Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here

by Christine Warren

  Danice jerked herself from his grip and glared at him. “You’re the one who told me you thought she might be being held captive here! When I heard that, was I supposed to throw up my hands and walk away? Oh sorry, but she’s out of my jurisdiction now. She’s someone else’s problem!”

  Mac tried to think of something to say, but it seemed like every time he opened his mouth, exactly the wrong thing came out, at least by Danice’s standards. Before he could decide on the safest tactic, she closed her eyes and blew out a huge breath, her shoulders collapsing as the tension drained out of her.

  “You know what? I’m sorry,” she said, hitching her blanket up higher and offering him a wry half smile. “I shouldn’t be yelling at you. Especially since I’m not really sure why I am. You haven’t done anything to deserve it. It—” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m just going to put it down to stress. I think I’m under just a little too much stress right now.”

  Mac saw the confusion and embarrassment warring in her eyes and felt himself melt. He wanted to be able to wrap her up in tissue paper and put her on a shelf somewhere to keep her safe. And he admired the hell out of the fact that he knew if he tried, she’d knee him in the balls and take care of things her own damned self. That was just the woman Danice was. It was the reason why he knew very well she needed to come along with him to look for Rosemary. The essence of Danice would allow nothing less.

  “Don’t apologize,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her and snuggling her close. “I’m the one who started the argument, and I don’t know what I was thinking. You’re a big girl. You’re more than capable of deciding what makes you happy and going out and getting it. So, I’m sorry, too.”

  He took it as evidence of how stressed out Danice really was that she was sniffling when she pulled back to smile up at him. The smile she gave him sagged a little in one corner, but it was a smile. He’d take it.

  “I didn’t think I’d have any trouble with this,” she confessed, leaning her head against his shoulder and sneaking her arms around his back. “I told myself it was nothing. After all, I knew about all this Others stuff; I’ve known for almost a year. If I could take vampires and werewolves and shapeshifters and all the rest of it, what did I have to be nervous about with some little ol’ fairies?” She huffed a kind of a half laugh. “Then I crawled through that itty, bitty space, got taken captive by a horde of supermodels with bad attitudes, got magically forced into sleep, fell into bed with a man I’ve known for a week, and woke up to find myself face-to-face with his estranged mother. You know what, Mac? I think this particular mighty has finally done fallen.”

  Mac smoothed his hand over the tangle of her hair. He had a vague recollection of freeing it from its braids last night, and he loved the thick, heavy feel of it in his hands. He stroked it as he tried to digest being lumped in with the events that had set off her temper earlier.

  “I admit we haven’t known each other for a long time,” he finally said, “but I hope you’re not feeling all that bad about the falling-into-bed part. After all, you didn’t land alone. I fell right along with you.”

  She pulled back and smiled up at him. “Don’t worry, Mac. That particular fall was the one enjoyable part of this whole experience. I’m just—” She wrinkled her nose and made a face at herself. “I just still need a little time to process…everything.”

  He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Something inside him shifted in dissatisfaction with her answer. From the beginning, he’d acknowledged that this woman called to him in a way he’d never experienced before, but now he wondered if there might be even more to his feelings than that magnetic attraction. It had upset him to have her meet his mother, to see what kind of woman he had come from, to expose her to the Fae’s instinctive machinations. Would he have cared about that if he weren’t already a little…a little in love with this woman?

  And if that was the case, then why would he be satisfied with being the best part of a bad experience? He wouldn’t be. He would want to know that she felt the same way about him that he did about her. No way could he settle for any less.

  He smoothed the frown from his expression as he felt her shift and pull away from him.

  “You know what else I need right now?” she asked, her grin turning teasing. Mac shook his head. “A shower. I feel like a red-hot mess. Didn’t your mother say there was a bathroom around here?”

  Mac summoned a leer and grabbed one end of her sheet, tugging playfully. “Yes, but the Fae aren’t much for showers. They’re more a long, leisurely, sensual soak in the tub sort. Which I’ll be happy to demonstrate for you. Right this way, madam.”

  Danice laughed and hurried ahead of him through the door he indicated. Mac followed more slowly, forcing the uncertainties from his mind. At the moment, he would much rather concentrate on more pleasant thoughts.

  And, he decided, as he joined Danice in the bathing room and shut the door behind him, turning those very pleasant thoughts into even more pleasant actions.

  Nineteen

  If there was one area other than the law at which Danice excelled, it was the fine art of denial. Even she, however, had to strive for new heights of achievement in order to pretend that the events of the previous night and earlier that morning had not, in fact, actually happened. It took every ounce of her God-given talent, but she’d be damned if she didn’t pull it off.

  “This is what your mother considers suitable?” she asked Mac with a laugh after they were dressed and preparing to leave their room. She swept a hand over the flowing gown of blues and greens—accented with sapphires, if you could believe it—that Tyra had sent for her to wear during the day. Apparently, another outfit would be provided for the feast later that evening. “What does she think we have planned for today? Entertaining the sultan of Dubai?”

