by Lori Devoti
It was a script, outlining his part for the next day—what to say, what to do. It was detailed and explicit, down to how he should smile and tilt his head at the appropriate moments.
He frowned. He didn’t appreciate micromanagement. He took jobs of his choosing; the mission decided by the employer, the details decided by Raf.
Uneasiness crawled over him. Someone had been in his room, gone through his belongings. What else had they done?
He dumped out the bag. Under his clothes was a package wrapped in brown paper. It was soft, obviously contained cloth. Inside was a bland gray tunic like the lords’ minions wore.
Apparently the elf lords’ spy had messed up, not realized the photos had already been taken. Or perhaps this was for Raf’s appearance before the crowds after he convinced Marina to leave the royals, publicly declare her allegiance to the lords.
He stared at the tunic for a moment, thoughts whirling through his mind. What did the elf lords think he was? A brainless pup with no pride, no sense of self? That he would let them dress him, put words in his mouth, tell him when to smile and when to scowl?
A growl found its way past his lips. He tossed the package against the wall, then spun back toward the bed, shoved the bag off the bed and crumpled the note.
He reached for a pillow, meaning to toss the pair that decorated his bed onto the floor also.
The material was smooth—like the silk Marina wore. He paused, stared down at it.
The silk…If Marina did as he asked, if she chose the elf lords over the royals, she’d never wear silk again. Would never be bossed about by her uncle again…no, she’d have new bosses, new elves picking out her clothes and putting words in her mouth.
The cage…the castle…would be grander, but her life wouldn’t be different. She’d still be a puppet, valued only for whatever part her owners forced her to play.
Did he really want that for her?
He thought about her story, what she’d told him back in the human world. Remembered their time together in Gunngar, holding her again here…His fingers dug into the down-filled pillow, creased the silk.
Did he really want her to pay the price for his revenge?
He forced the tension from his hands, flattened them and smoothed the wrinkles he had created.
Did he want her to pay a price at all?
The pillow smooth again, he stared at it….
No. He didn’t. Not anymore.
The next morning Raf waited in the sitting room for Marina and the reporter. After finding the note and package, he’d prowled his bedroom, stopped himself a thousand times from shimmering into Marina’s bedroom and shaking her, then pulling her to him and repeating what they’d done earlier, made love. Something about finding that clothing…thinking of what it meant to Marina, had broken through the shell of lies he’d built around himself.
He wanted revenge, but he wanted more than that now. He wanted Marina.
There had to be a way to have both.
Today he would figure out how.
Sitting on one of Geir’s fancy couches, dressed in his own outfit of jeans and a dark T-shirt, he waited for Marina to arrive.
He was growing antsy when the reporter walked into the room, followed immediately by Marina. In her hand was a white sheet of paper—a script, he guessed, just like the one that he tossed aside last night.
She was dressed in silk again—yellow, and some kind of purple flowers were woven through her hair. She looked every inch the princess, but, he realized, it was simply a costume.
Time to stop the play acting.
As she and the reporter went through social niceties that Raf didn’t understand or like, he waited, his anger at the elf lords and the royals growing.
Marina turned, a smile on her face. It looked real, her eyes and skin glowed—but Raf knew it couldn’t be. She had the script, knew her part. She probably thought he had slipped it under her door. She had to be angry. He was.
He stepped forward and pulled the paper from her hand. Startled, her eyes rounded. “Did you need my list for some reason?”
He glanced down; it wasn’t the script as he’d thought, but a simple “to do” list of frivolous duties involving hair, nails and shoes. It angered him almost as much as the script. He balled it up, too and tossed it onto the floor.
Cas took a step back. “Is this a bad time?”
Marina’s gaze flickered from Raf to the reporter, then with a smile, she placed a reassuring hand on the reporter’s arm. “No, this is perfect. Raf is just…tired.” She shot Raf a look that sizzled with warning. “He’s not used to Alfheim’s…weather.”
“Oh.” Cas looked confused, but Raf wasn’t concerned with the reporter or what he believed. He was focused on Marina. The look…she hadn’t given up, wasn’t beaten. The strong female he’d known in Gunngar was still in there—just disguised in silk and flowers. He knew what he had to do. He had to bring her out.
With a smile, he slid onto the couch and waited to see what she would do next.
The reporter pulled out his recorder. He talked mainly to Marina. When he did refer a question to Raf, Raf ignored him. He was done with the games—fed up to the point of exploding.
Marina spun a tale that combined what the elf lords had laid out on the script—how her time in Gunngar had been both fulfilling and exciting, how she had looked forward to coming back to Alfheim and working with them some more—and what he was sure her uncle wanted said—that she was equally excited to be back with her family.
She was playing both sides, offending neither. She was pretending, coloring every word and gesture to appease either the elf lords or the royals.
What she wasn’t doing, was being honest, real, herself.
Raf’s annoyance surged.
He cut her off midsentence. “What Marina didn’t know was that I was working for the elf lords all along. They’d hired me to spy on her.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Just like they’ve hired someone in this household to spy on her now. When she found out, she had me locked up. A deserved punishment, although I wouldn’t have been so generous, and I don’t plan on being so generous now.”
