Noah (32 page)

“Does Tristan need help with damage control?”

“His emissary said they had it under control, but you know how these things go. When innocents are involved, you can’t just kill off everyone who got a whiff of forbidden information.”

“A few Mind Demons might help,” Noah insisted. “Erase some short-term memories.”

“Tristan said he had it covered.” The giant shrugged a huge shoulder. “You can offer, though.”

“Shala has gone home for the holiday,” Noah mused, speaking of the Shadowdweller Ambassador. “I will make the offer through her when she returns tomorrow. Hopefully it will not be too late to be effective by then.” Noah turned to Jacob. “How goes the hunting?”

Kestra could tell there was a wry sort of pain behind that statement. This time she didn’t resist her impulse. She sank into Noah’s thoughts and found out about this other, more sinister side to the Hallowed moons. The side where burnt caverns were no longer enough, control was lost, laws forsaken and morals discarded, and the Enforcer sent to lay down the law against his own people. Sometimes, battling them, the Enforcer would put his very life on the line in the name of protecting innocents, the laws of his King, and the transgressing Demons themselves. And then the retributive punishment that Demons deemed unspeakable. She had only gleaned glimpses of these awesome responsibilities in her earlier forays into Noah’s troubled memories of the Hallowed moons of the past few years, and the very tangible troubles that made the actions of the Enforcer so very necessary.

There was more information still, a link to further understanding his father’s death, but she knew he was reliving every thought and memory she touched in him. Since she didn’t move as silently through his mind as he did through hers, she didn’t want to disturb his composure. Noah’s hand left the desk and reached out to link fingers with hers. Kestra felt his silent gratitude, so she couldn’t even feel embarrassed about the small affection.

“I have no active beacons at this time, but I have a few warnings. As you know, I cannot tell until it is almost too late who it is. I have noticed a few twitches, and I will keep watch.”

Elijah snorted with laughter. “Who’s sitting the little hellion so you and Bella can pursue…ahem…
twitches
tonight?”

Kestra’s eyes grew wide and she bit her lips in a repression of shocked laughter as her gaze swung to the austere Enforcer.

“And I suppose your little pussy cat is not going to get the lion’s share tonight?” Jacob flashed back, the barb partly some kind of play on words that went right over Kestra’s head, but she got the meaning well enough.

She looked expectantly at Elijah.

“Gentlemen.” Noah’s halting demand ended the sparring. “We all have multiple responsibilities tonight. I would like us to try to manage them with a modicum of maturity. Gideon, anything to add?”

“Only this. The rogues are killing, not merely feeding. There is no telling how this will affect their powers. I think there should be a serious warning placed out over the network.”

“I will send Jasmine to start the chain,” Noah said. “Anything else?”

All three men shook their heads.

“Great. See you at the festivities. Let us try to enjoy this holiday.”

Kestra felt him squeeze her hand. No sooner had she smiled at him, though, than a massive arm swept her from the desk and urged her across the room toward the fireplace. She barely touched the floor as she followed Elijah. She didn’t have much of a choice.

“So, tell me all about you. You’re spunky, right? Tongue like a blade? You’re in good shape for a human…err…Druid, I mean. That’s a compliment, so I hope you are taking it that way.” Before Kestra knew it, she was seated in front of a cozy fire and Elijah had pulled a chair up across from her so they were only a foot apart. She glanced up in search of Noah, but he was speaking with Gideon.

“Do you always ask so many questions?” she finally managed to interject.

“Only under special circumstances.” Elijah’s eyes sparkled with humor and it was too infectious. She grinned back at him as he leaned conspiratorially forward. “My mate gave me specific instructions to find out all about you, and I have to say I am damn curious myself. You don’t mind, do you? We’ve all waited a very long time for you to come along.”

“Actually, I’m an extraordinarily private person,” she hedged. Again her gaze shifted to Noah. His darkening expression made her wonder what he was talking to the medic about.

