Storm Warned (The Grim Series) (20 page)

She arched her back and thrust against his hand, wanting, seeking, aching for release. Aurddolen was no Tylwyth Teg, however. Her desires were as feral as the lioness she’d pretended to be—but he knew his timing had to be perfect. Nuzzling aside her heavy spill of braids, Lurien licked and kissed her nape until she shivered uncontrollably and he could feel her minute scales pebble against his skin. In the same moment that he thrust his cock deep, he sank his teeth into the back of her neck. Lightning strobed around them as she bucked in his arms, pumping her hips in a violent paroxysm of pleasure that set its own hard rhythm, until the whiplash of ecstasy ensnared him as well.

With a satisfied moan, Aurddolen sank to the ground, and he followed her. They lay side by side gazing up at the golden moon without really seeing it.

Finally, she leaned up on one elbow to grin at him. “Again!” she laughed.

“Definitely again.” His mouth quirked, and an abrupt downpour of rain soaked them both.

Startled, the dragon woman’s skin flared with strident patterns of green and blue. “Where did that come from?” she demanded of him. The clear night sky was still aglow with a lustrous full moon—but she could not look upward for the heavy pelting drops. He pointed at a small cloud, hidden from view by the overhanging trees.

“At least it’s warm,” she said grudgingly.

“And so are you,” he said, and reached for her, but she eluded him, leaping to sit astride his lap.

“You may control the storm, but I have powers of my own,” she said playfully, and drew a circle around one of his nipples with a single sharp claw. “I think I will begin with—”

The explosion heaved the ground beneath them, buffeted the air around them. It shook the foundations of the entire palace and the mountain upon which it stood the way a fierce terrier shakes its prey.

The vibrations hadn’t died away before Lurien was in a defensive crouch over Aurddolen, his long black hair spilling across his bare skin in thick wet ropes. He’d already called his silver hunting knife to his hand and held it at the ready while magic gathered in his other fist.

A glance at Aurddolen showed her wide-eyed but unhurt. “Get the traitors,” she hissed. “I will see to the queen.”

In answer, he shook his head—and a binding spell instantly shackled her with invisible chains. She would not be able to move from the spot.

“You cannot think I had anything to do with this? Lurien, you need my help!” she shouted in fury and frustration, but he barely heard as he raced in the direction of the blast. His leathers materialized on his body as he ran. The explosion hadn’t been the throne room . . . that much he knew. Lurien raced down a hallway at full speed, intending to cut across the central courtyard. Only well-honed instinct allowed him to stop in time.

Barely. The central courtyard, where the envoys had succeeded in putting aside their differences and learned to work together, no longer existed. A blackened crater surrounded by fallen or failing stone walls was all that was left, save for the nine arched doorways that led into the palace. All of the smaller samplau, the seedings from the Nine Realms that had been painstakingly readied to be sent, had been destroyed.

Lurien stood at the still-smoking edge of the pit. Looking across, he could see many of the guests gather at the doorways to peer at the disaster, some curious, most nervous. Was a traitor among them? He felt the presence of Gwenhidw at his elbow, no longer in the guise of a fearsome pwca, and sensed all four of his men close behind her. He was thankful for their diligence—he knew from experience just how difficult it could be to keep track of the woman. “Someone seeks to undo your work, Your Grace.”

“Someone always wants to undo that which is good. They will not succeed,” she said simply. “They have cost us
time
, perhaps, but fortunately time is quite flexible in this dimension.” Gwenhidw leaned over to view the depths of the hole. “Thank all the stars that we were not working here this night.”

“Obviously you should have more parties.” Lurien won a weak smile from her, and then she called out across the chasm to her guests for a return to the throne room—and the celebrations. The faces in the doorways slowly disappeared until only Lurien remained. The queen had also returned to the party, and he knew she would not resume her pwca disguise again. Instead, she would make a point of being seen by her people in hopes of allaying their fears. And also, Lurien knew, to thumb her nose at whoever dared to try to disrupt the peace and progress of the kingdom.