The reporter paused, sat there with his recorder going and his mouth hanging open. “Excuse me?”
Raf smiled. He could feel his eyes glittering, knew their normal blue had darkened. “What part did you miss? The part where the elf lords have spies in this house or the part where Marina locked me in a box?” He glanced at her and raised a brow—dared her to step up, stand up for herself.
She pursed her lips and sat back.
“The princess…?” Cas turned in his seat. “Locked you in a box? But I thought, Sim said…”
At Marina’s refusal to respond, Raf growled. “Yes, a box. It’s one of the reasons I decided to hunt her down. She wasn’t easy to catch, but I had a net and a dragon. It worked out.”
He stared at Marina. She stared back. Her eyes were sparkling with anger, but her lips were pressed together in a tight thin line.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “There was a witch, too. More than one actually. The one Marina burned…or didn’t. And the one she forced into her body. That one was tricky, but we dealt with it.” He glanced at the reporter. “Have you met Amma? From what I hear, she can be quite the bitch, but then again so can our princess.”
Marina’s nostrils flared and her hands formed fists in her lap. She didn’t know what to do, how to react—which personality to pull from.
Raf smiled and leaned back against the couch cushion.
The reporter flipped off his recorder and pulled a paper from his pocket. He glanced around the room, then leaned forward. His voice tense, he addressed Marina. “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t want to. I have a story to run and I’m not letting some hellhound get in my way.” His lip turned up. “This is the version of events I had heard. Can you confirm them?”
Raf grabbed the reporter by the back of his collar and jerked him backward.
Words, or what would have been words, gurgled from the reporter’s throat. Raf reached for the paper, but Marina beat him to it. She glanced over the sheet quickly as if she already knew what was written there, then nodded, folded it in two and shoved the paper into the reporter’s jacket pocket.
Raf lifted the reporter higher, until he had to stand on his toes to keep from strangling.
“Does it matter if I can confirm it?” she asked. Her gaze darted behind Cas to Raf, as if the question was for him…or perhaps the reporter’s answer. Raf loosened his grip, let the reporter croak out a reply.
“No.”
She nodded, then pressed a button on the table beside her. As if he’d been standing just outside the door, Tahl appeared.
The guard’s gaze slid over the three of them, took in the reporter’s awkward position and Raf’s grip on his collar. He didn’t hesitate, kept his face blank and respectful.
Marina waved one hand. “Mr. Dwin is ready to leave. Would you see him out?” Then she turned on her heel and floated from the room.
With a snarl, Raf threw the reporter to the ground and stalked after her.
Marina waited for Raf outside in the hall. When the doors to the sitting room exploded open, she headed for the garden. She knew he’d follow. At the fountain, she stopped. She’d risked a lot playing the interview as she had. While she hadn’t betrayed the royals, she hadn’t denounced the elf lords, either. Geir wouldn’t be pleased.
But she understood Raf’s pain, and wanted to help him. She’d lost her parents, too, and while two elves had been caught and tried for their murders—no one really believed they were their killers. Like everything in Alfheim, it had all been pretense, an act for the populace.
Besides, she’d guessed the interview was a set up, that the elf lords had already paid Cas to get the story they wanted. What she said didn’t matter. Meeting with her and Raf was just window dressing.
Her uncle was experienced enough in the ways of Alfheim to know it, too, she hoped.
But Raf wasn’t. And for some reason now, he was angry with the way she’d played things. Which made her angry, too.
She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to storm forward.
Barely aware of where Marina had led him, Raf ground to a stop in front of her. “What were you doing in there?” He couldn’t explain his anger, wasn’t sure if he was angry at her or himself—but the note, her performance, spending the last day in a world full of pretense…it was more than he could take. He was done.
“What you wanted me to do, what everyone wants me to do. I was playing my part.” Her face was pale.
“There’s a spy here,” he said.
She shrugged, cold, uncaring. “More than one, probably.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
She took a step toward him. Her chest almost touching his, she stared up at him. “In Gunngar it bothered me because it was you, because I let you get close and see the real me. Here? What are they going to see or hear? Just what I want them to. I won’t make the mistake I made with you again.”
He grabbed her by the forearms and pulled her up onto her toes, just as he had the reporter, except his intentions for Marina were far different. What had happened between them was real. He accepted that now. Everything else—He cut off the thought, and blurted out, “Was it a mistake? Or has everything we’ve done afterward, with the exception of what happened between us last night, been the mistake?”
He pulled her closer, kissed her.
Her body was stiff and he was angry. Angry at the mess he’d found himself in. He felt trapped by his need for the elf lord’s seer stone, and he resented the hell out of it. He was angry that Marina didn’t seem to resent it with him.
He ignored the rigidity of her body and pulled her against him anyway. She tried to turn away, but he deepened the kiss. Slowly his anger began to seep away, be forgotten. His senses, his reality were engulfed by the female in his arms.
