“We’re offering him freedom and a chance to see Leandra again.” The boy had already proven himself willing to sacrifice anything to protect the girl he loved. “I doubt he’ll put up much of a fight.”
His main concern was his dear aunt Rilla taking out her frustrations on his family’s home. Leandra was a bean-tighe, a hearth spirit, and her life force was bound to the fortress. She would live for as long as it stood, and she would die if it fell. Rilla knew this, and she was willing to sack her sister’s home in pursuit of revenge. Of course, she’d also been willing to kidnap her nephew, so it was safe to say Rilla’s family values were skewed.
Leandra was already a bit of a peculiarity. Through no small feat of magic, Tiberius had managed to relocate her to a cottage on Earth with nothing but a stone from the fortress as an anchor. The girl was strong. That didn’t mean I wanted to draw a bull’s-eye on her back.
One problem at a time.
“His parents rallied the troops when Tiberius went missing,” Isaac said, finishing my thought for me. “They’ve had three weeks to mobilize. The fortress will be locked down. That will protect Leandra long enough for us to get the prince to safety. After that, maybe he can bargain with his parents for her return to Faerie.”
“He loves her with the kind of all-consuming passion reserved for teenagers and romantic tearjerkers.” A wistful sigh escaped me. Theirs was a fairy tale, and it would no doubt end just as grimly. “He won’t offer her the position of his mistress, and that’s all his parents will allow.”
“Romance isn’t only for teens,” Isaac ventured.
Maybe not, but what had romance ever done for me, except drop my panties? Apparently, I was highly susceptible to fairy lights, long strolls through the woods and handsome fae men.
“What I meant was they have this Romeo and Juliet thing happening, where they’re both willing to die for one another, to be together. It’s a grand romantic gesture they’ll both probably regret when they’re adults, if they live that long.”
The lifespan of royalty was notoriously short, as was the lifespan of kitchen maids who caught future kings’ eyes and hearts.
“You’re a warg.” Isaac passed me another energy bar. “Aren’t you supposed to believe in soul mates?”
The jagged pieces of my heart scraped together in an agonizing shift of perspective. This was good news, right? That he thought of me as impervious to the bonding instincts of my inner wolf? That meant he had no idea she was locked on him like a hunter with a ten-point buck in her sights. The woman could resist him. I could move on. The wolf… She loved him with her whole heart, and she was never going to consider him as anything other than hers.
“I’ve seen too many mated couples split to believe soul mates are a real thing.” I took a bite of my lemon-flavored bar. “Mating heat. That’s real. It’s biological. The rest is a happy fiction cooked up by Hollywood in an effort to one-up vampires.”
Isaac dropped the artifice and studied me. “Is this my fault?”
Which part? I wanted to ask. Breaking my heart? Stealing hers? Making love to me and then leaving the next day like it didn’t matter? Running from a nascent bond that would take my lifetime to break, if I got lucky? If I got away from him. Tall order considering he was my alpha’s cousin. He was in my life for good, and he would always dance on the fringes. Just never with me.
“No,” I told him honestly. “It’s mine.”
I had been warned about Gemini men. I had known asking him to stay in one place, with one woman, was tantamount to asking him to lasso the moon. But I hadn’t cared. The wolf in my soul had deemed him worthy, and it was her I pitied most. That was my story, and I was sticking to it. I certainly didn’t feel sorry for myself.
“Where in this haystack do we start looking for our needle?” I asked when the silence got too heavy. “Tiberius mentioned the Torquatus lands, but those are his ancestral holdings. Since his elevation to prince, he would have been living at the Halls of Summer, right?”
“Yes, that’s how it’s supposed to work.” He gathered our trash and tucked it all away. “Would Rilla kidnap him and then return him to his seat of power? A place where his word was law?”
“Why not?” I considered the idea. “She’s bought his cooperation, and he’s no good to her hidden away. He’ll lose his title if he’s not around to defend it.”
Isaac paused in his zipping. “You’ve got a point.”
“Yes, but my hair covers it nicely.”