He drew a symbol in the air and waited for two of his hunters to come to his side.

“Go to the westernmost garden, the one grown wild. Arrest Aurddolen o’r Draigddynion at once. She is not to be released, even by order of the queen herself. Put my seal on the door.” He was glad he had that one little bit of power under fae law. As
llaw dde
, he could act directly to protect the monarch—even against her wishes.

Was Aurddolen deliberately distracting me?
he wondered.
Ensuring that I was not at Gwenhidw’s side when the plot was carried out?
If so, the dragon woman must have been frustrated by the change of venue, with all the envoys at the throne room this night rather than in the courtyard. Lurien had detected no such feeling from her . . . and if he was wrong, she was going to hate him forever. Yet even she could not deny that most of the conspiracies over the centuries had involved the dragon people in one way or another.

As for himself, he would not trust Aurddolen again. He could not take the chance with Gwenhidw’s life at stake.

EIGHTEEN

I
’ll have to be thanking Ranyon for fixing this.
Caris loved the porch swing, even if they’d decided not to rock it in case Liam’s bruised head didn’t like the movement. She loved the entire sprawling porch with its sturdy roof. It was like a room without walls, where you could enjoy being out of doors while still feeling sheltered.

It was a sheltering place in which to speak of difficult things too. It had been hard for Liam, of course. What man was good at talking about disappointment and lost love? But he had managed to tell the tale through as honestly as he could. And he’d held her hand the entire time—for her sake or to steady himself? Perhaps both.

“What do you think went wrong?” she ventured at last.

“Hell, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve asked myself that. Maybe it was too easy,” he said. “We got together in high school, when we were just kids, and just kept on going. Maybe we got too comfortable.”

Caris frowned. “Why is being comfortable a bad thing? I should think a couple would cherish being at ease with one another.”

“I just meant that sometimes people stay together because it’s easier than being alone. Jade and I never had to worry about who we were going to sit with at lunch, or finding a date for the dance, or who we were going to hang out with on the weekend. We didn’t have to put any effort into it, you see?”

“That’s almost more like being friends or school chums, isn’t it? I mean, my cousin, Enid, lived two farms over and we played together whenever we could, but we weren’t really close. We didn’t even like each other all that much. It was simply convenient.”

“Convenient.” He said the word like it tasted bad. “That’s a helluva lot worse than
comfortable
, but maybe that’s what it boiled down to in the end. Although it didn’t start off that way. I was in love with her, I know that, and yet I also know that I didn’t put her first. Not ever. And what kind of love is that?”

“Maybe just an inexperienced love,” she said simply. “You’re so hard on yourself. You were young but you had good intentions. You didn’t use her and discard her. Instead you made plans to spend your whole life with her.” And just for a moment, Caris felt a twinge of envy and even a little jealousy toward a girl she didn’t even know.

He sighed. “What I really wanted was a marriage like Aunt Ruby and Uncle Conall have. You were talking about
cherishing
a minute ago? After all the years they’ve been together, they’re still crazy about each other. When I was growing up, I had no idea how much work love really was, didn’t realize how much work the two of them put into their relationship—I guess I thought it all just happened by magic.”

Curious, she asked, “What do you mean by
work
?”

“They put each other first, always. And I couldn’t begin to list all the little stuff they’re always doing for each other.”

“Ah. I didn’t think of that as work. Surely that’s just what comes naturally?”

He snorted. “To a woman, maybe. To men, not so much. I know that’s one place I screwed up for sure. I put my music career first, above everything else, thinking I was doing it for Jade too. I wish I’d gotten smarter sooner, paid a little more attention to
how
my aunt and uncle stay close. They don’t take each other for granted. Me? I definitely took it for granted that Jade would always be there.”