“Noah, the next occasion you require my services, I ask you tone down your call. Legna found the power…extreme. Painful.” Gideon tried to broach the subject he hadn’t had an opportunity to discuss before then with as much gentleness as he could muster. A gentleness that had not existed in him and
would
not exist in him had it not been for his mate.

Noah’s full attention came around to the medic, his eyes finally leaving the figure of his mate, who was being herded across the room by Elijah.

“Painful?” It took a moment for the information to register on the Demon King. “Was she harmed?” he demanded. He knew how sensitive his sister’s powers had become since she’d mated with Gideon. He was a powerful Ancient, and the infusion of his power had advanced her ability beyond her years. It had never occurred to him that his pain would harm his sister when she was so far away in a Russian province.

“It was nothing I could not heal.” Gideon paused a beat and Noah had the feeling the Ancient was editing his next thoughts. It wasn’t like him to do so. Gideon was as blunt and straightforward as they came. If he was holding back, Legna was behind it. “It was quite a feat for a nontelepath to reach that far and with that much…clarity, Noah.”

“Legna is a Mind Demon. We are brother and sister. We have always had a strong connection. Though I admit I am impressed as well. I do not even know what my intentions were at the time, Gideon. I was acting purely on instinct.”

“And your instincts are like nothing any of us can imagine,” the medic said. “Even you do not understand the full scope of your abilities. You have been King since a fairly young age. You have lived a life of restraint, as your position requires. Perhaps…” Again a significant pause. “I am grateful you have found your mate, but I believe it would be wise for you to truly examine the scope of your power, Noah. The tie to your emotions is too great, the potential for harm to others equally great if you do not examine and adjust to the ways your power has grown. You have worried too long about things other than yourself. Take this time of adjustment to your mate to find your own depths. Only then can you truly control them.”

“Gideon, you sound strangely like my
Siddah
,” Noah said quietly, no humor in the statement at all.

“I am your
Siddah
. I will be
Siddah
to you until the day I leave this plane of existence. No matter how many centuries pass, that bond is never broken. When I see my fosterlings floundering, it does not matter to me their age and their position in this society. I taught you to embrace your power, to always plumb its depths for your best abilities, and you have always done so…up until I believe the moment your own power began to intimidate you.”

Noah’s eyes clouded with an ominous darkness, his expression and stance turning to stone.

“Kes is here now. If I were
intimidated
, as you say, then you know it will end with the balance she will bring me. You waste your conjecture and worry on me, Ancient One.”

“Do I?” Gideon raised a silvered brow. “Tell me this, Noah. When your uncontrolled power strikes your Druid mate, what consequence do you suppose it will have?” Gideon moved so that he was side by side with the Demon King against the edge of his desk. He leaned in to speak softly to him. “I have complete control over every nuance of my own power, Noah. This alone makes me the most powerful Demon in history. That management includes the ways in which my abilities link to my emotions.

“You have seen how your sister has been affected by the connection we have. It has been over two years since we fully Imprinted. She is still growing in leaps, still struggling to compensate for this growth. Isabella,” he cited further, taking no apparent note of the King’s flinch, “became an incredible Druid under Jacob’s immense power, but even now she cannot fully control it. In the beginning she was bludgeoned by her abilities. It will take her decades to understand how to tone down her premonitions alone.

“When your mate looked into my eyes the other day, she whipped through my entire essence in a heartbeat, without even knowing what she was doing. It was pure instinct. What followed after her initial summary was an ability I have never seen before, and I will be much surprised should I ever see it again. You and your Fire can draw on power and energy, you can even take its quantitative measure by reading a power aura, but no one can map out a precise schematic of another being’s powers
and weaknesses
like Kestra can now do. Untrained, I might add, yet with full comprehension of what she is studying all the same. What was more, your newly fledged mate reached inside me and unearthed the path necessary for me to heal others while in astral form. She showed it to me, and I have already begun to examine it. She was not only accurate, but chillingly so for one who had only learned of our existence shortly before. Information, I am assuming, that was responsible for her panic attack.”