He cracked a small grin at the old joke. “Do you want to go investigate?”
“Can we find it?” It’s not like we had a map. Or did we? “How did Thierry expect us to navigate?”
“The way she explained made it sound simple, but after Firn Hall, I’m not so sure.” He stood and offered me a hand, which I took, and he pulled me to my feet. “Time passes differently here, but it’s in relation to locations. The more you want to be somewhere, the faster you get there. The less you want to arrive, the slower you travel. Think about it. For that to be true, distances must be manipulated around us all the time. Meaning nowhere is where it should be. Instead it’s where someone else wants it to be.”
The promise of a headache bloomed in my temples. “You’re saying maps are useless, and we’d have more luck getting around if we clicked our heels three times while saying, ‘There’s no place like the Halls of Summer?’”
A loose shrug rolled through his shoulders. “All we can do is try. We’re already in Summer. How far can the Halls be?”
The trek reminded me of summer vacations spent with Meemaw and Pawpaw. The sun beat down on us, and I turned a lovely shade of lobster. Humidity thickened the air, and sweat dampened our clothes. I stopped every so often and plucked a handful of interesting flowers or dug up what I hoped might be a medicinal root. Enzo was missing out on his big adventure, and I wanted to bring him souvenirs.
The thought of him left in the king’s clutches tightened my chest. We had done the right thing, but at what cost? Enzo was a powerful witch. I had to believe he could hold his own until we returned. He had known the risks, the same as Isaac, but still. He was a good man, or there was goodness in him. I wouldn’t be responsible for snuffing out that spark when Miguel hadn’t managed to in all the years of Enzo’s indenture. He deserved a chance to be his own master, and that meant I had to trust his will to live was at least as strong as my will for him to survive.
We would make this quick, and he would be okay. He had to be. Or else there would be hell to pay.
“See that pond?” He pointed to the distant horizon. “We should head there and refill our water bottles.”
We had drained all but one during our hike, and it wasn’t going to last much longer. Grateful for an excuse to rest my feet, I plopped down on the grass and watched him set to work filling the bottles, dropping purification tablets designed to neutralize magic, pathogens and microbial contamination into each before tightening them and repacking them. He sat beside me and stretched out his legs when he was done.
“It’ll be dark soon.” The afternoon had zipped past, which made me wonder if we had, for lack of a better word, wished away the distance between us and the Halls in exchange for daylight. “We should think about where we want to spend the night.”
“Tents are too conspicuous, so we each have a sleeping bag. We’ll have to find shelter and make camp there.”
Summer was the perfect, blue-sky snapshot taken straight off a postcard. Rolling fields of lush grass. Ponds and streams perfect for skinny-dipping. Bushes heavy with ripe fruits. Bountiful wildlife. All it needed was a dozen log cabins and a stable full of horses to be the perfect grounds for a kids’ camp.
“Where are all the fae?” We had yet to cross paths with any, at least as far as I was aware.
“Not sure,” said the resident expert. “There must be cities and towns. It can’t all be countryside.”
The gleam in his eye was one I recognized. “You want to search for them, don’t you?”
“It’s a chance to see where my people came from.” He didn’t bother denying what we both knew to be true. “It’s a temptation. A strong one.” He shot me a half smile. “But I can resist.”
“Maybe after…” I started, unsure how to finish. This wasn’t a sightseeing trip. There would be no time to waste once we secured Tiberius. Rilla and her forces would bear down on us all the way back to Winter, and that put us squarely in the king’s hands. From there we had to extricate Enzo and beat a hasty retreat home, where I would face yet another firing squad.
Thierry might wield more clout than I had given her credit for, but when it came to prison breaks, upper management got tetchy.
“Maybe.” He saved me from myself.
After plucking what resembled a dandelion splattered with ketchup and tucking it safely into my pack, we resumed our walk. A path had been cut into the countryside, making it easier to navigate and also more dangerous if we crossed paths with hostile fae. Summer was Seelie territory, and they were, in theory, the lesser of two evils, but I worried that the unique qualities making this trip possible might also appeal too much to the famously avaricious nature of the fae. Perhaps taking the high road was overrated. We might do better tomorrow by sacrificing comfort for safety by wading through the grasses.
