Shadowlander (8 page)

Cate couldn’t imagine Rook as small. Ever.

The sliced fruit spiked the air with a sweet tangy fragrance and instantly made her mouth water. Damn, she was hungry. But she hesitated. What if she ate this and couldn’t go home?

What if I don’t eat and die from hunger?
a little voice inside her head argued back.

Rook raised a brow, waiting for her to take the fruit from him. He’d asked her to trust him. Given it went against everything she’d been taught as a child, it was a lot to ask, but he’d already been far more solicitous and caring than any boyfriend she’d ever had. She carefully took the spiky wedge and looked at him, unsure how to eat it.

He bent it inside out, exposing the glistening pulp, and took a bite. The juices ran, a vibrant trail from the corner of his mouth. Cate’s heart rate sped up a little as she resisted the urge to lick it away.

She mimicked him, bending the piece of fruit so that the dangerous-looking spikes all folded inward, and took a bite of the juicy pulp. The intense sweetness burst in her mouth, a tangy mix of blackberry, raspberry and blueberry combined in a texture like that of a kiwi. It tasted of homemade berry pie still warm from the oven and a curious warmth spread along her throat and warmed her belly once she swallowed.

“It’s hot!”

Rook smiled at her delight. “It brings with it the heat of where it grows. One of the best things you can eat on a cold day is a gilly.”

So very strange. While her logical mind understood that magick flowed differently here, the physical manifestation of it still surprised her. “How
do
the portals between your world and mine work?”

He coughed. “From gilly fruit to portals? That’s quite a change of subject.”

Yes, it was. And this place was also quite a change from the coast. Heavy, tall evergreens and large-leafed maples created a dense shadowed wood that crept right up to the rolling edge of the blue-green ribbon of the river. Waves rushed in a frothy white swirl around rocks scattered here and there, filling the air with the sound of gurgling water and the high, chimelike laughs of the small fae that scampered through the trees like squirrels. The smell in the air of Christmas trees and green woodsy things caused a pang in her chest. It reminded her of home.

Cate tried to enjoy the moment for what it was and took another bite of the fruit, indulging in the taste of it, then licked her lips. She needed to press on, find Maya, and discover exactly what the invasion was about. Cate swept the toe of her boot in a wide arc through the gravely sand at the river’s edge. “Look, you asked me to trust you, so
quid pro quo
is only fair. I just want to know how they work.”

His eyes were fixated on her mouth. “Fae magick,” he answered simply.

“That’s it? Magick? Come on. You’ve got to do better than that. You asked me to leap a catamount over a river.”

His gaze lifted, connecting with hers. “Why so curious?”

“I’ve been watching the fae come and go since I was a little girl. It seems so effortless for you to travel between our worlds. Why are there certain times, when the veil is thinnest, where we can travel to your world? The portals seem rather temperamental to me.”

He gave her an indulgent smile and offered her another wedge of fruit. “Everything has rules, Cate. Even magick.”

Cate eagerly took the fruit and bit into it, the pinching hunger in her stomach easing. “So tell me the rules. I just want to understand.”

§

Rook supposed that being a Seer and not knowing everything would be a kind of torture of sorts, which made him appreciate her drive and desire to understand his world all the more. Perhaps like other Seers, once she fully understood what this world had to offer someone of her station, she’d never want to leave.

“Except for the eve before each solstice, when the sun’s movement disrupts the portals’ operation, leaving them accessible to mortals, the portals operate with a key, an object with the proper resonance to unlock them.” Rook pulled from his pocket a golden key coin with a mermaid on it and showed her. “We often use key coins that, once used, return to their owner. Each is unique.”

Cate plucked the coin from his fingers and cupped it in her hands. “It vibrates just slightly.”

A smile spread across his face. He couldn’t help it. Each experience, each memory he created with her, bound her more tightly to him. While besting his father’s favorite, Kallus, in court would be a sweet victory for Rook, there was more than just pride at stake. Cate held the outcome of their fate, the destiny of his people—indeed their world—in her dainty hands. For their good, if she was properly guided. She could just as easily destroy them—and him in particular. She had no idea of the power she could wield.

It was up to him to get her to see the worth of their plans, to understand how Uplanders were disrupting the balance between their worlds, threatening to destroy them both, and convince her to stay. But he’d have to give her good reasons. “You feel the energy in it,” he said, keeping his voice as even and smooth as he could, given the cascading jumble of emotions she stirred in him.

“Okay, so you have this key coin. But then what?” she asked as she flipped it over and over in her fingers, the gold flashing in the sunlight.

A light breeze caught her hair, toying with the curls at the base of her neck, making him jealously wish to do the same.

“You have to find a portal first. Most are marked by a rune.” He picked up a stick and drew the rune in the soft sandy soil of the riverbank. “This is the mark.”

“Can you make the mark yourself and have it open a portal?”

Rook chuckled. “You are far cleverer than regular Uplanders, aren’t you?”
And far more dangerous
, he thought to himself.

Cate shrugged. “Just makes sense to me.”

“We can form the rune in the Upland realm and open a portal, but from the Shadowland side you must find one that already exists.”

“Then what?”

“You throw the coin at the portal.”

“You mean like bus fare?”

Her enthusiasm was endearing. Yes, once she became familiar with their world, with him, she’d never want to leave. None of the Seers ever had once they’d been introduced to the court. Soon enough, she’d forget her old world and adjust to the realm of the fae.

