Still buried deep within her, he slid a hand under her lusciously curved rear and used his hold to leverage himself on her, up and down, rubbing himself against her clit until she moaned.
“Come for me, Aislinn. Come on, baby,” he whispered. Her nipples hardened against his chest, he felt her body tense, and he knew he had her.
It wasn’t long before her body gave itself to him in a sweet, soft release, her fingernails lightly scoring his shoulders and his name falling from her lips.
Then he tucked her body against his, covering her with himself as much as he could, and held her until they both fell asleep.
GET
out. They’re coming.
Aislinn gasped at the disembodied voice pulling her from the deep sleep she’d been in. She sat straight up, the blankets falling away from her nude body and the cool morning air bathing her breasts.
That had been a warning and she couldn’t ignore it. “Gabriel!” She shook his shoulder. “Gabriel, wake up.” He groaned.
She rolled out of bed and went for their clothes. As Gabriel sat up, she tossed his jeans at him. “Quick. They’re coming.” She yanked her jeans up over her hips.
Someone pounded on the door at the front of the house. She stilled, her gaze locked with his.
“Fuck.” Gabriel bounded out of bed and pulled his jeans on while she jammed a shirt over her head and shoved her feet into her shoes. Together they ran to the doorway. Gabriel scooped the bags up from the floor.
The pounding sounded again. A loud male voice yelled, “Open up in the name of the Shadow King. Your house is to be searched for fugitives under an Unseelie Court edict.” More pounding. “If you do not open the door, we have orders to break it down.”
She ran toward the spiral staircase, but Gabriel just stood there, staring at the door. Halting near the stairs, she looked back at him. His pupils were large, every muscle in his big body tense. His jaw was locked and he seemed to be straining toward the Shadow Guard on the other side, as though holding himself back from rushing toward it. Her gaze skated down and she saw that he’d pulled a charmed iron club from the bag and he held it tight in one fist, skin protected by the leather-bound grip.
“No,” she whispered harshly. “Not here, not now.”
He didn’t move.
She walked to him and moved his jaw, forcing him to look at her. Black hate overwhelmed his eyes. “I know it goes against your nature to run. I don’t like it, either. But there are at least five Shadow Guards on the other side of that door.” She paused, pressing her lips together. “You said you would protect me, Gabriel. Right now that means we have to get out of here and bring the battle to them when we’re prepared.”
He gave his head a tiny shake as though to clear it. His eyes bled from hatred back to the warmth she more commonly saw. She pulled him forward and he followed. They ran to the window that overlooked the Boundary Lands. Finding no Shadow Guards on the back side of the house, they made their way down the spiral staircase to the patio doors below.
Gabriel opened the door and they flew out into the trees and kept running. Together they jumped logs and dodged tree limbs, Aislinn’s heart pounding.
In only a moment the Shadow Guards would break down the door and enter the house. They would discover the electricity was off and the evidence of squatters having been there—the burned-down candles, the freshly cleaned dishes in the sink. They’d be able to deduce quite easily that there was a high likelihood the squatters had been the fugitives they were looking for. They’d call in reinforcements, start searching the woods. They’d try to call in the magickal “bloodhounds,” but thanks to Ronan that probably wouldn’t work. All the same, this area would be swarming with Shadow Guards and goblins in a short time.
Nature spirits swirled around them, sensing the drama. The nature fae who lived in the Boundary Lands probably already knew who they were and why they were fleeing through their land. Unlike the troop, the nature fae mostly stayed out of court business.
“Wait.” Gabriel stopped her by a fallen tree trunk and ripped open one of the bags. He pulled out a sweater and shoes for himself, an extra pullover for her against the chill in the air. He tossed the garment to her. “We need to go in the opposite direction.”
Clutching the pullover, she leaned over, out of breath, and braced her hands on her thighs. “What? Why?”
“Deeper into the Boundary Lands is exactly the way they think we’ll go. We need to go into Piefferburg City. They won’t expect that and they won’t be looking there.”
