He’d tried patience, though the gods knew it was not a virtue he had been overly blessed with. He’d tried seduction. He’d even tried bribing her with the promise of treasure and a life of ease. But she’d stood steadfast against them all, determined to hold on to a life that was no longer hers.
So perhaps he would do what he should have done in the beginning. Snatch Maggie from her world, and hold her here, in the palace, until his body had convinced hers that she wanted nothing more than to stay.
His injuries from the battle with the Dullahan already healed, Culhane prepared himself for a battle of another kind. In this one, there would be no physical injuries. This battle would be one of the mind. His will against Maggie’s.
“She’s a strong woman, my Queen,” he said to himself as he walked into the throne room. Here, the walls sparkled in the sunlight, catching the rays of the dual suns and splintering them through their crystal panels until prismed colors danced around the room. The dazzling display of light and color would have blinded a mere mortal. Only those with Fae blood could truly see and withstand the beauty in Otherworld without sliding into madness.
And it was for this, his Maggie Donovan had been born.
He stalked to the intricately carved, silver-sculpted throne, stepped up onto the dais and ran one hand across its cool, heavily jeweled surface. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds winked from their settings on the Queen’s chair. The throne meant for Maggie.
She’d sat here only a few times and hadn’t looked at all at ease. But she had it in her to be a great queen and he would see to it personally that she both accepted and celebrated who and what she was.
He folded his arms across the top of the throne and spoke to the empty room as if facing his Queen herself. “Your place is here, Maggie. With me. It’s time you learned that.”
“You’ll see,” Finn assured Maggie again as they walked down the wide hall. “Mab is contained. She will not escape so easily. She had no friends, only subjects. No one is eager to see her returned to the throne.”
Maggie liked the sound of that, but asked anyway, “No one? What about the rogue Fae?”
“Well,” he admitted regretfully, “they are, of course, not to be trusted. But as they’re trapped on Casia in their own prison, they are in no position to offer assistance to Mab.”
Casia. The frozen island where Culhane had stopped a budding revolution. God. There was so much she had to learn.
“Hope you’re right,” Maggie said.
“Ah,” Finn answered with a wink, “I am a wizard. You can trust me. But even were I proved wrong, Maggie, you would have Culhane standing at your side. The warrior would do anything for you. He will keep you safe.”
Would he? she wondered. Or had he given up on making her Queen and decided to pull off a coup of his own? Maybe he’d rather be a king in his own right than be the warrior of a reluctant queen. Was she really all that important in Culhane’s little world?
Maybe all he’d wanted was help getting free of Mab. It was possible he hadn’t wanted her for Queen as much as he’d wanted a new ruler. Anyone would have done as long as it wasn’t Mab.
Well, that was a depressing thought.
“Are you thinking about the Dullahan, then?” Finn asked.
“No. How could I? I don’t even know what they are.” She frowned, looked up at the tall wizard walking beside her and said, “I’m thinking about Culhane. And wondering if he really is my warrior.”
“Ah, Maggie . . .”
“You said yourself he went into battle without even telling me.”
“It is his duty to protect Otherworld.”
“Yes, but how is the question,” she muttered, then followed Finn into a room she’d never been in before. Enormous, she thought, not at all surprised, since this whole place seemed to have been built on a scale for giants. But the difference in this room pulled at Maggie as nothing she’d ever seen before had.
Paintings. Hundreds—thousands of them—dotting the walls in varying shapes and sizes, and she grinned when some of the subjects in those paintings moved. “This is amazing. Eileen’s got to see this. She won’t believe it. Really, Finn, this is—”
A slight sound caught her ear and Maggie looked off to the left. “Eileen? What’re you doing in here?”
The girl whirled around guiltily, clasped her hands behind her back, winced and hunched her shoulders as she looked at Maggie. “Um, nothing?”
“What’s going on?” Maggie had been down this road before with her niece and she knew that when Eileen wouldn’t meet her eyes or answer a straight question, something was most definitely up. Besides, she was really trying to project the whole I’m-too-innocent-to-do-anything-bad look. “Spill. What happened?”
“Happened?”
“Eileen . . .”
“Oh, trollshit.”
Maggie looked at Finn. Finn was staring at a painting. Eileen was staring at Finn. And nobody was looking at Maggie. Apprehension coiled into a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. This could not be good.
“What?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Eileen said.
“Mean to what?” Maggie asked.
“I’m sure it was an accident,” Finn said softly, still wearing a worried expression, and that more than anything else made those brand-new knots in Maggie’s stomach start writhing as if they were snakes in a pit.
“I didn’t know it was real,” Eileen whispered.
“What was real?”
“I should have locked the door,” Finn said.
“If somebody doesn’t tell me what’s happening . . .” Maggie let the vague threat hang in the air until finally, Finn looked at her.
“That painting”—he stabbed one finger at the frame now holding a painting of an empty sky—“was Mab’s prison. She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“I only touched the painting, Aunt Maggie,” Eileen said, her voice going whiny and thin. “I didn’t know she’d land on my hand.”
“Oh God.”
“She shifted and sort of . . . disappeared,” Eileen finished.