  Mac smoothed a self-conscious hand over his midnight-blue silk shirt and shrugged. “To my mother, these are probably considered what you wear to dig around in the garden. Down to earth has never been a phrase widely used to describe her.”

  Danice stifled a snort. “I’d never have guessed. And I suppose she goes hiking in these shoes.” She hitched up her skirts to admire the delicate silver slippers she wore to match.

  “If it ever occurred to her to go hiking, I have no doubt that’s exactly what she would wear.”

  She laughed. “By the way, we haven’t had time to sit down yet and go over our game plan.”

  “Game plan?”

  “Yeah, you know. How we’re going to go about finding out who hired you and seeing if he got someone else to bring Rosemary to him.” She made a face. “Somehow after our reception last night, I’m guessing just strolling up to people and asking if they’ve seen a stray human around—other than me—wouldn’t be the best strategy.”

  “Well, my original plan involved beating the information out of Quigley—”

  “Surprisingly, I’m no longer nearly as opposed to that idea as I suspect I would have been forty-eight hours ago.”

  “—but since that no longer appears to be possible, I’m afraid the choices become somewhat limited.”

  “In what way?”

  “You’re right about the fact that questioning random Fae would be more likely to get us thrown back into the dungeon than to further our investigations,” he said with a grimace. “The Fae are a suspicious lot, and the Unseelie Court are more suspicious than most. Probably because of all the intrigue and power grabbing that goes on around here. If word got back to the king that a changeling and a human were poking their noses into court business, we would be thinking positively if all we expected was incarceration and torture.”

  Danice winced. “Doesn’t sound like the king around here has much of a sense of humor.”

  “Oh, as much as your average serial killer, I think.”

  “Fun.”

  “Yeah, so canvassing the neighborhoods, so to speak, is out.”

  “Then what else can we try?”

  She coul
d practically see Mac wrestling with his answer, his reluctance to share the obvious idea.

  “Come on, spit it out. As long as it doesn’t involve locking me away somewhere safe while you beat your manly chest for clues, I promise to give it a fair hearing.”

  Mac winced. “It’s not that. It has nothing to do with you. I was just hoping not to have to go there.”

  “Where is there?”

  “I might not have grown up in Faerie, but I do have relatives here,” he admitted cautiously. “Not all of them are quite as bad as Tyra.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, there may be one or two willing to point us in the right direction without asking us to sign away our souls in exchange.”

  “Wow,” Danice breathed, studying his expression carefully. “You really don’t like these people much, do you?”

  “It’s not a matter of liking or disliking them,” he said. “The issue is that I don’t trust them.” He must have read the confusion in her face, because he sighed and seemed to brace himself for what he was about to say. “Look, the Fae are fundamentally different from humans. I don’t know if it’s a result of the immortality, or if it’s just some fatal design flaw, but they—most of them, anyway—they don’t think in human terms. With the Fae, right and wrong are not absolutes. There’s no black and white here. For them, everything is just one of a billion shades of gray. They don’t share that human sense of conscience.”

  “Are you telling me that these people are evil?” she asked, fighting back the welling panic. “That we just got ourselves trapped in some kind of devil’s lair?”

  “No, of course not. I never meant to make you think that. It’s not that they all go around looking to harm everyone they come across. It’s more like…” He paused and frowned thoughtfully. “It’s more like the Fae take self-interest to the next level. The Fae are just…inherently selfish. They judge the world by what it can give them, by how they can achieve pleasure, or status, or amusement. Especially here at the Winter Court. I’m not trying to tell you that everyone you meet here will be out to get you; just that they probably will all be out to help themselves first.”

  Danice opened her mouth to issue her usual smart-mouthed retort. Like how maybe she should give up her plans to build a vacation home here. Something stopped her, though. She looked into Mac’s face, and she could see his unease. She could see how uncomfortable it made him to tell her all this, and for the first time, she wondered about what it meant to him to be linked to this place by blood and nothing else.

  She tilted her head as she gazed up at him. “Is that what your mother is like?”

  He barked out a short laugh. “Oh, my mother is a prime example. She could be the poster child for the Fae sense of morality. But she’s not really important. I’m just telling you this so that you’ll understand that just because I introduce someone to you as family, it doesn’t mean that person will necessarily be on our side, okay? In Faerie, you always have to watch what you say, no matter who you’re talking to. Even if you think that person is your best friend.”

  Danice shrugged and reached out to take his hand, the first time she’d reached out to him since they got to this mixed-up place. She laced their fingers together and smiled up at him, letting the tiniest fraction of her feelings for him—the ones she refused to allow herself to think about—to shine through.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I promise that the only person I’ll trust here in Faerie is you.”

  He raised her hand to his lips. “I think I’m going to be glad that you’ve decided to trust me at all.”

  “I’ve always trusted you,” she blurted out, surprised to find it felt like the truth. She hadn’t realized that over the past few days, she’d come to rely on Mac completely, for everything from advice about what to do next, to guidance on how to take those next steps. Admittedly, they might have ended up in a bit of a predicament here in Faerie, but even now, she knew in her bones that she could rely on him. That, even if he couldn’t get both of them out of the situation, he’d stay by her side for as long as she was in it. And really, what more could she ask of him? Of anyone?

