A Tale of Two Kingdoms (18 page)

She stared for a couple of beats before smiling in a way that almost looked like she felt pity for them. “If wishes were fishes.”

Duff looked at Song, who shook her head slightly. “Pardon?”

She took in a deep breath. “You must know that, while this is all very romantic, it’s also made a lot of people very, very angry. I can’t welcome you into my country and not give you any protection. If something happens to you here, how do you think that would make me look?”

“Honestly, I had no’ thought about how it would make you look.”

“Clearly not. Young people are always thinking only about themselves.” She shook her head briskly as if intending to appear firm. “No. Security is a mandate and, obviously, it shouldn’t be a financial burden on the Canadian people. So you need it and you need to pay for it.”

Duff stared at the Prime Minister. “It would have been very helpful if you’d mentioned this before today.” She shrugged. “So how much security is bein’ mandated?”

At the wave of a hand to the guard just inside the door, he opened for a suited man carrying a file. He walked briskly, with great economy of movement, to the oval table sitting at the end of the room inside a giant bay window. The Prime Minister nodded toward a chair next to her. He sat and laid the file on the table in front of him.

Duff’s gaze focused on the file, wondering what it might contain.

“Prince Torquil, Princess Hawking, this is Mr. Brachen from the CNS. He will be supervising your case and insuring that your security needs are met so that there are no unfortunate incidents while you’re here.”

The prince was unconsciously holding Song’s hand tighter than he would have intended as he felt his dream of living a quiet remote life with his mate slipping through his fingers like sand.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Ottawa. So nice to have met you.” She smiled at Aelsong. “And welcome to Canada!”

She swooped toward the door as if it would open magically before she arrived at the threshold. And it did.

Mr. Brachen cleared his throat. “Well, as has been said, welcome to Canada.”

Duff and Song, both feeling more apprehensive with each passing minute, more like prisoners than refugees, murmured polite thank yous.

“The thin’ is, Mr. Brachen. We were plannin’ to ease our way into the livin’ of a remote life, be reclusive until people in the area got used to us. We do no’ have accommodation for others. Nor is there accommodation nearby.”

Brachen nodded. “I understand. Perhaps we can find a way for the Prime Minster to feel reasonably
secure
,” he smiled at the emphasized word like it was a private joke used often in his line of work, “without completely dismantling your vision. In other words,” he looked between the two of them, “compromise.”

“Well, Mr. Brachen, that may depend partly on my mate’s inclination to agree with your proposal and partly on how much compromise I can afford.”

“Fair enough. Let’s find a starting point, shall we?”

“Very well, For starters, is there any way around this… mandate?”

Brachen raised his chin, closed the file, and folded his hands together. “You could refuse, but you’d need to make a formal statement to that effect, which would make you vulnerable to any lunatic who could figure out where you are – not that hard to do,” he said under his breath, “and,” he smirked, “elves and fae are given to lunacy even when unprovoked. You two have poked the rabid dog with a stick until he’s now howling looney tunes.”

Duff looked down at his hands. The picture of living with Song by that mountain stream had been so vivid, so perfectly clear. He saw a beautiful feminine hand come into his field of vision and close over his own clasped hands, and there it was. Even in the midst of bitter disappointment, he wasn’t alone anymore. It wasn’t about the house in BC. It was about Aelsong Hawking. She was his home wherever she was.

He looked up into her face and without looking away said, “Mr. Brachen, I’ve no’ had a chance to speak with my bride since learnin’ there’s a stump in the path. Would you be so kind as to give us a minute to ourselves?”

They heard the chair move back. “Certainly. Just let the guard outside the door know when you’re ready to resume our discussion. Or if you’d like your refreshments refreshed.”

Song had spent the past year diligently exercising mind over a body in mating heat, which meant that its entire purpose for existence was finding Duff Torquil and coupling with him. He was the other half of their biological whole and, what she needed more than anything was to be with him. But that was not the same thing, as spending time with a person and coming to appreciate the subtle way he looks askance when he’s uncertain or the way his lashes linger on his cheek when he’s summoning patience.

She may have only spent a week with him, but she knew him well enough to read the disappointment that was radiating off of him in waves. His dream had just been shattered. For her, she didn’t particularly care for remote mountain living. She could like it or not, but she didn’t like to see what she was seeing on her mate.

“So, Dougal,” she said brightly. She got a little smile in response to her use of the a.k.a. “We’re hittin’ our first bump. I’m told life is full of them. We’ll just be takin’ a step back, seein’ where we are, makin’ a new plan and startin’ off again.”

He reached up, touched her cheek, and sighed deeply. “I was so sure this was good, I did no’ come up with a Plan B.”

“It was good. It is good. Let’s hear what Word Game has to say. Maybe it will no’ be so bad as you’re thinkin’. Aye?”

“Do no’ really see another option.”

“So we ride along until we do.”

Duff nodded. “So you’re smart, too?”

“Tcha. Landed ENT’s sexiest man alive, did I no’?

That earned her a hearty laugh with resplendent twinkling eyes.

CHAPTER 9

Over the next day Duff hammered out something with Brachen that he thought was feasible with his means. They would be accompanied to Prince George and would be met there by the small security force that had been handpicked to insure their safety. They would erect temporary quarters until the property could be turned into a “compound”.