“Are you crazy? Someone will recognize us. I bet
Faemous
has been playing our faces on a loop.”
He shook his head. “No way. The Shadow King will be keeping this hush-hush. He’ll have concocted some story about why his guards are searching houses, but I bet anything that story doesn’t include you or me. If the troop knew he was trying to kill his blood daughter because she posed a threat to his throne, they would rise up against him and protect us. He wouldn’t want the Summer Queen to know what he planned to do to you, either. He’s only barely avoiding a war with her by the fact that you came to the Unseelie Court of your own free will. If it came out that you were coerced or influenced—”
“By you.”
“By me, that would throw the legitimacy of your defection into shadow and there might be a war after all. The Summer Queen would use any excuse.”
She looked further into the trees, searching around as though the right answer would fall from the sky. Somewhere above, a bird called. Her inclination was to stay hidden in the woods, not go back toward the violence. But then what? Set up a little cabin or tree house and blissfully live out the rest of their lives here in the Boundary Lands untouched by the Shadow King? No. Of course not. There was no running away from this. There was only meeting it head-on.
She swallowed hard, managed to catch her breath, and looked at him. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He nodded and tossed one of the bags with the weapons to her. “Arm yourself.”
Fishing inside, she found a long charmed iron dagger in a leather sheath. She hooked the sheath to one of the belt loops of her jeans, so it hung at her hip—ready to grab when she needed it.
When,
not if.
They took the long way around, seeing no nature fae but the small flitting lights of the littlest ones. They found a good place to sit and then waited until nightfall. Under cover of darkness, they would make the trek back into the city, back into Piefferburg. It was time to put an end to this.
Time to face her father.
They found a place to wait for the gloaming to fall. Spirits flitted around them and then away, but still no nature fae sought them out, yet flowers grew mysteriously quickly around them, twining around trees and snaking across the ground. She sat in a soft bed of leaves, eyes closed, waiting. Gabriel sat opposite her.
She opened her eyes. “Call one,” she said, gazing into the branches of the trees above them. Sunlight dappled through the leaves, painting the ground in spots of gold.
“Call one?” He paused, understanding. “Call the sluagh.”
She nodded, finding his gaze. “Not the whole army, please. Just one. Can you do that?”
“I can.” He paused, looked up into the tree limbs, and then rubbed his chin. “You want to see if you can do it.”
She drew a steady breath and looked down at the leaves at their feet, her jaw locking. “I’ve never been to Goblin Town or the
ceantar dubh
. Until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never even seen a creature like Barthe. I couldn’t stop staring at him like some farmer who’d just come to the city for the first time. I don’t know if I can command the sluagh and I need to find out.”
“I’ve never called any of the sluagh before but I feel in my blood that I can do it.” His voice was strong and sure and his eyes were clear and straightforward. “Don’t you have that same assurance?”
She dragged the toe of her shoe through the dirt and looked up at him. “No.”
“So you need to see one, command one, in order to find that confidence.”
“It’s better I find out now, don’t you think? And better
one
that I can’t control now than an
entire army
later, don’t you think?” She paused, a sad smile twisting her lips. “That would be bad.”
“Yeah, that would be bad.”
“So, if I can’t control it, how will we dispel it?”
“You mean, how can we ensure it won’t escape and wreak havoc and mayhem all over Piefferburg right after it kills us?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, exactly. That.”
He grinned, showing a quick flash of white teeth. “I guess you’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t, necromancer. Ready?”
“No.”
“Ready?”
“Oh,
Danu
, yes.” She drew the dagger to make herself feel better, the thick leather grip heavy in her hand.
He muttered words in Old Maejian—way, way too fast for her taste.
And it appeared.
TWENTY
“RONAN!”
The word ripped from Bella’s throat as she watched her husband fall. Charmed iron wrapped his arms, though that didn’t faze him. He had immunity to charmed iron. It was the drug they’d just injected him with that worried her.
He collapsed and the goblins caught him, their thin, gray fingers gripping his arms and legs and hefting him on the Shadow King’s command. On the way back from the Boundary Lands, they’d used her to keep him in line, threatening to harm her if Ronan tried anything.
