She ducked her head and smiled into his shoulder, his words warming her through.
“Why did you wake up? It’s early in the morning.”
The dream came rushing back to her, stealing her warmth and making her smile fade. “I had a dream, Gabriel, like no dream I’ve ever had before. It compelled me to give up the Book of Bindings, but to whom I’m not sure. It was menacing and almost seemed laced with some kind of malevolent magick.” She glanced up at him. “That’s impossible, isn’t it? I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”
Quiet reigned for several moments, his body rigid against hers. “We’ll ask Ronan and Niall about it in the morning. If anyone will know, they will.”
She kissed his collarbone, wanting to relax the alert stiffness in his body, wanting to lose herself in him and forget the dream.
He lowered his head, the fire snapping and crackling in the background. His lips brushed hers and she pressed upward for a firmer contact. He covered her mouth with his and kissed her deeply, his tongue stealing within to brush up against her tongue.
She moaned against his lips and moved her body, shifting her thighs so she could wrap her legs around his waist. His hand slipped from her waist, over her hip, to her rear, where he cupped one cheek and ground himself against her.
Then they leisurely undressed each other, revealing silken skin to the gentle, fire-warmed air. Sighs escaping them became moans of pleasure and then soft entreaties for more. Finally he slipped between her thighs and then deep within her, becoming one with her, and they showed each other with their bodies that the words they’d just spoken were true.
GABRIEL
awoke naked and tangled in the silken sheets of Aislinn’s bed. It was the only place he wanted to be. The remnants of the fire no longer warmed the room and early morning sunlight peeked in from around the edges of the heavy sapphire-colored curtains covering the window that overlooked Piefferburg Square.
Contentment filled him as he rolled over. Aislinn’s scent from her pillow filled his nose. Finally, she was his.
All the stars seemed aligned suddenly. All was right with the world.
He reached for her, the memory of how her body had felt the previous night still fresh in his mind—her soft skin and the velvet clasp of her sex around his cock, her hot mouth and the mesh of her tongue with his. His name falling from her lips mingling with the sweet sound of her orgasms.
His hand slid against the opposite side of the bed, brushing the cool sheets. Aislinn had already gotten up.
Gabriel raised his head and glanced at the now-dead fire in the fireplace and the bright, multicolored furniture in the room. Aislinn wasn’t anywhere within eyesight. The kitchen or bathroom maybe? He sat up, letting the slick sheets fall to his waist, and pushed a hand through his long, tangled hair. The whole apartment felt empty.
“Aislinn?” he called, but got no answer.
Now alarmed, he tossed the blankets back and rose from the bed. He searched the apartment, not finding her. When he returned to the bedroom, that was when he spotted the piece of gray paper stuck to the fireplace mantel.
He ripped it off and read it.
Give us the book and you get your queen back.
Tell the masses and she dies.
The Grand Temple in the Goblin Town. Five p.m.
He’d been here when they’d taken her. He’d been right next to her and it had happened anyway. Now she was in danger—again—and he’d done nothing to prevent it.
Gabriel crushed the note in his hand, heart pounding, and got dressed.
TWENTY-FIVE
RONAN
drummed his fingers on the table in Aislinn’s living room and Gabriel knew he was concerned. He’d known Ronan Quinn a long time, since long before he’d defected from the Black Tower for the Rose in pursuit of Bella. The look on Ronan’s face, combined with the drumming fingers, meant it was bad.
Gabriel clenched his jaw. Rage had begun to burn low in his belly when he’d found the note and it wouldn’t be extinguished until he had her back in his arms. “Just tell us, Ronan,” he ground out.
Bella shifted next to Melia. Both women glanced up at him at his tone.
Ronan sighed. “There’s only one thing it could be if there really was some kind of magick in that dream that disturbed Aislinn.”
“The Phaendir.” That came from Melia, who uttered it matter-of-factly.
Ronan gave a curt nod.
Gabriel paced back and forth in front of the couch. “They want the book, of course, and they know Aislinn has it hidden. I wonder if they’re pulling the same shit with the Summer Queen to get the piece of the
bosca fadbh
.”
