“That you’re a dangerous, arrogant, superficial man with piles of discarded, heartbroken female bodies on each side of the path you tread.”
They’d stopped in a large open area where a huge fountain, in the shape of a swan, flowed into a pool. There were fewer people here. For a moment all was silent except for the sound of running water and the clicking heels of the few passersby.
He studied her with hard, glittering, dark blue eyes. “Your honesty is very refreshing. I’m sorry that’s your first impression of me. Perhaps I can change it.”
“Maybe you can.”
“A little too honest, that’s my first impression of you.” He narrowed his eyes. “And perhaps a bit jaded about men at the moment.” He loosely shrugged one shoulder. “Just a guess.”
Good guess. Time to change the subject. “Why do you wish to change courts anyway?”
“I’m surprised a pure-blood Seelie Tuatha Dé would ask such a question. I thought everyone here believed the Rose Tower superior in all ways. There should be no question why I wish to defect from the Black.”
Aislinn didn’t understand the twist to his words. It was almost—but not quite—mockery. An odd attitude to have when he seemed to want to join those he mocked for the rest of his very long life.
“Apparently Bella and Ronan have gone to the Unseelie Court. It can’t be that bad.”
Gabriel smiled. “Well, there’s no
Faemous
film crew there.” No. Apparently the film crew the Shadow King had allowed in years ago had been eaten. “And the nobles aren’t as . . . prissy.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Prissy?”
He nodded. “The Unseelie Court is darker and you have to watch your step.”
“So I’ve heard. Magick cast, blood spilled.”
“Sometimes. The magick is stronger, more violent, and held in higher regard. You know that. The laws are different there and you have to be careful. You don’t want to make enemies of some of them.”
Fear niggled. “How are Bella and Ronan?”
“Good. They’ve adjusted to life in the Black. They said to tell you they’re fine, but Bella misses you. They say to tell you they’re happy.”
She studied him for lies. It was what she wanted to hear, of course, and Gabriel seemed the type to tell you what you wanted to hear. But she
so
wanted to believe what he’d said. She’d lost more than one night’s sleep worrying about her friends. The memory of watching them walk away into Piefferburg Square on Yule Eve, forever banished from Seelie by the Summer Queen, still made her heart ache.
Though the crime that Ronan had committed—taking work from the Phaendir—normally would have held the punishment of death. He’d been lucky. They both had. The Phaendir, a guild of powerful immortal druids, were the sworn enemy of the Sídhe—Seelie and Unseelie alike. Enemy of
all
the fae races.
There was good reason.
The Phaendir, with the full support of the humans, had created and controlled the borders of Piefferburg with powerful warding. They called it a “resettlement area.”
Piefferburg’s inhabitants called it prison.
If one wanted to be philosophical about it, the fate of the fae was poetic punishment for the horrible fae race wars of the early 1600s that had decimated their population and left them easy prey to their common enemy, the Phaendir. The wars had forced the fae from the underground, and the humans had panicked in the face of the truth—the fae were real.
On top of the wars, a mysterious sickness called Watt syndrome had also befallen them. Some thought the illness had been created by the Phaendir. However it had come about, the result was the same—it had further weakened them.
The two events had been a perfect storm of misfortune, leading to their downfall. When the fae had been at their most vulnerable, the Phaendir had allied with the humans to imprison them in an area of what had then been the New World, founded by a human named Jules Piefferburg.
These days the sects of fae who’d warred in the 1600s had reached an uneasy peace. They were united against the Phaendir because the old human saying was true—the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Aislinn cleared her throat against a sudden rush of emotion. Bella had been the only one in the court who’d carried the weight of Aislinn’s secret. Really, Bella had been more of a sister than a friend. “Come with me. I’ll give you a tour before dinner.”
“Sounds good.”
They walked the length and breadth of the Rose Tower, which was enormous and completely self-sufficient. She showed him all the floors and how they were graduated in terms of court ranking. The higher floors, the floors closest to the queen’s penthouse apartment, were where the purest-blood Seelie Tuatha Dé resided. She showed him the court-yard in the solarium where the families with children lived so they could have yards to play in. The school. The restaurants on premise where the nobles dined. The ballroom, the numerous gathering areas, and the banquet halls.
