He merged out of a construction lane. “Here and there.”
“What else can you do? Scuba?” She said it as a joke but wasn’t surprised when he nodded.
“Yes.”
“Rock-climb.”
He glanced over out of the corner of his eye, his mouth lifted in a slight smile. “Don’t forget ice-climb, sail, Morris dance, and God knows what else.”
“How many languages do you speak?”
“I’ve lost count.” He spoke in Chinese.
She stared at that rugged profile. “Why? Why do you do all this?”
“I’ve been in exile a long time. It’s either that or die.” He spoke matter-of-factly.
She was silent the rest of the drive, thinking about Cormac—the man, a person—for the first time in the many years she’d known him. To be exiled from your home and people would be horrific. She’d had a taste of that when her father had sent her to her uncle’s house, but that was nothing compared to what he’d experienced. Michaela had always been surrounded by her own people, even when her family had been less than satisfactory. She had found Caro, and Eric and Stephan, and even humans like Yao and Ivy.
Cormac had no one.
They arrived home. She turned the key and led the way into her apartment, grateful the alarms were still set. She couldn’t afford to relax her guard.
Cormac steered her to the couch with a gentle hand on her lower back. Even that slight touch was enough to send a soft burn shivering over her skin, so she shook him off. Cormac nodded at the cushions. “Sit down. I’m getting you a drink and we’re going to talk.” He smiled. “Have a conversation, like regular people.”
It was a relief to not have to think for a moment and it had been a long time since she had been able to react, rather than give the orders. With a heavy sigh, she leaned her head back, only to find her knot of hair in the way. With a quick movement, she untwisted it and let it flow over the back of the couch.
Even her apartment’s pleasant order failed to cheer her. Having to deal with Madden’s hostility and accusations had been more shocking than she’d let on. She’d hidden the pain, but she’d trusted him. Suddenly her mentor was becoming a man she didn’t know, and liked even less.
Contrary to what she let people believe, Michaela didn’t enjoy confrontation. She rubbed her jaw, trying to relax the deep muscle tension from keeping herself under control. It was a skill she had practiced for centuries, but she’d never had to invest so much to govern her emotions as she had recently. Part of her wanted to take on her biggest, meanest masque and go pick some fights. Or become a long, lean runner and race for miles.
She wouldn’t, though, because that wasn’t who she was. She was Michaela and she faced her problems head on. At least she did now. It had taken multiple marriages for her to take control of her own life, and she would never relinquish it again.
The ring of glass against a granite counter came from the kitchen, and she hoped it was the sound of a drink being made that was not tea. When she was in her Yuri masque, Michaela drank like a fish. As part of the persona she’d developed for him, Yuri was a man of the earth, a heavy drinker and big eater with tremendous physical strength. He swore and fought, held grudges but was a loyal friend. As Yuri, she had been able to face tragedies that would have crumpled her had she been in her natural masque. She rolled her head to her chest, then around in a circle, wincing as her vertebrae popped alarmingly despite the daily exercise. Masquerada depended on supple muscles for easy transitions to other masques.
How long had it been since she created a new persona? Years, maybe. Frightening the humans in the alley as a vampire had been the first time she had shifted in a while. It hadn’t even given her the joy she was used to. Dread knotted in her stomach. Was le vide creeping up on her? It was insidious, that empty tedium that eventually sucked all of the color out of life. She had fought it once in the 1800s. Fear of le vide was what had forced her to leave her comfortable merchant’s life in Melaka to face the terrors of the New World.
What would her life had been like had she stayed? She closed her eyes, bringing back the sights and smells of China. The first part of the Ming dynasty had been decadent if a family had wealth and Michaela’s didn’t. Or at least, her parents had decided that they needed more and had honed in on the humans as easy marks. And they were, once Michaela had been established as a young, fertile woman who would provide many sons to the aging merchants. She shuddered. They had married her six times, each as a different masque, before she’d refused to go again, unwilling to feel those cold hands parting her flesh and the whip when she’d been without child month after month, until the old men died. Her old amah had given her the herbs she needed to prevent pregnancy and she’d taken them religiously, even when bedridden from a beating.
After her unfilial refusal, her parents had sent her to her uncle’s in Malaysia as punishment. He was going to find another husband for her when she’d finally run, knowing that leaving her family would be the only way to escape that horrible cycle. Captain Lu had taken her in as a cabin boy.
Cormac came out with a tray. He’d created a veritable feast, complete with wine. On a tray were olives and nuts, cheese and crackers. “How did you know what I liked?” she asked in amazement.
He passed her a glass of white, perfectly chilled. “It wasn’t hard to tell. Your kitchen had an entire cabinet of bar snacks.”
She took a handful of salted almonds. “I usually eat at work.”
“I’m not complaining.” He cut himself a large hunk of brie and popped it in his mouth. “The fey usually live on nectar and sap, so I’m not much of a cook myself.”
They ate in companionable silence for a few moments. Michaela thought about what he’d said. “Do they?”
“Do who what?” Cormac poured himself more wine. Under the light, his hair shone almost opalescent.
“The fey eat sap.”