“They’ve been after the book for a long time, Gabriel. They don’t like that we have it within the borders of Piefferburg,” Melia answered. “The piece is valuable, too, but it’s worthless without the Book of Bindings. That book holds the key to everything. If they can get that and destroy it, well, then the fae are shit out of luck.”
“They’re afraid because we have two of the four necessary pieces,” murmured Bella. “They’re worried we might actually manage to break the warding.”
Melia spoke vehemently. “Maybe they’re right to be concerned.” She pressed her lips into a firm line. “They can’t have the book, Gabriel. No matter what. This is bigger than Aislinn’s life. You know she would agree.”
Gabriel turned on Melia with a growl in his throat. Nothing was more important than Aislinn’s life,
nothing
. Yet once he parsed through his gut response, he knew she was right. The majority of the inhabitants of Piefferburg yearned for freedom and they deserved it. Aislinn would agree and she would gladly die to give it to them.
But he wouldn’t let her die to obtain it. Not for any price.
He stared at Melia as these thoughts crowded his head and he worked on an answer to his quandary. She shrank back into the cushions at the look on his face. “We won’t give them the Book of Bindings,” Gabriel said finally, “but fuck if we’re letting them have Aislinn, either.”
“On that we can all agree,” said Bella. “I’m not willing to sacrifice Aislinn’s life, either, Gabriel.”
“We’ll have to be careful of everyone we bring into the planning, even the rest of the host. Even my brother,” said Ronan. “It’s difficult for the Phaendir to enlist help this side of the borders, but it’s not impossible. When they twist any fae to their side, they do it with the threat of death over their heads—theirs or someone they love.”
“Yes.” Gabriel remembered Carina. She’d done what she’d done to protect her husband, Drem, and died when she’d failed to please the Phaendir. She probably would’ve been killed even if she’d been successful in her mission. “No one outside our circle can know anything about our plans.”
Ronan nodded. “Agreed.”
“Melia and Bella, can you cover for the queen today?” They were Aislinn’s court aides and were trained to take on issues when the queen was indisposed.
Bella nodded. “As far as the Black will know, Aislinn is ill.”
“Then I’ll get everyone else together and we’ll start laying our plans. We’re bringing Aislinn home tonight.”
THEY
hadn’t bothered with a gag.
They didn’t need to. All they had to do was clamp charmed iron handcuffs around her wrists and that prevented her from filling her mouth with the words and magick that would bring the goblin army to her defense. Her arms were wrenched behind her back, twisted viciously. It had hurt at first, but the pain had faded to numbness and now she couldn’t feel them at all.
Why they’d plopped her down right in the heart of Goblin Town remained a mystery to her. All she had to do was free her wrists, which would free her tongue and her magick, call for aid, and the Phaendir that held her would be hors d’oeuvres. There had to be a reason they’d selected this location, but try as hard as she could, she was unable to untangle the mystery.
Maybe they were just that arrogant. She supposed perhaps they had a right to feel that way. After all, they had successfully imprisoned all the fae races for over 350 years.
And it would take a miracle for her to get these cuffs off.
Still dressed in her thin nightgown and still barefoot, she sat in the pulpit of the Grand Temple at the foot of a huge carved jade statue of the goblins’ primary goddess, Orna. She watched the black-robed figures of the Phaendir—they hadn’t introduced themselves, but she had no doubt that was who they were—walk the premises. They’d taken over the building and closed it up. Who knew what they’d done with the goblin priests and their attendants?
All the windows of the temple were shut, the shutters drawn, all the doors locked. They’d even snuffed the candles on the tables lining the sides of the temple that the goblins came to light when they prayed to their gods—much different deities than the rest of the fae worshipped.
The minor deities were honored with statues that writhed and shifted on pedestals all along the edges of the temple, bespelled to modify and transform continually. The gritty sound of ever-shifting stone was the only filler for the silence. The only light that penetrated the murk in the temple came through the pale red-tinted glass panels near the top of the arched ceilings.