  “I do trust you,” she repeated, more definitely this time. “So lead on, MacDuff. Which of your favorite aunts or uncles should we go see first?”

  Mac reached out to pull open the chamber door, and whatever he’d been about to suggest never managed to make it past his lips. And what made it past Danice’s lips really wasn’t something she felt comfortable sharing. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for shock, she liked to think she never would have said it at all.

  Standing just on the other side of the door, Morag and her Unmerry Women ranged across the exit in a wall of smug dislike. The head of the King’s Guard even had the audacity to shake her finger at the two of them like a scolding schoolmarm.

  “Ah-ah,” the Fae woman tutted. “Lady Tyra might have moved the two of you to a more comfortable room, but don’t mistake the fact that both of you are still prisoners of the king. At least until he says otherwise.”

  Danice frowned. “But Tyra arranged to have us released and to gain us the right to move around Faerie however we needed to accomplish our work.”

  Mac cursed beneath his breath. “Correction: She promised those things. That doesn’t mean she actually got them done. Or even remembered to bother trying.” He looked at Danice, his expression apologetic. “I’m sorry, but it would be just like her to decide how she wanted things to be and then completely forget to inform anyone else—like the king or the King’s Guard—of her plans.”

  “That’s hardly your fault,” she assured him, turning back to Morag. “But I’m sure there must be a way to clear this all up. I don’t think either of us is really enough of a threat to anyone to justify keeping us as prisoners.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not your decision, human.”

  To Danice, the guardswoman sounded about as regretful as Ted Bundy.

  “Then tell me whose decision it is, and we can go talk to them.”

  Morag’s smile widened. As a direct consequence, Danice’s stomach dropped. It was not a pleasant smile.

  “As it happens,” the Fae said, “that is precisely the reason we’re here. The Guard has come to escort you both to meet just the official with that kind of authority. You’ve been summoned to an audience.”

  Oh, yeah. Not pleasant didn’t even begin to cover this.

  Danice turned her head to look up at Mac. His face looked as if it had been sculpted in marble, all hard planes and sharp edges. If she had to make a wager at the moment, she would have laid every last cent in her bank accounts that his stomach had taken a similar plunge to hers. Both of them currently rested about one floor below the rest of their bodies.

  Even before she opened her mouth to ask the question, Danice feared she already knew the answer.

  “An audience with whom?”

  Mac’s voice answered, his tone tight and clipped as it formed exactly the words Danice had not wanted to hear.

  “With the king.”

  Twenty

  Having never before traveled with an armed guard, Danice could see that in other circumstances, she might have enjoyed the experience. In this case, she wanted to give every single one of said guards the wedgie of her life. Too bad they all carried enough weaponry to make rebel insurgents look like Girl Scouts.

  Mac had remained curiously silent on the trip through a mind-numbing number of identical corridors, his eyes straight ahead as he marched in time to their improvised chain-less gang. Again, Danice spent most of her time wishing she could read his mind. She had begun to understand that Mac’s veneer of charm really was a mask he wore to prevent anyone from seeing the deeper feelings that lay beneath. She knew now that when everything was normal, the man could chat like a magpie, but when he went silent, it really was time to worry.

  For her own part, Danice kept quiet by default. The only member of the present company she was willing to exchange more than bar
bed insults with was the one who’d clammed up tighter than the CIA, so instead she concentrated on taking in the scenery. Until the guards escorted them into the throne room. At that point, she simply lost the ability to speak.

  She had never seen anything like it.

  Hell, she’d never imagined anything like it, and Danice had a first-rate imagination.

  First of all, the room was enormous; the New York Giants could easily host home games inside the walls. With room for fans to gather and watch. Maybe even to tailgate. She would never have guessed at the size before the doors opened. After all, they looked a lot like the doors to the room Tyra had put her and Mac in, if more elaborately decorated. They stood about eight feet high in a corridor whose ceilings—like those of all the others they had passed through—went up maybe twelve to fifteen feet. Not until they stepped through and into the vast chamber did the space soar (easily two additional stories) into the air before losing itself in darkness. For all Danice knew, the thing could rise another ten stories above that. She could only say that the proportions of the place seemed designed to make anyone who entered it feel like an insignificant speck in a universe beyond ken.

  Which, she imagined, was precisely the idea.

  The room wasn’t just larger than Danice had expected, it also presented a vastly different image from what she had pictured. When Morag had informed them they would be having an audience with the king, she had pictured something out of Buckingham Palace, or maybe Versailles. (Okay, she’d never been to either of those places, but she’d seen pictures of the homes of royalty before, and they didn’t look like this.) She’d expected elaborate moldings and gilded furniture and portraits of ancestors so ugly that you wondered how they’d ever managed to reproduce. But the Unseelie throne room looked nothing like that.