Most of the residents never really left the building for much beyond shopping or to have a night of dining out. Some of the more adventurous slummed it at a few of Piefferburg’s nightclubs, but the Summer Queen discouraged the Seelie Tuatha Dé from mixing with the trooping fae—those fae who didn’t belong to either court and weren’t wildings or water dwelling.
While social contact with the troop was discouraged, un-chaperoned and unapproved contact with the Unseelie Tuatha Dé was strictly forbidden. Aislinn suspected more of the illicit sort went on than was widely known. After all, she suspected her own mother of it. There was no other way to explain away certain . . . oddities . . . in Aislinn’s magickal abilities.
She and Gabriel ended up at her front door. A good thing, since she wanted her slippers, a cup of hot cocoa, and her own company for the rest of the evening.
Gabriel grabbed her hand before she could snatch it away. “Thank you for spending time with me today,” he murmured in Old Maejian, the words rolling soft and smooth like good whiskey from his tongue. He bent to kiss her hand in the old custom, his gaze fastened on hers. At the last moment, he flipped her hand palm up and laid his lips to her wrist. All the while his thumb stroked her palm back and forth.
That callused rasp in conjunction with his warm, silky lips sent shivers through her. Made her think about his hands and lips on other parts of her body, which made her think of his long, muscled length naked against her between the sheets of her bed.
In a sweaty tangle.
Limbs entwined . . .
Bad incubus.
She snatched her hand back.
He stood for a moment, bent over, hand and lips still in kissing position. Then he grinned in a half-mocking, half-mischievous way, straightened, and walked down the corridor, all sex wrapped in black and adorned with a swagger.
She supposed the Summer Queen thought spending time with Gabriel would be good for her after her breakup with Kendal. A little meaningless fling to get her back on the dating horse? But she did not do meaningless flings.
And she was definitely unappreciative of being saddled with a man like Gabriel Mac Braire.
Sweet Danu, what had the queen thrown her into?
TWO
AISLINN
shifted uneasily, watching Gabriel come toward her in the ballroom. A hundred other men in the room were dressed in the same style of black wool tuxedo, but none of them wore it like the incubus. His hair was pulled back at his nape, revealing the almost brutally perfect bones of his face and accentuating the deep blue of his eyes.
“Sweet Danu,” Aislinn murmured, taking a sip of her champagne. She jumped, startled, as Carina came up on her side.
“Oh, my goddess,” Carina said, gazing hungrily over the rim of her glass. “Look, he’s coming over here.” She made a low growling sound. “There’s something about a man from the dark side, isn’t there?”
“No, there’s not.”
“I’m so jealous you get to be his guide.”
“You’re not the only one. Think of Drem.”
“Drem doesn’t care how much I drool over other men as long as I come home to him.”
As he cut through the crowd, people seemed to move out of his way by pure instinct. It was odd the way the men seemed to sidestep him. Even the women did, though they might take an appreciative look at him while they moved aside. Was it because he was Unseelie? Was it because he was incubus? Neither explanation seemed right to her, but she couldn’t put her finger on the threat he seemed to unconsciously exude.
Somewhere deep within, Aislinn also had the subtle impulse to get out of his way, despite his attractiveness, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she wanted nothing to do with men at the moment. She pointedly looked away from him as he approached.
“Aislinn,” Gabriel greeted as he came to stand near them. “Carina. You both look beautiful tonight.”
“Thank you,” answered Carina with a simpering smile. Aislinn rolled her eyes.
He motioned with his hands at the thronged room. “So, is this a special occasion?”
“You know well that this is a common event,” Aislinn answered. “We discussed it this afternoon.”
“Yes, that’s right. Weekly, right?”
“Periodically.” Gabriel was ever so lightly mocking again.
“Would you like to dance, Aislinn?”