“No,” Noah said numbly. “It was something else. Though perhaps this was partly an exacerbating factor,” he admitted. Then he focused on the Ancient fully. “I knew something was happening between you. I even understood she was caught up in a reflexive use of her new power, and that taking the measure of a power was a part of that ability. But I never suspected anything like this talent to lead even
you
to an undiscovered resource within yourself.” The King looked across to Kestra. “I could not touch her mind while she was seeking so deeply within you.”

“The communication between you is young yet. Already stronger than it was then, I am assuming. And here we come back to my point,” Gideon pointed out quietly. “Great power requires more than just great control, Noah. It requires understanding and management. You would put a cork into the mouth of a volcano and expect the pressure to never seek relief? Stop merely controlling what you fear in yourself. Do this before you lose the opportunity to manage yourself with knowledge and the same wisdom which you use in all other things. Be aware that there is an inevitability here. You have your mate to help you now, and you will help her as well, but do not allow it to come to the point that she taps into a part of you that you cannot help her understand because—”

“Because I do not understand it myself,” Noah finished softly for him. The monarch reached to rub the back of his neck as tension pooled there in a dull, twisting ache of clenching muscles. He looked over at Kestra and Elijah, and found her breathtaking blue eyes fixed squarely on him, her concern clear on her face, a small frown pulling on her pretty lips as she flicked a wary, assessing gaze at Gideon. For the second time that day he found himself relaxing under the balm of her concern and giving her a calming smile. Noah looked into Gideon’s expectant gaze. “Thank you,
Siddah
,” he said, nodding his head in a rather formal bow of respect for his old mentor. The King had a sudden thought that sent shadows over his features. “Gideon, is there something you are not telling me? Something I should know?”

Gideon knew he could not hesitate and sound truthful. He wasn’t one to lie, and he would never betray Legna’s heartfelt request to spare Noah the truth about how he had hurt her. So he gave the question his own interpretation in order to satisfy all conditions.

“I believe I have told you everything I needed to impart to you,” he said easily. “Now, if you will forgive me, your sister is rather adamantly requesting my attendance, as well as the Captain’s, at Siena’s festivities for the night.”

“I will miss you here this year,” Noah found himself saying suddenly. He instantly chided himself for it. Holidays had paled for him since his closest friends and family had scattered across the lands to do their duties as mates and ambassadors, duties
he
had often asked them to take on as their King. He had been determined never to show his personal feelings on such subjects, so he would not make others feel conflict with their other lives. “But next year,” he added with quick ease, “Seth will be older and perhaps I will host a multicultural Samhain or Beltane, bringing all my distant emissaries home and their foreign friends and courts with them.”

“A fine idea,” Gideon agreed. “Though I doubt the xenophobic Mistrals will attend, I do not see why all the other Nightwalkers would not. I suspect it is time to engage in this manner of gathering. Peace and Destiny be with you tonight, Noah,” he said in farewell, reaching to clasp arms with the King. “Legna and I are pleased to see your future happiness secured in this woman,” he said, nodding toward Kestra. “She is strong and intelligent. A fit mate for you. However, she is greatly scarred on an emotional level. This will be a difficult passage for you both and we wish you luck, as well as offering any assistance you might need.”

“Thank you, my friend. Give Legna and Seth my deepest love and fondest wishes to see them very soon.”

“After the moon has waned some.” Gideon smiled with unusually suggestive humor. “I do not think we should dare to pop in until you and Kestra are done becoming acquainted.”

Noah laughed and, with a clasp of his shoulder, sent the medic across the room to fetch Elijah.

Kestra had been split between the two conversations, neither of which required much of her input. Elijah chattered a stream of amusing statements that she realized were directed at teasing Noah about her presence and the effect it promised to have on the King’s bachelor lifestyle. Apparently, Noah had taken great joy in busting the chops of his newly attached attachés for the changes in their behaviors since they’d taken their women into their lives. Or so Elijah felt. She rather liked the warrior’s easygoing manner, but she couldn’t fully enjoy it while she was worried about what was disturbing Noah as he conversed with the healer. She felt it pulling at her skin and blood, her very heart and spirit, the urge to somehow be a part of anything troubling he faced.