“
Gwr dieithr yw yfory
,” said Caris. “It means, ‘Tomorrow is a stranger.’ ’Tis human nature to be thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.” She certainly hadn’t expected her own life to change so dramatically.
What would I have said to Da if I’d known I wouldn’t see him again? What might I have done?
The thought pricked her heart and tears stung her eyes again. She quickly changed the subject. “Did her family want her to marry you?”

Her question surprised him. “Yeah, actually, they seemed pretty enthused about me. I think they even pressured her a little, asking when I was going to propose. Friends and family on both sides did that, figuring marriage was a foregone conclusion, you know? I thought it was too, actually, although we didn’t really discuss it.”

“Truly, she wouldn’t be the first girl that didn’t know how she really felt until it seemed like it was too late to stop the wedding.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you’d be on my side,” he grumbled.

“Well, of course I am.” She used her free hand to cup his cheek for a moment. “I’m just trying to understand.”

Liam looked out over the devastated farm, but she didn’t think he was seeing it. “I’d like to think I’d have found a way to
understand
too, if she’d just told me she’d had second thoughts, had changed her mind. I wouldn’t have liked it of course—I know damn well I would have tried to talk her out of it. But I hope I would have seen sense eventually,” he said. “If only she hadn’t gone through with it . . .”

Liam rose and paced the porch slowly. She knew by his pallor that the exertion was making him dizzy, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to talk him into sitting down. Not yet. His hurt and his anger were too close to the surface now, and Caris thought of the lurking pike with their needle teeth in the cold mountain lakes of her homeland. He wouldn’t bite
her
, but it was plain he was biting at himself, over and over.

“If she just hadn’t gone through with it,” he continued. “Hadn’t stood in front of me and spoke vows she’d already broken and wasn’t ever going to keep. But she did.” His voice rose. “She did, dammit. And it nuked everything, me included.”

His story reminded Caris of the yard. She could imagine how pretty it must have been before the storm, all fruiting trees and blossoming flowers, peace and tranquility. And now there was nothing left but a tragic and terrible mess. No hint remained of what was once picturesque, and all of the calm had been upended by chaos.

There was no peace within Liam, that much was certain. The heartbreak and betrayal had been as cataclysmic as the storm, leading to the collapse of the bridge between his music and his soul. True, Caris herself had been discouraged from expressing the music that lived within her during her human life. And she had been physically prevented from doing so as a grim.
But what kind of pain does it take to dam up the songs inside when there’s no one and nothing to stop you?
She’d learned that Liam Cole had once had a burning need to create music, just as she had. But while hers still blazed, his own fire had died out as surely as if a river’s worth of water had washed it away.

“You said you haven’t played since. Not even once?”

Liam sat down heavily beside her then, plainly exhausted. Caris guessed he’d been wrung out far more by rehearsing the past than by pacing.

“Not a damn note,” he said. “It’s like all the music that was in me just packed a bag and left town. And the thing of it is, I don’t even know if I want it to come back. Music just—I don’t know, it kind of opens you up to the bone. Takes you over. It’s not something that exists in you, it
is
you. It’s why I couldn’t bear to hear you sing, as talented as you are.”

She nodded. “Perhaps you’re just not ready to feel that much again.”

“Maybe.”

“Then I’m needing to say something. Your pain and your anger are like a festering wound. If you don’t find a way to let go of what happened to you, it’ll poison you.” That much she knew. The Fair Ones had stolen her life once. Instinct told her that if she allowed herself to dwell on her own anger, if she spent her energy on hating the fae, or simply permitted herself to wade too deeply into grief, then her new life would be lost as well, swallowed up in the pain of a past she couldn’t change.

“How would you know a thing like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You
know
what you’re talking about. I can hear it in your voice.”

“It’s because of my da,” she said quietly. “My mother passed on when I was but two. He loved her desperately, and he grieved for her his whole life. He never let go of it, don’t you see? Instead of remembering the good, he hung on to his pain, and that’s why he drank so much. It wasn’t so bad when I was small—he’d only drink at night after the farm was looked after, and after I was in bed. But once I was grown, he started his drinking early in the day, and he drank more all the time. And then . . .” Her voice trailed away, and she bit her lip.