He passed her a cracker. “I’m exaggerating a bit. Most fey make a show of only eating that kind of fare, flowers and nectar, when they are in public. It’s too corporeal. Too crude.”
“In private?”
“They wolf down whatever they like.”
“No meat though.”
He shuddered. “Only the most debauched would even consider such a thing. One day Isindle was…” He broke off. “Sorry. More wine?”
“Isindle. Your sister.”
He held his glass up to the light and gazed at the pale liquid. “That’s right.” He put down the glass, looking resigned. “Before you can ask, here’s what you need to know. She is younger than I am, and as bright as a star. Yes, I miss her greatly. Yes, she lives in the Queendom and as I pointed out before, our meetings are rare as I am an exile.”
Michaela flushed. “I wasn’t going to interrogate you.”
“You weren’t?” His peaked brows rose. “I thought you were interested in me.”
She opened her mouth and shut it, realizing how he had caught her. To say she wasn’t interested would be unnecessarily rude. To say she was would be—well, what would it be? He did interest her.
The silence grew as Cormac drank his wine and regarded her. She should speak. She didn’t want to. The heavy quiet in the room was charged with an energy she wasn’t sure she wanted to break up or tap into.
What she did know was she was exhausted. Mentally and physically.
Cormac broke into her thoughts. “You’re tired.”
His voice was firm and brooked no subterfuge. She didn’t give it. “I am.”
“Tell me.”
Michaela took an olive and let the salt fill her mouth. How to answer this? What she was truly tired of was the ever-present solitude, the split life of being a Pharos member. Covering so many secrets from those she wanted as friends. No matter to whom she turned, there was an invisible barrier that she couldn’t pass, knowledge she needed to hug
close.
Cormac spread his arms over the back of the couch and spoke when she didn’t reply. “You’re a member of Eric’s High Council. The head of it, if I recall correctly.”
She nodded. This was public information, as was the fact that she had been the one appointed to oversee the defie challenge six months ago that nearly cost both Eric and Caro their lives. She had seen blood before, lots of it, and on the bodies of those she loved, but the defie had been shattering.
“I was involved in cleaning house after Iverson lost the defie against Eric.” She shrugged. “You saw how some reacted to it. I didn’t make friends.”
“A lot of work, I’m told.”
She rubbed her eyes. “That’s an understatement. It’s still going on, half a year later.”
“Eric handles insurrection much differently than I’ve seen it done.”
Michaela knew exactly what he meant. “Eric is unusual both as a masquerada and a leader. He isn’t vengeful and made a point of allowing those who honestly regretted their decision to have another chance.”
“He was turned, not born, if the rumors are true.”
“For once, they are.” Eric had been a coureur de bois in the 1600s. He was still a noted expert in determining fur quality, not that it came up much in his role as Hierarch.
“Exceptionally strong, then. Those who are turned are notoriously powerful.”
She laughed. “You know?”
“I make it my business to know.” He poured them both more wine and Michaela drank it down without thinking.
“What else can you tell?”
Instead of answering her directly, Cormac stood up and walked to where she sat on the couch. She poured herself another glass of wine, welcoming the slight dizziness. The room was getting hot, and she stripped off her cardigan. Cormac’s eyes flickered slightly as she also unwrapped the long, heavy silver chain she’d wrapped around her throat that morning and tossed it with a clank on the table. For a moment, she felt like her true self, Miaoling, but she pushed it down deep. Miaoling had been forced to deal with enough of life and once she stepped foot on Captain Lu’s ship, she’d sworn that she would never let Miaoling, her real, true, secret self, be hurt again.
She must have sat there drinking her wine and thinking idly to herself for some time because Cormac reached out and laid a hand on her knee. “Tell me about Ivy.”
Michaela nestled back into the chair, letting the warmth of his touch spread over her skin. “She’s a descendant of an old friend of mine.” A branch of Yao’s family that had remained in China.
“Who?”
Yao. Being his friend had been Michaela’s privilege. She ran her hand along her left arm, feeling the slight ridge of the scar on the back from the overseer’s whip.
Cormac caught her hand and ran his finger along the scar. “This is part of your story. Tell me.”
She hesitated and he brought his hand to her chin, tilting her face to look him in the eyes. It was hypnotic, Michaela thought, staring into his clear jade gaze. There was an old compassion in his expression that she recognized. It was a rare arcana who had not known loss and pain over their long lives.
She wanted to tell him.
“His name was Yao,” she said.
Chapter 14
Cormac released his hold on Michaela once she started speaking. He’d felt the shudder that had run along her slender body at his touch, and his response.
He wanted her badly. He’d never felt this way about a woman before, but Michaela was no simple woman. Inside that tiny body were lifetimes of experience, and he wanted to know every part of her.
She stared at her glass, swirling the wine inside. “I came to Canada in the late 1800s. I was facing le vide and I thought that things would be better over the sea.” She sighed. “There were stories about gold lying on the ground. The usual tales immigrants tell themselves to help make the decision. It seemed exciting.”
“Was it bad?” Cormac paid little attention to human history, but even a fey knew that humans cycled from cruelty to enlightenment to cruelty.