I hope Faerie doesn’t have snakes. Or ticks.
“What do you think about holing up over there?” Isaac brought my attention to a copse of what might have been the distant cousin of weeping willow trees, had they mated with a briar patch. Sharp points stood in stark relief, crimson against the white bark. “Nothing will bother us in there.”
“How do we get in?” I had a few ideas, but all of them would end in blood and tears.
“Leave that to me.”
We reached our spiky sanctuary as night fell, and Isaac wasted no time performing a partial shift of his left hand. The skin grayed and hardened up to his elbow, and tiny flecks of mineral caught the moonlight. This form I had seen before. A monolith. He walked up to the lethal tendrils hanging in thick bunches from the trunk and gathered enough in one hand to make an opening. He gestured me forward, and I ducked under his arm. Flattened grass filled the small clearing. We weren’t the only ones who had thought this place made for a good sanctuary. I just hoped we were the first here tonight.
The magic-spiced air made scents difficult to parse, but the wolf assured me no one had been here for hours, and I trusted her senses over mine any day. We waited for Isaac to join us and then made camp. We rolled out sleeping bags and organized supplies for dinner. Isaac, being Isaac, had brought along an invention created with this trip in mind. It was a single burner like the kind found in small hotel room kitchenettes, but how it was powered, I had no idea and figured asking him to explain it would end with me blinking at him and him sighing. For both our sakes, I accepted its existence and didn’t complain when he used it to boil hot water to pour into our MREs.
I wrinkled my nose when he passed me my dinner. I couldn’t help it. It smelled more like preservatives than protein, and my stomach rebelled.
“You have to eat to keep up your strength.” Isaac didn’t take offense at my insult to his cooking. “This can’t be worse than the prison food, right?”
Hating to contradict him, I admitted, “Actually, the food was the best part. I got rare steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They hoped to bribe the wolf into good behavior, I think.” I frowned. “That or they didn’t realize wargs are omnivores. Either way, I didn’t complain.”
“It’s not steak, but I brought you something that might take the edge off.” He presented me with a foil packet. “I’ve never made jerky before, so if I screwed it up, I apologize.”
The scent of meat hit my nose, and my mouth watered. A growl rippled through the air, not from my throat but from my gut. I shoved the first stick into my mouth whole and swallowed before remembering I ought to chew in this form. Coughing didn’t slow me down as I popped in three more pieces before the wolf was sated enough to allow me to put up the rest for later.
“Does that mean it passed inspection?” His eyes were wider than usual. “I have more if you want it.”
The temptation to glut had me sawing my bottom lip over my teeth. “No. I shouldn’t. We might need it later.”
We tucked into our meals, and the nighttime sounds accompanied our chewing. Sharing a meal with him under the stars… It was nice. Peaceful. Comfortable. Since he had cooked, I cleaned up the resulting mess and performed a quick perimeter check.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” I asked when I noticed him rubbing his eyes.
“No time.” He shook his head. “Just don’t yawn, and I’ll be good for the first watch.”
“You’ve got to replenish your energy.” I tapped his shoulder, and he swayed. “You shifted into the frost giant aspect twice and the monolith just now. We can’t afford for you to burn out this early in the game.”
He grunted manly noises at me, a weak argument from a guy already half asleep now that he was sitting down in the dark with a belly full of food.
“Sleep.” I nudged him, and this time he reclined onto his sleeping bag. “Good boy.”
“Wake me if you need me.” He made it an order from behind closed eyes.
“You’re cute when you go all alpha,” I teased.
His lids cracked open. “You think I’m cute?”
Sighing heavily, I tossed a handful of grass at him. “Sleep.”
He did, and damn if he wasn’t smiling all the while.
Despite the exotic locale, first watch proved just as boring as it would have been back home. At least until a small throat cleared beyond the curtain of the willowy thorns. I inhaled, and the scent of fur and blood snapped my instincts on high alert.
