Storm's Heart (25 page)

They were also hellishly bad at letting go.

N
iniane’s exhaustion swallowed her whole. A formless fog filled her mind. She was vaguely aware that Tiago climbed into the back of a vehicle while still holding her. Rune said something to him, to which he replied, and then Rune shut the door. Other car doors opened and shut. Moments later Aryal started the vehicle, and she drove them through quiet gray-lit Chicago streets.

Then Niniane must have fallen asleep, or fallen into a state very like it. She dreamed of movement and quiet noises, but she only came awake when Tiago leaned over to lay her on a bed. She cracked open bleary eyes and looked around. They were in her penthouse room, back in the hotel from hell. She pushed into a sitting position, her exhaustion-smudged face filled with alarm.

His hatchet-hewn features softened as he bent over her. He said, “It’s all right. You’re fine, it’s safe.”

Had it been a long, vivid, incredibly beautiful dream? She blinked, looking around. She wore a voluminous black T-shirt. Tiago was armed and bare-chested, and dressed in black fatigue pants.

She was sore in the most private places of her body. She relaxed marginally. It had happened. It hadn’t been a dream.

“Are you going somewhere?” she mumbled.

“No,” he said. He kissed the sleepy soft pout of her mouth. “I’m just stepping into another room for a few minutes. I need to call New York and talk to Dragos.”

“All right.” Her eyelids felt like they weighed about ninety pounds each. They fell shut and she couldn’t pry them open again. Her head listed to the side. “I’ll wait here.”

He laughed, a soft exhalation of air. “I’m going to leave the door open, so I can keep an eye on you. I still haven’t calmed down from when the Djinn took you. Lie down, faerie. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and urged her down. She resisted for all of thirty seconds. Then she lay down and turned onto her side to hug a pillow as he tucked the bedcovers around her. She felt the brush of his fingers through her hair. He turned off the bedside lamp and walked into the bathroom. After a moment she heard him speaking in a quiet voice.

That was the last thing she remembered before she ran through a shadowed palace soaked in her brothers’ blood.

T
iago positioned himself in the bathroom so that he could see the top of Niniane’s black tousled head. He leaned against the bathroom counter and hit speed dial #1 on the iPhone he had stolen from Rune. He didn’t need to double-check the number. All the sentinels had Dragos as #1 on their cell phones.

“What now?” Dragos said as he answered the phone.

Tiago rotated his shoulders, working to loosen the muscles that had tightened after the fight with Rune. He told the dragon, “I quit.”

Silence on the other end of the connection.

“Niniane is my mate,” Tiago said.

He waited and listened to more silence.

He snapped, “You can’t tell me Rune didn’t find a way to get in touch with you in the last couple of hours.”

“I’m waiting to hear from you whether you’re still an ally or not,” said Dragos.

“Don’t be stupid,” Tiago said. “Of course we are.”

“All right. Keep her safe and stay in touch.” The phone clicked.

Tiago shook his head and laughed silently to himself. When all was said and done, Dragos was the most efficient predator of them all. And, after all, what else was there to say?

He splashed off at the bathroom sink, found and unwrapped a new toothbrush and brushed his teeth. He went to the side of the bed where he undressed and set his weapons within easy reach on the bedside table. He exulted in the exotic intimacy of joining her in bed as he slid nude between the covers.

That was when he discovered she had curled in a tight ball. He pushed up on one forearm to stare down at her. She was clammy, her breathing choppy, and she had both hands clamped over her mouth.

“Faerie,” he said in a sharp voice. His Power mantled in the room, seeking an enemy. He couldn’t sense any other Power or influence nearby. He gripped her shoulder. She made a strangled noise and exploded into a hellcat. She kicked and punched at him, her movements wild and uncontrolled. He threw one heavy thigh over her thrashing legs, and he gripped her wrists as gently as he could and pinned them on the pillows on either side of her head.
“Wake up, Niniane.”

She hurtled into awareness, her heart slamming in her chest. For a nightmarish moment she couldn’t remember where she was or recognize the dark silhouette of the male pinning her down. A terrified, despairing noise broke out of her as she tried to buck off his weight. He shifted immediately, easing off of her but not letting go of her wrists. Then he said her name again, and it snapped her reality back into place.