She hesitated, jaw locking.
“Sure she would,” Carina answered, slipping Aislinn’s champagne glass from her fingers and giving her a “helpful” push forward.
Gabriel slipped his hand around her waist and led her toward the dance floor of the glittering ballroom, where couples already swirled to the traditional music of the Seelie Tuatha Dé Sídhe. They had all danced to the same melodies a millennium ago. These days they were just more refined.
His hand was large, imposingly so, and possessive on her waist as he led her into the crush. He took her hand in his and pulled her much closer than she wanted, though the proximity was proper for the dance. Her breasts swelled above the bodice of her dove gray gown, making her feel naked all of a sudden.
She cleared her throat and tried to get comfortable in his arms. The problem was that she actually
was
comfortable in his arms. He made her feel safe in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely.
“How are you enjoying the Rose Tower so far?” That was a nice, distant question and she’d even sounded polite. Score point one for her.
“It’s nice and the women are friendly. Not the men, though.”
She gave a short laugh. “That can’t be anything odd for you, an incubus. The men feel threatened.”
“Not in the Black Tower.”
She made a scoffing sound. “I find that hard to believe.”
“I missed you today,” Gabriel said, his voice low and soft near her ear.
She’d been gone all afternoon. “I was volunteering in the
ceantar láir
. There’s a center there for—”
“Homeless fae. Yes, I know of it.” He smiled a little. “Close your mouth.”
She realized she’d been gaping and snapped her mouth shut. It was hard to believe he knew of the shelter. Aislinn couldn’t think of one Seelie who did. “Sorry. I volunteer there once a week preparing and serving meals.”
“The queen can’t like that much.”
“She’s fine with it,” Aislinn said defensively. In actuality, the queen suffered Aislinn’s “hobby,” as she called it, badly.
He gave her a look of doubtfulness. “She allows you to rub elbows with down-and-out goblins, boggarts, skillywiddens, and red caps?”
“She’s very compassionate.”
He laughed.
“She can be,” Aislinn amended, “sometimes. Anyway, I don’t need to defend myself or her to you.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because you’re making me.” Her voice was a low, annoyed hiss. Gah! This man brought out the worst in her and she just couldn’t control it.
“I would never make you do anything you didn’t want to do, sweetness,” he murmured over her head, looking out over the crowd. The words seemed laden with innuendo.
“The Seelie Court is about more than just balls, clothes, and shallow gossip. We are an honorable tower. Our men and women believe in chivalry and integrity. We operate with a respectable code of ethics here.”
“Relax, Aislinn. The last thing I wanted to do was rile my tour guide.”
“I’m not your tour guide,” she snapped.
“No, you’re my dance partner and a very good one, too.” A slight note of wonder threaded his voice.
Aislinn blinked and looked around, realizing all eyes were on them. Her voice had been strained and stiff while she spoke to him, but her body hadn’t been . . . at all. In fact, she’d shamelessly melted against him and let him lead her into an intricate dance pattern that had all the ballroom admiring them.
She glared at him. “You did that on purpose.”
Unperturbed, he only shrugged a shoulder. “I can’t make you do anything some part of you doesn’t want to do.”
Annoyance flashed. She pressed her lips into a thin line to control it. “I still don’t understand why you want to come to the Rose, Gabriel. You seem to hold this court and even the queen in contempt.” She stared up at him for a long moment as if she could read his mind. “What game are you playing?”
“You caught me. I’m actually here on a top-secret mission for the Shadow King, with orders to target you. I compelled the Summer Queen to help me get closer to you and I’m using my charms as an incubus to seduce you to the Black for nefarious purposes.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, Gabriel. What makes you want to be here?”
He spun and then dipped her. His mouth came down close to hers. “I’m bored, sweetness, and you’re the perfect cure.” He held her that way for a heartbeat, their lips almost touching. Around them people clapped.
He righted her and she hurried away, returning to Carina’s side to retrieve her drink. She needed that drink, lots of them. Gabriel melted back into the crowd.