“Might I claim sanctuary with you?” an equally tiny voice asked. “I am no threat to you, that I swear.”
A glimpse at Isaac proved he was out cold. He didn’t snore, he was too dignified for that, but his lips had parted in sleep. Tearing myself away from him, I approached the edge of our defenses and stared down into the dark. Warg eyesight was good, but it wasn’t good enough to pick the speaker from the night.
“Stand where I can see you,” I ordered softly.
A small creature hopped into a beam of moonlight, and my jaw ached as my canines pushed at my gums. It had been so long since I’d shifted, and the wolf wanted to hunt. The urge was almost maddening with easy prey in sight.
“Will this do, Sharpy?” he inquired.
Sharpy? I ran my tongue along the edges of my lengthened teeth and figured it was a fair enough nickname. “What are you?”
“A púca.” He twitched his nose at me. “What are you?”
Púca. Hmm. If memory served, they were a type of animalistic fae that changed into two or three predetermined shapes. All non-predatory. They were identifiable by the black fur they kept in all forms and the limited scope of their shifts.
“I’m a warg.”
“Never heard of it. You smell like a predator. Do you eat bunnies?”
“Yes.”
“Oh bother.” He worried his front paws together. “How about goats?”
My wolf’s palette was not a discerning one. “Pretty sure I would if the opportunity presented itself.”
“Horses?” His beady eyes brightened with hope. “How do you feel about those?”
“They make me nervous.” Horses got antsy around wolves, and their powerful hind legs meant wolves got twitchy around them too. “Trust me. A nervous warg is a bad thing.”
“I see. Well.” He limp-hopped back into the shadows. “I’m grateful you didn’t eat me.”
“Wait,” I called after him. “You smell like blood. What happened?”
“A trap.” He stretched to one side, exposing a raw wound down his hip. “I didn’t see it in time. I’ll be fine by morning, but the cats have already picked up my scent.”
“Cats,” I hissed. Those were worse than horses. “Are they danger
ous?”
“To you?” He twitched his nose at me. “I’d wager not. You smell odd. It’s likely they’ll avoid you. I’ve sought shelter here before. That’s the only reason I chanced it.”
The trampled grass proved more than one desperate creature had found refuge here. Who was I to turn away another in need? Besides, the worst that could happen was I’d fall asleep, shift and eat him. As long as the reverse wasn’t true, I felt safe offering him sanctuary.
“Can you get in by yourself?” I wasn’t keen on tangling with the thorns when I had avoided them earlier. “My friend helped me inside, but he’s sleeping.”
“Oh, I have a way in.” He gave a glad hop. “Do you mind?”
“Help yourself,” I said, charmed by his fluffiness.
Moments later, grass and dirt sprayed like confetti onto Isaac’s ankles, and the púca popped his head out of a hole I was pretty sure hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Are you sure you won’t eat me?” His pink nose quivered. “Not to brag, but I’m sure I would be quite delicious. There were a great many cats after me, you realize.”
“I’ll try my best to resist,” I vowed. “Hop over here, and let me take a look at your wound.”
“Is that a good idea? What with my blood and your sharp teeth?”
“Wargs are half human.” Then again, that might not reassure the little guy if he knew anything about humans. “It would take a few minutes for me to shift into a wolf. You’d be gone before that happened.”
“Ah. Yes.” Mollified that his murder would inconvenience me enough to give him a head start, he hopped on unsteady legs over to me. “It’s rather gruesome, isn’t it?”
I brushed his fur aside and examined the shallow scrape curving over his hip. There was just enough blood to tantalize a predator, but not enough that his life was in danger from the loss.
“Too bad Enzo isn’t here,” I murmured. “He’s got poultices for all occasions.”
“There’s no need to fuss,” he assured me. “I’ll heal by the morning if I live that long. I’m Leon by the way. Leon Aloysius Nodbottom.”
“I’m Dell Preston.” I shook the fluffy paw he offered. “Pleased to meet you.”
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