When the agreement was struck, Song and Duff were eager to get out of the hotel and resume their journey toward their new life. They sat close together in the back of the SUV that was transporting them to the airport where they were expecting a gauntlet of reporters.

As they were hurried along by security people and jostled inside the lounge of one of the private jet hangars, they were separated and, before either knew what was happening, they were wearing handcuffs and pushed through doors on opposite sides of the room.

The two large elves who had custody of Song weren’t prepared for a demonstration of Hawking fire. She not only broke free, but managed to knock one of them down. Just inside the door to the adjacent hangar, Duff was engaged in his own skirmish with well-trained people who had been better prepared for resistance.

She was overtaken before she reached him, but not before being forced to witness him being tasered. She would spend the rest of her life wishing she could purge that sight from her memory, for all the good that would do.

The press was waiting en masse outside the palace gates at Derry hoping to get photos of Aelsong Hawking being formally extradited on a convenient technicality and forced back home by the king. The palace guards held the crowd back while the caravan with dark tint window drove through. The cars made their way to the rear entrance at garden level so that no photo ops would be possible.

The guards who had been charged with the duty of delivering the princess escorted Song into one of the small parlors used by the family. Her parents were waiting along with her brother who stood looking officious by a cheery, popping fire.

After the escorts removed the handcuffs, Aelsblood nodded and they withdrew closing the door behind them.

“Welcome back, sister.” She said nothing, didn’t even bother to change expression. She simply turned and started for the door. “You’ll be findin’ a suitable complement of security staff on the other side of the door to insure that you do no’ get lost and temporarily lose touch again.”

She turned around slowly. “You plan to keep me prisoner, do you?”

Tepring began crying softly. “Truly. ‘Tis the safest thin’ for you. Your behavior is thought to be traitorous no’ just to your family, but to your entire species.”

Aelsong turned to her father. “What have you to say about this, Da?”

Aelsblood answered before their father. “For gods’ sake, Song. He’s fae!”

Song ignored that and waited for Ethelred’s answer. He met his daughter’s gaze without censure or recrimination, nor did he convey that she would find support there either. He gave the subtlest of shrugs and said in a tone that sounded casual against the backdrop of his wife’s weeping, “He’s the king.”

While Aelsong stared at her father, trying to read what was there, she heard Aelsblood say, “Go to your rooms, Song. You need, what do they call it? Oh yes, a time out.”

Song blinked and turned slowly. She walked back toward the fire where her brother stood. The large, ancient bit of firetending equipment caught her eye.

If there was anything worse than having one’s other half forcibly ripped away and tortured in front of them, it was having one’s sibling behave as if she was an adolescent caught at a prank. She swept up the heavy iron poker and, brandishing it with two hands, took a swipe that looked like a worthy attempt at beheading her brother.

In a defensive move that probably saved Song from execution for the crime of assassinating the monarch, he threw his forearm up and blocked the blow at the last second, yelling, “Ow,” and “Guards,” in rapid succession. “You’ve probably broke my arm, you nitwit. Are you thinkin’ you have no’ done enough damage for now? You know what we used to do with elves who committed treason? We did no’ lock them in their girly sweet rooms.”

The guards were awaiting instructions. “Take her to her rooms. Lock her in. Post a guard outside and make sure she does no’ leave. Be very certain that she does no’ get messages in or out either.”

As the guards were trying to drag her out, Song had a few choice parting remarks for Aelsblood that reminded all the household staff within hearing distance of another of her brothers. “Lock me in, will you? You’d better make sure I ne’er get out. If I e’er do, I
will
kill you next time, you bloody cocksuckin’ source of pus and piss. Do you know why you do no’ know how it feels to be mated? Because the mysteries decided there’s
no
female elf, no matter how horrid, who should be so accursed.”

“Get her out of here,” Aelsblood said, holding his arm.

As soon as they were gone, Tepring rose from the sofa having said not one word. On the way out of the room, she stopped in front of her son and slapped him on the neck with the hand that wasn’t holding a handkerchief.

“Mum! For… what in Paddy’s name is that about? Has the entire palace gone mad?”

He looked over at his father who was glaring at him. It was a look he had often seen trained on Ram when he was growing up, but he had never experienced the full impact of the old man’s formidable personality directed straight at him. It was very uncomfortable.

“Did it no’ occur to you that perhaps we should talk about what has happened as a family?”

Aelsblood looked confused. “Well, no. What do you mean?”

“Do you see this incident purely as a matter of state? That’s certainly the impression you just gave your mother and your sister.”

“As a member of the royal family my sister has a special obligation to…”

“I believe what you missed in your analysis of this situation is that the key to that sentence was family. Your mother would have liked to see you treat Aelsong with love and sympathy. You did no’ even manage to squeak out respect. It was shameful.”

Aelsblood gaped. “Unbelievable. My sister runs away with the heir to our enemy’s throne and you sit here callin’ my behavior shameful.”

The former king sighed deeply and looked at the rich amber color of the whiskey in the tumbler he held in his hand. “I wonder where this whiskey came from.”

“’
Tis Lagavulin,”