Maggie needed to sit down. But there weren’t any chairs. So she locked her knees, looked at the wizard and for the first time since all of this had started, pulled rank and demanded in her most queenly voice, “Explain. I thought Mab lost her powers to me. How’d she get out?”
“Shifting isn’t really a ‘power,’ ” Finn admitted. “It is simply a part of being Fae. Once her fall was halted, Mab simply . . . left.”
“Fabulous,” Maggie muttered.
Finn pushed one hand through his thick, blond hair and said, “This has never happened before, my Queen. And the truth is, Mab could be anywhere. But wherever she is, she is no doubt plotting her revenge on you. You are in grave danger.”
“I’m really sorry, Aunt Maggie.” Tears shone in Eileen’s eyes, and Maggie reached out to draw her in for a hug.
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Not like she’d done anything on purpose. Still, Maggie looked up at the wizard and noted the flicker of worry in his normally placid blue eyes. “Finn, would you see that Eileen gets home? I need to see Culhane.”
The palace echoed with the sounds of her footsteps as Maggie raced down one corridor into the next. “Culhane!”
She didn’t even stop when one of her female guards flew through an open window and stopped directly in her path. “Majesty,” the tall woman said, “do you require assistance?”
“I require Culhane,” Maggie said quickly, and stepped past the woman. She probably should have told Finn to send Culhane to her back in the real world. But at her house, there would have been too many distractions. Bezel. Jasic. Eileen. Nora. Quinn. Maybe Claire. Nope, she needed some one-on-one time with Culhane and the only place she stood a shot of getting it was here. In the palace. Where she could simply order people to leave them alone.
Maggie kept moving, looking into rooms as she ran down the hallway, not sure exactly where she was headed—and it occurred
to her that there were probably a thousand or so rooms in the damn palace. It could take her years to find the man.
Frustrated, she shouted, “Culhane!”
“He’s in the throne room,” the female now behind her said softly.
Maggie stopped, looked over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes at the familiar woman. “Ailish?” The Fae she’d spoken to at the DMV.
“Yes, Majesty.” She smiled, obviously pleased that Maggie remembered her. Well, she was hard to forget. “Have you come to tell the warrior of your decision to allow the females into the Warriors’ Conclave?”
Hell. She’d forgotten all about that in her rush to find Culhane and tell him about Mab. Being Queen wasn’t getting any easier. “I will tell him, yes. But first I have to talk to him about something else.”
“Mab.” Ailish frowned.
Maggie blew out a breath. “Word spreads fast.”
“Bad news does, my Queen.”
“Well,” Maggie said thoughtfully, “at least you think it’s bad news.” She really didn’t need her own palace guard turning on her and helping Mab retake the palace.
“We do. You have our support in the coming fight.”
“Good to know,” Maggie said, turning away again. “Now, which way is the throne room?”
“End of the hall to the left.”
She was running before Ailish stopped speaking. Need pushed at her, fear chased her and at the moment, the only thing that would help, was seeing the fierce, unyielding features of her very own warrior.
Because Maggie needed to know if he really was her warrior.
“Free.” One word and the taste of it was magnificent.
Mab took a deep breath of the icy air of Casia and smiled as if it were the sweet, floral-scented air wafting through the windows of her palace. This harsh, cold, biting wind slicing into her skin, dragging at her hair, was like fine wine, because it represented all she needed.
Opportunity.
Here in this prison she’d created millennia ago, she would find the help she required for ridding herself of Maggie Donovan and the warrior who had helped the human onto the throne. The throne that was rightfully Mab’s.
A smile as cold as the ice beneath her feet touched Mab’s face and she focused her gaze on the village lying at the foot of the mountain. Yes, there was danger here. Some of the rogue Fae she’d imprisoned so long ago would hardly welcome her with open arms. “There will be a few who are willing to look past old grudges to acquire what I now know to be most precious. Their freedom.”
When she had been caught, out of time and space, falling through eternity, Mab had known only frustration and something she’d never experienced before. Fear. Fear that she would always be thus. That there would be no end to her fall. That the great and powerful Mab would become nothing more than legend as she spent perpetuity caught in a frame on a wall in Sanctuary.
“But the gods have smiled on me. Thanks to the mixed-blood human child.” The niece of Mab’s usurper. “One day, I will thank her properly. Perhaps by allowing her to serve me once I kill her aunt and regain my power.”
That thought bothered her, only because of the difficulty in killing an immortal; then she dismissed her concern as she realized one very important thing: The new Queen wasn’t fully Fae yet. Her powers were slowly overtaking her, but she was still part human. Easier to kill. There was still time. Kill Maggie Donovan and Mab’s power would return. And with her power she would retake the throne and spend the next good portion of infinity punishing those who had schemed against her.
With that shining promise firmly in mind, she shifted, going to the village to begin to gather her forces.
Chapter Eight
Culhane grabbed Maggie as she raced into the throne room. He wrapped his arms around her and for one brief, tantalizing moment, buried his face in the curve of her neck. For one spectacular second, she allowed herself to relax in his arms and savor the feel of his solid strength surrounding her.