Now they were back in the Black Tower, in the Shadow King’s quarters, and the royal had decided the only way to keep Ronan from making trouble was if he was unconscious.
She watched, her heart lodged somewhere just behind her teeth, as they carried him into one of the bedrooms. Her throat worked and blood trickled where the Shadow King had cut her to ensure Ronan’s cooperation. All Aodh had to do was threaten her and Ronan did whatever he wanted. Aodh had laughed as he’d commanded him, saying love had made him weak.
Ronan had done things, woven spells—laid traps.
“He’ll be fine, Bella,” purred the Shadow King.
He lounged on his couch, while Barthe gripped her arm. They’d left Aurora knocked out back in the cabin. Bella hoped the fragile woman was stronger than she appeared because the guard who’d hit her had backhanded her so hard she’d slid halfway across the floor.
“Do not speak to me,” she ground out, her voice a low tremble of absolute rage.
He moved faster than she’d ever thought possible, coming to stand directly in front of her. His red-tipped hair swirled around his shoulders with the action and brushed her collar-bones. “I am king of the Unseelie,
your
king. You’d best master that tongue in my presence or I’ll cut it out.”
She refused to look at him. Her jaw locked, she unfocused her eyes and gazed past him, lifting her chin.
“Tell me where they are and I’ll spare your husband.”
Even if she knew where Aislinn and Gabriel were and told him, he would never let Ronan live. Bella understood that cold, hard fact. Ronan was too much of a threat to him. So was Niall. “I don’t know where they are. We left the Black Tower before Gabriel took Aislinn from the dungeon.”
His fingers snapped out fast and hard, gripping her chin hard enough to bruise. Guiding her face up to his, he brought her eyes to focus on his face. She felt there was no resemblance between the Shadow King and Aislinn, not a breath. “And Niall? Don’t tell me you don’t know where he is, either?”
“I don’t.”
He pushed her to the side. She stumbled and fell to the floor, sprawled there, looking up at him with pure hatred on her face. He smiled down at her. “It’s a good thing for you that you have some value to me. I can think of five different ways I’d like to flay the skin from your body right now.”
Bella knew the kind of value she held for him.
She was bait for a trap and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
GABRIEL
had requested the firstborn, the oldest, of the sluagh as a way to summon only one of them.
The creature oriented itself. Growled. Turned and fastened its eyes on each of them in turn. Appraising the male as the greater threat, he charged Gabriel.
All of this happened in the time it took for Gabriel to raise the charmed iron hatchet he’d taken from the weapons bag—a heartbeat.
“Halt!”
The sluagh stopped midcharge, so close to Gabriel he could scent the bone-dry dust of almost completely decayed flesh. His immediate gut reaction had been to slash with the hatchet. It sailed harmlessly through the creature’s abdomen just as he’d presumed. If Aislinn hadn’t commanded it to stop, his action would have been too little, too late.
It was gray and scaly, with a bulbous body like an ant’s—puffed-out chest, minuscule waist, and a thicker pelvis region. Its arms and legs were thin, but wiry with muscle. The tattered remnants of decayed clothing hung from its bony shoulders and wrapped its starved, tiny waist. Its head was shaped like a gray peanut, with hollowed, deep-set eyes and a large, gaping maw with sharp, pointed teeth—a mouthful of fangs. In one narrow hand it gripped a machete.
Gabriel stared at its weapon and the teeth and claws, betting anything this creature would draw real blood with or without a necromancer to command it. It had no tether to the afterlife as other souls possessed and its privates hung small and shrunken between its spindly legs. It was hard to believe the thing had once been some kind of fae.
“Oh, sweet Danu,” Aislinn breathed.
Gabriel still had a grip on the charmed iron hatchet even though he knew it wouldn’t work against a sluagh because they were spirit. If Aislinn commanded it to take corporeal form and then lost control of it, he wasn’t even sure if the blade would do anything to it then. After all, it was already dead.