As his anger ebbed, Marina’s seemed to increase. Her hands shot from his chest to his neck, and she locked them behind his head. Began kissing him with the same angry energy he’d had only seconds before.
His hands cupped her buttocks and he pulled her even closer. She sighed into his mouth. He moved his lips to her throat and rained kisses down its ivory length.
In the distance, through a fog, something crashed. Marina jerked from his embrace.
Her eyes wary, she glanced around. He pulled her against his side and listened. Footsteps, soft, elf soft, pattered along the far side of the garden. Leaving Marina behind, he shimmered.
The garden was plopped down in the center of the mansion—like a hole in the middle of a doughnut. There was no way out without going through the house. Whoever was listening wasn’t some stranger who had wandered upon them from the street. It was someone from inside Geir’s household. Geir himself?
Raf doubted it. Geir didn’t seem the kind to spy. He would hire spies. More likely it was the person who had left the note in Raf’s room.
What had he seen? The kiss? The interview?
What the spy had seen didn’t matter. What did matter was that someone was spying. Hypocritical as it was—Raf had no patience for spies, had no intention of putting up with one.
Fed up with everything as he was, he didn’t stop to think any more. He shifted.
Within seconds, he was in his canine form. He shook himself free of his clothes and padded forward, searching for a scent. The smell of elf was everywhere. He listened, heard material brushing against plants and soft breaths no louder than a moth’s wings as it drifted through moonlight. He turned his head, caught a flash of blue among the plants.
He had spotted his prey. His lips pulled back and leapt.
Chapter 11
M arina braced a hand on the fountain to keep from falling. Raf’s abrupt shimmer had left her surprised and unsteady. She’d barely regained her balance when she heard him materialize on the far side of the garden. Magic flowed toward her—into her. She blinked, startled by the strange sensation.
She’d noticed magic around her before, but never felt it this way…as if it was streaming into her. She opened her hands, felt it surging through her veins. She spread her fingers, tried to do as she had when Amma had been inside her, to send power shooting from her palms. There was a pressure, like something building, preparing to escape. Her muscles tensed; she held her breath. Then nothing. The feeling was gone as quickly as it had come.
Her shoulders dropping, she let out a breath.
There was a crash. She spun. She’d forgotten where she was for a second, forgotten about Raf and what he was doing.
She hurried toward the noise, across the grass and stone floor of the garden. Through the plants she saw golden fur flying through the air—Raf leaping. He had caught someone—or was about to.
Marina’s heart thumped. The spy he’d mentioned. What would Raf do with him? What would Marina do with him? She hadn’t lied, it had never occurred to her to call out the spies she knew followed her everywhere.
Spies were a part of royal life. She’d been stupid to think they wouldn’t follow her to Gunngar, but here…they were so expected…to hunt one down? Challenge him?
Raf roared and landed. A body fell, knocking more plants to the ground. Marina raced forward, eager to see the spy’s face, eager to face at least one pretense head on.
She shoved ferns and flowers out of her way, stepped over broken pottery and heaps of dirt. Then before her, blocking any other steps she might have taken, stood Raf, in his hellhound form. His head was low and his back was rigid. He growled.
Marina stepped to the side to see who lay trapped under him, to see whose neck was wedged between his jaws.
Her sister’s stormy blue eyes, wide and filled with terror, stared back at her.
“Raf. Stop!” Marina pulled on his fur. Caught up in the heat of his hunt, he didn’t lift his head, didn’t move his jaws from around his prey’s throat, he simpl
y snarled.
“Raf.” Marina squatted next to him, stared him in the eyes. “It’s Ky. It’s my sister. Let her go.”
Slowly, the blood lust receded. He came back to himself, realized the scent he’d caught right before leaping was familiar, that it belonged to Marina’s sister, the female he’d helped from the floor when he first arrived. Still…
“She was spying,” he said in Marina’s head.
Marina pressed her lips together. “Let her go.”
Every instinct he had screamed that he shouldn’t, that while he held the quivering elf female he should question her, find out exactly why she’d been lurking behind the plants, but Marina’s gaze was determined, and he could smell her worry.
He opened his jaws and stepped back.
Ky grabbed her neck where his jaws had been, but otherwise didn’t move. She seemed unable to.
Without looking at Raf, acknowledging that he’d done as she asked in any way, Marina sat next to her and slipped an arm around her waist. “Are you okay?”
Raf padded back to his clothing, changed into human form, then jerked on his clothes. He wasn’t sorry for jumping on Ky or pinning her to the ground. She had been spying. He wouldn’t let her walk away without answering for that, but he would give Marina a few moments with her first.
Dressed, he went back to where the two females sat on the floor.
“I just…I saw you two come in here, and I was curious. I’ve never met a hellhound—” Ky glanced at Raf, and her hand automatically moved back to her neck. There was no mark there; he’d had no intention of killing her, just holding her, intimidating her.
She licked her lips and swiveled her gaze, eyes round and huge, back to Marina.
He’d succeeded in that at least. Planning to keep the advantage, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at the small woman.
Marina frowned at him, but kept talking to Ky. “Raf thought you were spying on us.”