She stopped struggling and said in a ragged voice, “I’m awake. Sorry.”

Tiago leaned on one elbow beside her and braced a hand on her ribs. He sounded as ragged as she did. “Fuck sorry. Just tell me what happened.”

How strange that he was here, warm and naked, one hip pressed insistently against hers. Greedy for the feel of his skin, she burrowed into his side and rubbed her toes along his calf. The crisp hairs on his leg tickled her bare foot. “I was having a nightmare about the night when Urien and his men killed my family. I used to have it all the time. Then it mostly went away. Now it’s come back again.”

He growled deep in his chest, the menacing sound vibrating against her cheek. He sounded frustrated. “I want to kill that son of a bitch all over again. And again and again.”

“It was just a dream,” she whispered.

“No, it isn’t, faerie. It’s a terrible memory of a crime committed against you and people you loved.”

“Yes.” The word came out on the barest thread of sound.

He propped a pillow against the headboard, settled back against it and pulled her into his arms. She settled against him with her head on his shoulder, one slender leg hitched over his hips, an arm draped over his chest. He radiated heat and strength, the forcefulness of his presence filling the room and scattering the last threads of the nightmare that clung to her like cobwebs.

He stroked the hair off her damp forehead. “Can you tell me about it?”

She lifted her slender shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I’d much rather it just went away.”

He cupped her shoulder, fingering the delicate bones underneath his shirt. “Maybe it will if you talk about it.”

So she did, her voice halting at first, as the words came hard. When she got to the part where she found the bodies of her twin brothers, tears streaked down her face. She described watching one of Urien’s soldiers as he murdered her mother with one efficient sword thrust, and Tiago rolled her onto her back and covered her with his body. His cheek rested against hers, and he covered her forehead with one huge palm. It was as if he was trying to hide her from the trauma of what had already happened. She rubbed his back.

“I never found out the details of what happened to my father, other than he and Urien fought, and Urien killed him,” she said. “My father had had a great deal of Power. I used to think nothing could touch him. Urien went after him personally and sent his soldiers to take care of the rest of us.”

Tiago kissed her cheek, her temple. “How did you get away?”

She laughed a little, hardly more than an exhalation of air. “I was misbehaving. I’d snuck out to meet a boy. He wasn’t acceptable, and I wasn’t supposed to be seeing him, and it was really just a typical stupid teenage prank. I spent most of the night with him trying to decide if I wanted to have sex or not. I decided not, and I slipped back into the palace, and that was when I heard something. It sounded like people running in the hall, only they sounded quiet and furtive. My brothers’ rooms were next to mine, so I went to check on them, discovered their bodies and ran to find help. Then I saw soldiers kill my mother, and I felt Power flare from Urien and my father’s battle, so I knew I had to run. I slipped out the way I had come in.”

Her apartment had a private walled courtyard with fruit trees and a marble fountain. Several of the apple trees grew within a few feet of the wall. Some weeks previously, she had stolen a rope from the stables and fashioned a rope ladder so that she could indulge in her illicit romance. Leaving had been a simple matter of climbing a tree and throwing the ladder over the wall.

Tiago pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth as he thought. Adriyel was the seat of the Dark Fae demesne, deep in the heart of one of the largest tracts of Other land in the continental United States. He had never been to Adriyel himself, but he had heard that the journey to the palace from any one of the passageways took several days by horseback. He had to clear his throat before he could speak again. “Chicago was founded some years after you crossed over. In the early 1830s, if I remember correctly.”

She nodded, watching her fingers as she traced his strong, sturdy collarbone. “Most European settlers called the area Fort Dearborn, which was built in 1803, and the American Indians called it Chickagou.”

“Getting from Fort Dearborn to New York would have been hard enough.” My God, the more he thought of the journey she must have made, the more it made him shudder. “How did you get from Adriyel to Fort Dearborn?”

“I went to the stables and stole a graewing,” she said. “I wasn’t used to riding one though, so it was a pretty wonky flight. I managed to get it close to the crossover passage before we crashed. It was injured so I was able to get away from it.”