He brushed a finger over her cheek. “Shit, I’m sorry. I have no business acting like I’m the only person who’s ever had it rough.”

“There’s no need for you to be sorry. Not for me.” Caris forced herself to meet his blue gaze. “Be sorry that you’re well on your way to an empty life yourself, Liam Cole. Don’t you see that I can’t be in it if you can’t lay the past to rest? How can you divide your heart from your soul? Your life from your music? It would be like a wall between us.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll abide by your rules for singing and music making because I care about you and don’t want to cause you pain—but I’ll not do it forever.”

“You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

She didn’t know what that meant, but she couldn’t say anything more over the lump in her throat. Instead, she simply squeezed Liam’s hand. Caris herself had never borne the heartbreak of losing a lover—although as new as her relationship with this man was, she already felt something of that raw, deep ache at the very thought of walking away from him.
But walk I will if I have to.

She had already endured the loss of her father, her entire life as she knew it, all that was dear to her, her own human body, and her music. It had been crushing and cruel—yet she had refused to relinquish her sense of
self
. Was that what the soul really was? She didn’t know, only that she would not give it up to the fae or to anyone else. She had waited more than a lifetime to be able to play her music again. The memory of sobbing over the instrument she’d found only this morning was still a dull ache in her heart, as two centuries of grief had finally broken loose. But when the floodwaters had ceased, pure exultation had burst from her like a star as she played that fiddle. It had been liberating beyond all bounds.

Of course, through the course of their conversation, Caris realized that it must be Liam’s own fiddle she’d found and borrowed. And she had no right to it.
Best to be setting that straight.
At least she’d gotten a chance to play the marvelous instrument once, and while it would be hard to relinquish it, she would return to her original plan and work until she could buy one of her own—though she would be unlikely to afford something of such amazing quality.
“
’Tis my turn to tell
you
something now,” she managed.

Her voice must have sounded far too grave because Liam looked almost alarmed. “You’re not married, are you?”

“Dear heavens, no!”

“Why the hell not?” he shot back.

“What sort of a question is that?”

“Because you’re too damn pretty to be running around single. Are all the men in your country blind?”

“What a perfectly silly thing to say,” she said, giving him an exasperated look—though she was privately delighted that he thought her
pretty
. Had anyone ever said such a thing to her in her life?
“
’Twas my da that raised me, remember? There was just the two of us, and he was a straightforward man. I learned to act the same, and even more so when I was running the farm on my own. I think perhaps I was too bold, too outspoken, because no boys brought flowers to me when my friends or my cousins were being courted. I likely scared them all off because I knew my own mind.”

“But you must have met someone, some time?”

“Are you hearing yourself? And how many strange women are there dropping by your farm to visit?”

“You’re the first. And I’m busy anyway.”

“Aye, and I was a bit busy too, you know. There was none but my da and me to run the sheep. No hired man, no herder, no cook. Only us. Not only that, but we lived halfway up the side of the mountain. If I went down to the village at all, it was to church with my da or to buy and sell at the market.” She didn’t mention all the hours she’d spent with her music. “Or do you suppose I must have simply forgotten to find myself a man?”

“Well, I just thought for sure you’d at least have a boyfriend.”

“Ah, well—when I was ten, perhaps,” she chuckled. “Collen Edwards and I agreed to try kissing, behind a tent at the market. His big sister had a sweetheart, and he wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and I was curious too. We kept bumping noses until I couldn’t stop laughing, and that was the end of that.”

Liam grinned. “A little hard on his tender ego.”

“I guess it was, since he didn’t ask again. And when I was twelve, I was fair to swoon o’er Bran Tommer each Sunday when I was supposed to be listening to the sermon. His family had their own pew, third from the front. I didn’t get to see much but the back of his
cochyn
head—he had the most splendid red hair! But I never said a word to him, and then he took up with Mary Shippey after that.”