Rook smiled. “Yes. Whatever that is.”

§

Cate gazed at the coin a moment longer, rubbing the still-humming piece between her fingers, then handed it back to Rook. As he took it, his fingers brushed against hers, sending a tingling sensation shooting up her arm. Her body was more than physically aware of Rook, it was tuned to him—to his touch, to his look, to his very presence—in a way that both unsettled and thrilled her.

For a moment she wondered if she should have kept the coin as a reminder of her time with him—and possibly a way to get back home if it took longer than the end of Midsummer’s Eve to find Maya.

No. She couldn’t keep it. Now that she knew the rune marking a portal looked like an Egyptian ankh, she’d be able to spot the way home anywhere. As long as she got Maya out before the solstice, she wouldn’t need the key coin; the veil would still be thin enough for her to walk through on her own. And it was far safer if Rook didn’t suspect her plans to return to her own world. She needed his full trust before she could ask him about the invasion.

A nagging sensation prickled in her chest. As certain as she was that she had to find Maya and return home, something in her gut made her just as certain that she’d never meet someone like Rook ever again—mortal or fae. The nagging turned into an uncomfortable pang just over her heart.

“Are you still hungry?”

Cate’s throat was too thick to speak, so she nodded instead. Rook sliced her a piece of the breadlike loaf and a hunk of what looked like cheddar cheese to go with it. It was sweet, yet completely at odds for a man of his royal position to serve her. And as little as it was, it meant a lot to her. “Aman and casin. It doesn’t taste nearly as good as the gilly fruit, but it’ll keep you from being hungry until we can get to Seaneath.”

Cate bit into the bread and found it soft and savory with hints of rosemary and olives. The casin tasted more like feta cheese than cheddar, salty and a little sharper than she’d expected, but she was happy with both.

Rook smiled at her, then cut slices of the food for himself. “Fae foods seem to agree with you,” he murmured.

“Have you ever met a human that they didn’t agree with?” she tossed back at him.

He chuckled, and Cate’s breath caught at the warm, rich resonance of it. She liked his laugh, liked the way it made her feel warm and bubbly inside. “A few. We once had an Uplander who raided the royal storehouse and ate so much he blew up to the size of a house.”

The food stuck uncomfortably in her throat and Cate coughed. “This stuff isn’t going to swell me up, is it? Bloating and I don’t really travel well together.”

He smiled at her and shook his head. “It only happened because he was so greedy and ate far too much. Enough to feed a catamount,” he added.

Cate felt marginally better but didn’t take seconds when they were offered. She stood, brushing the crumbs from her suede skirt. Every minute she spent with Rook was endearing him more and more to her in a way she couldn’t hope to explain. She needed to be away from him for a bit, just to clear her head.

“Um, I need to excuse myself to take care of, um, girl stuff.”

Rook indicated the woods with a sweep of his hand. “The forest is yours, my lady. Just watch that you don’t put any Illith fae in danger.”

Cate shifted her weight to her other foot, suddenly feeling the forest was a far less hospitable place. “What will they do?”

He gave her a devilish grin. “Bite you in the bottom.”

Cate’s suspicious feeling intensified. Wild fae weren’t the only thing about to bite her in the ass.

Chapter Six

The afternoon sun warming his back and the gurgle of the river would have been pleasant, if a war hadn’t been going on inside him.

Rook waited until Cate had disappeared into the dense thicket of trees before he hastily wrote a missive to his father on a scrap of vellum.

Have captured a Seer. Will reach you by tonight.

He rolled it into a small scroll, then took a beetle flier from his pocket, held it in the palm of his hand, and tapped its hard shell.

The iridescent blue-green metal casing opened, allowing the small glass- and gold-veined wings to unfurl. “Deliver this missive to the King of Shadows and no other,” he instructed the mechanical messenger as it clasped the scroll between its thin metallic legs. Vibrating faster and faster, the glass wings began to hum, and the beetle lifted into the air. It quickly became a glittering speck before disappearing among the trees.

It was done. Once the missive reached his father, Rook could not take it back. The entire court would turn out to observe the new Seer brought among them. He stuffed the remnants of their repast back into the saddlebag—and his feelings down deeper, until they swelled painfully in his chest.

Duty and honor warred with something far darker and deeper that was growing inside him. He’d always admired Cate from afar, thought of her in his dreams, but now that he’d touched her and felt her respond, those feelings were beginning to twist and change into something else entirely.

He didn’t know what to call it, this powerful drive to protect her, to know she would be his and his alone, no matter the consequences. It was foolhardy and rash. Bold and consuming. Fae generally didn’t have solitary life mates or binds to only one and no others. It was an anomaly among them. And the need to do just that was hungry and eating him alive from the inside out.

Cate emerged from the woods, looking every bit as elegant, every bit as magickal to him as any of the Ragnorian- or Makcay-caste fae. The way she held her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, and the very elegance with which she moved marked her as regal. The powerful among the court would fight him to have a taste of her. And he would fight back. Cate was
his
.

“Are you ready to see the capital?” He extended his hands to lift her into the saddle of her catamount.

Cate wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing them into brain-searing contact that burned away his rational thoughts. “Kind of a silly question,” she said with a tilt of her head, her eyes bright. “A person can’t be ready for something they’ve never experienced before.”