He swore under his breath. Graewings were a winged species that bred in Other lands. They looked like giant dragonflies. Like their miniature cousins that fed on mosquitoes, they were efficient predators, but they fed on creatures much larger than mosquitoes. They were dangerous mounts, for not only were they difficult to control, but their flight capabilities were much like helicopters. They could dart forward and backward, or rise and fall straight in the air. Accidents from riding a graewing tended to be fatal. If the fall didn’t kill the rider, most likely the graewing would. The Dark Fae had an elite force of fifty troops who were graewing riders that were traditionally led by their monarch. Urien himself had been famous as a proficient rider.

A body shouldn’t feel so many things at once, Tiago decided. He wasn’t sure if someone could explode from so many powerful emotions, but from the way he was feeling it seemed possible. He unclenched his jaw so that he could talk. “Okay,” he said. “It happened a long time ago. You survived. That’s all that matters.”

She kissed his warm bare shoulder. “I just realized something,” she said. She sounded drowsy now. “I always dream about my brothers. I never dream about my mother or my father. I mean, in the dream, I just know they’re dead. I wonder why.”

“Aside from the emotional impact of finding your brothers’ bodies, that was when you discovered how your life had changed,” Tiago said. “You had to have been going into shock by the time you saw what happened to your mother.”

“Maybe that’s it. I also always dream about hearing Urien’s footsteps as he hunts for me, when the only footsteps I really heard were soldiers running through the palace. Anyway, after I escaped, Urien built the mansion and walled the grounds around that passageway, and of course he built outposts at the other passageways too so that he could control the traffic to and from Adriyel. I know I’m prejudiced against him, but it always sounded a bit like putting up the Iron Curtain to me.” She yawned. They had stayed up all night, and she had already been exhausted, and talking about the nightmare and the memories left her feeling wrung out.

Tiago said quietly, “Walking back into the palace is going to be difficult.”

What else could she say to that but the truth? “Yes.”

He ordered, “You must tell me whenever the memories bother you. And you must swear to me you’ll never ride a graewing again. I don’t even want you within fifty feet of one. Understand?”

“That seems a bit extreme,” she muttered. “It wasn’t that bad. They’re just so fast, and while I’d seen them in flight lots of times before, I didn’t know what I was doing. Anyway, I’m s’posed to. Tradition. Need flying lessons first though.” Her eyelids drifted shut.

“I don’t care about tradition. If you ever need to have a flying mount, you will ride me,” he said. He could protect her that way, and if she ever got dislodged, he could catch her before she fell. He frowned. Maybe they could create a harness for him to wear that she could use as a saddle. With a seat belt. And she was going to have to wear a helmet. And a life jacket if they ever had to fly over water. Would a parachute be too much, just in case?

“Fine. Whatever.” She groped along his face until she could tap his mouth with an admonishing finger. “Shush now.”

“All right, faerie.” He pressed his lips to that slender pink-tipped forefinger. “You sleep.”

By the time he eased his weight off of her again, she had fallen fast asleep.

T
he Dark Fae mansion and its eighty-acre tract of land lay a half mile northwest of Chicago’s downtown Loop area. The grounds were bordered by a tall stone wall topped with rolls of barbed wire. The area had changed so much over the last two hundred years. Niniane didn’t recognize anything in the stylish surrounding neighborhood as their SUV approached two tall iron gates.

This time Rune drove and Aryal rode shotgun. All of Niniane’s things had been packed in suitcases and rode in the back, along with Tiago’s duffle bag. Rune and Aryal had already sent their things ahead. Rune had dressed up for the occasion: the jeans he wore didn’t have holes in the knees. Aryal wore her usual outfit of fighting leathers and weapons. Tiago rode with Niniane in the backseat. He was dressed in a clean black T-shirt and fatigues, and of course he was armed as well. His hawkish face was alert and relaxed, his dark gaze constantly moving over their immediate surroundings.

She flashed back to earlier. She had awakened with the awareness of his long, powerful body lying next to her, one of his hands resting on the narrow frame of her rib cage. Even before she had opened her eyes, she knew she faced a day filled with profound differences. She had stirred and turned to him, and discovered he was already watching her, his expression pensive and strange with rare tenderness.