She laughed shortly. “It was slavery. Yao became my friend after I was whipped by the overseer. I was working on the railroad and I hadn’t broken the rock fast enough. Yao came to me that night with some salve he’d smuggled in, an herbal remedy from home I hadn’t seen in years.”
That definitely didn’t match his recollection of history. “There were women on the railroad?”
Michaela snorted. “No. I was a man back then, of course.”
“What?” The casual gender-swapping of the masquerada still threw him.
“We were considered subhuman. There were few safe places for Chinese and hardly any Chinese women here because they didn’t want us to breed and start families, put down any roots.” She turned her hand over and pointed at a pale round scar on her palm. “Got this from the Swedish foreman when he scorched me with a poker. I was sleeping when he thought I should be awake.”
“Why don’t you heal the scars up?” Like the fey, masquerada could heal quickly.
Her gaze burned him. “There are some things that you never recover from. Some experiences that should be remembered. This”—she jabbed her finger—“it’s not a scar. It’s a memorial to Ming and Yao and Bian. Men who had the misfortune to be poor and Chinese while here in the Americas.”
Cormac refilled their wine. “You’re a masquerada, a strong one. You could have changed your appearance to look like that Swede, could have walked away.”
“I won’t lie.” She put the glass on the table with a soft clink. “I thought about it. Even tried. I wasn’t able to. It would be a betrayal of myself.”
“How so?”
“When we take on a masque, we take on more than the appearance. I would have been tainted with the attitudes of those who looked like that overseer. I feared as John, or Sven, I would have seen Yao and the others only as tools to be used and discarded, not as men with value and individuality and worth. Those smugly superior thoughts would have been mine.” She paused, dark eyes further shadowed with memory. “I didn’t know if I was strong enough and I couldn’t take the risk of losing myself like that. We Chinese were hated, degraded in every way. An obnoxious pestilence to be used grudgingly for the hardest work and then discarded. To take on a masque that would harbor such despicable thoughts was unacceptable.”
Cormac leaned back, fascinated by this window into her mind. “Yao helped you?”
“He was a good, kind man. Even among our own, there were bad men, the kind who would run to the overseers and report on any indiscretion. We despised them. They were the same men who would tattle to the magistrates back home. The reason didn’t matter—whether it was for extra food, or to make others suffer, or to experience a little bit of power themselves. Yao and I found friends. It was a hard life, but we could laugh. I couldn’t leave him there while I walked away in a different masque.”
She smiled, her gaze distant. “We played jokes on each other. It’s odd now, to think of what we found humorous. Then Yao died.”
Cormac had expected this, but the desolation in her voice caught his heart. “How?”
“I had been told to blast a tunnel with dynamite. He knew how much I hated the job—we all did—but he hated it slightly less and took my place without me knowing.”
A tear fell down her cheek. “They didn’t bother to bury him. Left him in that tunnel, parts of him sprayed over the walls so nice people who wouldn’t even look at us could have an easier train ride.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shivered. “We worked hard, Bian and Ming and I, and we paid the head tax and brought his family over. Said they were mine. All the Chinese looked alike to the customs men so I didn’t have a problem. I’ve watched over them since.”
“Ivy is related to him?”
She smiled. “His great-great-grandd
aughter and more like him than any member of the family.”
“Tell me more about him.”
Michaela opened her mouth to speak but bent her head as a storm of weeping shook her body. Cormac, though he was fey and soulless, felt something tear at him. He leaned over and wrapped his arms around her, letting her cry as he whispered into her ear.
* * * *
It had been many years since Michaela let herself think of Yao. She remembered his death each year as was proper, but she wouldn’t let herself dwell on him. In Cormac’s embrace, she recalled Yao’s mischievous smile. “He was a good thief,” she said.
“Then he would have been respected by the fey.”
“You said you weren’t thieves.”
“Perhaps I exaggerated our virtue. In any case, we all admire expert technique. What would he steal?” Cormac’s voice was soft and he brushed her hair behind her ear.
“Food, mostly. Clothing. Only from the company men. He’d never steal from another Chinese. None of us would.”
Cormac nodded. “During the war, we did the same. The idea of stealing from a warrior on your own side was anathema.”
“The fey war?” Michaela leaned back and wiped her eyes, which seemed to have lightened to bronze from her tears. “I don’t know much about what happened.”
No surprise. It had been a sordid civil war because Tismelda wanted the Tansy Throne. “We don’t celebrate it much. Even our songs are more about the nobility of sacrifice than Tismelda’s grubby greediness.”
“You were in it.” Michaela sat facing him.
“We all were.” Cormac drew his fingers through Michaela’s hair. It felt like heavy silk and slid out of his grasp. Her eyes didn’t leave his, but her lips opened slightly.
A faint pulse beat in the hollow of her throat.
“Cormac.” Her voice was unsteady.
He wrapped her hair around his hand and pulled them closer. “I’ve been dying for this.”
He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. She twisted away so that his lips landed on her throat. Before he could react and claim her mouth, her hands moved up the outside of his chest and along his shoulders. If Cormac had been hard before, feeling Michaela against him turned his cock into a length of steel. She ground into him and he actually saw lights flash behind his eyes.
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