Daylight shifted lazily as the sun moved across the sky and Aislinn mostly spent her time watching dust motes dance through the air, when she wasn’t stabbing looks to kill at the Phaendir or planning ways to defeat or escape them without her magick.
Twice now they’d caught her trying to escape out the back of the temple. So now she’d been assigned one solitary druid to guard her, while they’d stationed more at the doors of the building that led out into the alleys of Goblin Town. They hadn’t hit her, hadn’t hurt her except for twisting her arms behind her back to get the cuffs on. They never spoke to her. They were silent, strong wraiths, united and unswerving in their purpose.
Of course, she had no illusions about her fate.
If they got what they wanted, they would probably let her go. They didn’t need to sow discord with the fae, who were, for all intents and purposes, under their thumbs so thoroughly as to be completely helpless. One little Unseelie queen meant nothing to the Phaendir. As long as they got the Book of Bindings, they would let the fae keep their Unseelie queen and their silly, harmless customs. Hatred burned up bile from the back of her throat.
But they would never get the book.
Gabriel wouldn’t give it to them.
He couldn’t
. He knew this issue transcended his love for her, transcended even her life. If he turned the book over to the Phaendir, they would destroy it. If they destroyed it, all hope the fae had of getting out of Piefferburg would die. She would never forgive Gabriel for that and he knew it.
Her people wanted out of Piefferburg.
Looking at the arrogant, black-cowled tyrants that held her now, fury ignited and raged in her stomach, racing through her veins and keeping her warm in the chilly room. Now, more than ever in her life, she wanted them defeated. She wanted revenge.
Freedom for the fae.
She wanted her hands filled with weapons or her mouth filled with magick and her immediate surroundings bursting with legions of unforgiven dead and goblins. She wanted to defeat these men who oppressed them and made them feel so much weaker than they were. But all she had were bare feet and a filmy nightgown that barely covered her icy skin, charmed iron against her wrists, and her magick stoppered up inside her by a supernatural plug. Even the tattoo burned into her flesh seemed dull and faded where she could see it on her chest.
The only weapons she had at her disposal now were her mouth, her mind, and her cunning.
“Why do you hate us so much?” she asked the man who guarded her.
His black-cowled head turned toward her and all she saw was blackness. “I’m not here to have a conversation with you. I’m here to guard you and, perhaps, execute you.” His voice was flat, but human sounding. Emotionless. That was no good. She needed him worked up.
“They’ll never hand over the Book of Bindings, which I’m certain is what you’ve asked them for. Therefore, I’m a dead woman. Can’t you honor a dead queen’s last request and talk to her?”
He only stared out over the expanse of pews that filled the temple.
“You must be really worried about the fae breaking free, right?” she goaded quietly, her red-tipped hair shifting over her shoulders as she gazed up at the druid. “I mean, you’re going to such extremes to get the Book of Bindings. This must be the first time you’ve dared to enter the city. After all, you must know that if you’re found out, you’ll be ripped from limb to limb and, at least in this part of town, eaten. Odd that you chose Goblin Town as the place to make your stand.”
“Don’t presume you know our intentions or our purposes.”
Oh, there had been a note of anger in his response. Now she was getting somewhere.
“Well, all I can do is presume, since the Phaendir aren’t exactly forthcoming. I know my history, of course. I know about the grudge you bear the fae.” She tipped her head to the side and affected a light, innocent tone. “Is it because we snubbed you? We smacked you down and humiliated you, didn’t we? Considered you less than ourselves? Especially the Seelie Tuatha Dé Danann. Of course, they have snobbery down to an art form.” Interesting how she could say “they” and not even care she wasn’t a part of them. “The Unseelie or the troop would’ve accepted you, but you were too good for them. I’m Unseelie, but on this issue I think I agree with the Seelie.”
“You have no comprehension of what you speak,” the man ground out.
“Oh, is that not it? Well, if it’s not some sort of revenge for being rejected, then it must be flat-out fear. Are you doing this because you fear us?” She paused. “But, I guess you should.
Now
,” she tacked on carelessly.