She felt his breath on her skin, the hard, broad expanse of his chest pressed to hers and the still-harder portion of his body pressing lower against hers. She held on to him, and just for that brief space of time, forgot that she was angry at him for going to war without even mentioning it to her. For not coming to see her in days. Even for deserting her dreams and leaving her body aching—though that last one wasn’t really his fault, she reminded herself.
Everything else was, though, and so she let go of him and stepped away from his embrace.
“That’s not what I came here for,” she said, ignoring the shrieking inside her mind. The tiny voices calling out, Are you crazy? He’s right in front of you! Go get him! We want some Fae sex, okay? Stupid mind. “Culhane, there’s something I have to tell you and then we need to figure out what to do about it.”
“I already know.” He scowled at her, braced his long legs in a wide stance and folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve come to tell me about Mab.”
“You know? How do you know? It just happened like thirty seconds ago, for God’s sake!” She goggled at him, eyes wide, mouth open. “How the hell does word spread so fast?”
He shrugged. “There was a momentary hesitation in the flow of time. We all felt it. It was Mab, reentering this dimension. It could have been nothing else.”
Fabulous. There was a Fae Spidey-sense network she knew nothing about. So fine. He knew about Mab’s escape and Maggie’s imminent danger. Yet he was still here. In the palace. Why hadn’t he come to her? Why wasn’t he in Maggie’s house in the real world searching for her right this minute? Was he just planning on cooling his heels at the palace and letting Maggie sink or swim on her own?
“Were you planning on coming to me about it?”
“I didn’t have to,” he pointed out all too reasonably. “You came to me.”
“Not the question,” she told him. Temper began to spike inside her as she walked a slow, tight circle around the great Fenian Warrior. Now that she was here, with him, she felt better about Mab and worse about Culhane. If everyone knew Mab was out, the chances of her springing a surprise attack were pretty slim. But her very own protective warrior hadn’t bothered to budge himself enough to leave Otherworld on her behalf. “You’re here. Why aren’t you at my house looking to protect me?”
He shook his head and his long, silky hair lifted from his shoulders. “You are here, Maggie.”
“Yeah, okay.” She could give him that much at least. “But you didn’t know I’d come here. You should have been looking for me. To warn me. To I don’t know . . . give a crap?”
Culhane turned in a circle, following her movements, keeping his gaze fixed with hers. “I already ‘give a crap,’ as you put it. I have for a long time. Do you forget that I have watched over you your whole life? That I am the one who sought to train you? To protect you? And for my efforts, I receive your disdain.”
“Disdain?” She pulled her head back and stared at him in surprise. “Why would you think that?”
He laughed shortly, fisted his hands at his hips and gave her a slow, thorough glance up and down her body before fixing his gaze on hers. “What would you have me think? You don’t trust me to teach you. You avoid your duties here in Otherworld. You avoid me.”
“You’re part of Otherworld,” Maggie said, feeling some truth in his words, whether she wanted to admit it or not. “So the avoiding just . . . happened.”
Maybe he was right about all of it, but who could really blame her? She had known, almost from the first moment when he’d popped into her kitchen and she’d knocked him out with a jug of milk, that he was a man a woman wouldn’t be able to flirt with and then step away from. That the moment she surrendered to her feelings for him, she would be lost. She wouldn’t be able to withstand what he could make her feel. Want. And once she gave in to her need for him, she would have to accept not only the warrior’s presence in her life, but the duties and responsibilities waiting for her here. In Otherworld.
Talk about ter
rifying.
“And it wasn’t you specifically I was trying to steer clear of. I just wasn’t ready for all of this—” She waved her hands high, encompassing the throne room, the crystal palace and Otherworld beyond the open windows. “It’s a big deal, you know. Not something you take on lightly. I’ve got a family and a house—”
“And a people expecting you to lead,” he added, interrupting her rant neatly.
“I know that.” Guilt, fresh and pure, rose up inside her. She’d turned her back on what this world offered because she hadn’t been able to let go of her own world. And in turning away from Otherworld, she’d kept Culhane at a distance. For her own peace of mind, she’d tried to ignore her feelings for him, but that wasn’t working anymore. She thought about him all the damn time. She dreamed of him. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything, so when was she going to just admit the truth?
She stopped, her back to the windows, her gaze fixed on the warrior in front of her. Through these last few weeks, Culhane had been her strength. He had defended her against enemies, stood with her against a raging, crazy-ass queen and protected her from demons. He had tried to show her that she was ready for her future, and all she’d been able to do was hide from it. She’d buried herself in her own world because the familiarity of it was a balm in some truly weird times.
But hiding wasn’t a damn answer, she reminded herself. It was just another problem.
And speaking of problems, there was one question she needed answered before she said anything else. “Do we know where Mab is?”
“I have an idea, yes.”
“Where?”
“Casia,” he said, his gaze still locked with hers.
She knew that name. She’d heard about it only a short while ago, from Finn. “You mean where you had the battle with the dolphins you didn’t tell me about.”
“Dol—” His mouth quirked slightly as he nodded. “Dullahan, you mean.”
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