His gaze shuttered.
“You wanted rules? Fine, I’m making one. One of ‘ours,’ which means we both obey it. Full disclosure or don’t bloody well interfere in my life. Don’t even try to be a part of it. Don’t you think,” I threw his own words back at him, “it’s time we cut everything loose? I might be gone soon. Soaring around in space. A Hunter. You might never see me again. I bet then you’ll be sorry you didn’t talk to me.” I didn’t say, I bet then you’ll be sorry you went away for two years and wasted them. But I wanted to. Except people have to want to stay with you and he clearly hadn’t.
He jerked and snarled, “I’ll bloody well be sorry I didn’t do more than that with you, Dani. I wanted to make love to you. I wanted to fuck you, I wanted to cut loose with you like I’ve never been able to cut loose with a woman in my entire existence. I wanted to explore every ounce of that brilliant mind and every inch of that powerful body of yours, learn your deepest desires, be the one to rock your goddamn world, watch the great Dani O’Malley abandon herself to passion, see her in the one place she’s never conflicted, and revel in being alive.”
Holy hell, he felt it, too.
“The Nine have no equals,” he said, eyes glittering with crimson fire. “We always hold back. An eternity of being careful. It’s not our nature to be restrained. Especially not when we fuck.”
I’d never thought about it that way. Like me, he could break people without even meaning to. Restrained sex: oxymoron any way you looked at it. To have so much inside you—all coiled up and ready to explode, waiting, always waiting for someone to come along who can see it, who can handle it, and never being able to let it out—I know what it feels like.
Pain.
A pain that, unlike the others I’ve mastered, I’ve never been able to figure out how to stop feeling. I don’t know that you can. It’s life trying to happen.
“A woman like you is a once-in-an-eternity opportunity. Every bloody one of us was waiting to see what you’d become when you grew up. I told you, you’re a fucking tsunami. I knew it even then. You didn’t smell like other people.”
The Nine had been watching me. Waiting to see what kind of woman I’d become.
“And Christ, you ran on pure adrenaline, unchecked aggression and sky-fucking-high dreams. The most fearless thing I’d ever seen. God damn it, Dani, everything I’ve done since the day I met you has been about keeping you alive. To never cage you or take away your choices, to see you rise, watch you become.”
“What? A bloody Hunter?” I demanded.
“I had no fucking idea that might happen,” he snarled. “If I’d known your hand had turned black, I would have factored that into my linchpin theories about you, and drawn conclusions sooner. It might have affected my actions, changed them. You withheld a critical piece of information.” He was angry about it, and not even trying to hide it, his face no longer cool and composed, but savage, fangs distending.
“As if you don’t all the time,” I flung, on the verge of vibrating, melting into the slipstream without even meaning to. Papers on his desk gusted, his hair ruffled.
“Breathe,” he ordered. “Get control of yourself.”
“Practice the preach. Your fangs are showing.” But I closed my eyes and took a moment to center myself. Then my eyes flew open and I said, “What the hell, Ryodan? What if I actually become a Hunter?” My voice broke on the last word, pain lacing it. Was I just one of those people who never got to belong? In this world but not of it? Never, ever once really of it?
He was silent a long moment, as if trying to decide what to say. A muscle worked in his jaw. Finally, he said carefully, “If you become a Hunter, perhaps you won’t care about this world, or those of us in it anymore. Perhaps it’s what you’re meant to be. Your journey takes you somewhere else.”
“You don’t believe in Fate,” I rejected flatly. “You believe in you.”
“Ah, Stardust, I’ve seen too many patterns unfold during my existence that hold a startling, cohesive symmetry. There’s a plan and it’s way the fuck bigger than you and me. The universe has an agenda. For a long time, everything I did was in defiance of it. Then I began trying to protect that agenda, so I could, at least, have some small say in the details.”
I said irritably, “I’d miss you. And I’d definitely still care about our world.” I love our world. It’s always my second priority. Survival is first.
“I’d like to believe that. But maybe some people are destined for larger things. And, according to you, you didn’t miss me at all for the past two years. I hardly see you missing me now, if you become something even less human.”
“Perhaps it’s not inevitable. Perhaps I can make it go away.” I ignored his other comments. I still didn’t know where he’d gone or why. And I was never telling him a single thing I missed about him until he told me that.
“Perhaps. Time will tell. In the meantime, once again, we’ve got a world to save. Perhaps we’ll need a Hunter to save it.”
“Perhaps,” I countered, “we’ll only need a little bit of a Hunter’s power. And perhaps, I can turn it off once we’ve fixed things, and be normal again.”
“ ‘Again’ implies you once were that way. You weren’t. And there’s nothing in this world you’d hate more than being normal.”
He was right about that. “What would you do, if you were me?”
“I’d keep an open mind, consider all possibilities. That’s all any of us can do. Life is a box you don’t get to open all at once. You can touch it, pick it up, shake it even, but you can only guess at the contents. There’s a hole in the top of the box where things come out, on their own timetable, on their own terms. You think you have things figured out,” he said, with a note of bitterness in his voice, “only to find you saw everything completely wrong, didn’t understand a bloody bit of it. So, you wait to see what pops out next. And you go on living in the meantime.”
Sound advice. Pretty much what I’d concluded, without the box metaphor. “What’s on the agenda today, boss?”
“Ryodan. Let’s just be you and me for a while. No role-playing, no superheroes. Just a man and a woman who admire each other and drive each other bugfuck crazy, spending time together. Let’s make that rule number two.”
“What’s rule number one and who gets to make it?” I demanded.
He met my gaze and held it a long moment. Behind those remote silver eyes, storms rushed and swirled. Immense, thunderous storms. He was upset. That worried me. One of my rules goes something like this: if an Unseelie prince says “Run,” run. Another is: if Ryodan looks upset, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
But me and him, we don’t do fear. We plunge back into our worlds, and wait for the next thing to pop out of the box. Prepared to face it.
“I’ll leave that one up to you,” he said finally. “You get to decide our number one rule.” His gaze added, Make it a good one. I’ll never break it.
We exchanged a smile then unlike any we’d shared before. An unguarded expression of warmth and respect.
Unfortunately, it did nothing at all to chase away the storms.
From either of our eyes.
A momentary lapse of reason that binds a life for life
CHRISTIAN’S CASTLE WAS…atmospheric, to say the least.
It sprawled atop a high cliff, towering over the vales below, affording a clear view of potential invaders. Though it was morning, not one speck of sunlight penetrated the bank of gloomy thunderclouds overhead. That smothering, low-hanging ceiling of slate stretched from horizon to horizon, as far as the eye could see. The only illumination was wan lightning that sizzled and crackled high above, causing the clouds to briefly flicker a slightly paler shade of depression.
The castle was vast, rambling across a mighty bluff, dropping sharply away on three sides. On the fourth, the wild, crashing sea slammed into the base
of the towering dark bluff.
The only way in was a winding path gouged into the side of the cliff. Once one topped that path, a long road with stone walls on each side led to a perimeter stone wall that enclosed the entire estate, broken only by a mighty drawbridge that was up and heavily barred. Then the winding streets of the keep proper began. Tall stone towers stretched up into the dense gray ceiling, vanishing within. The castle soared and ducked, towered then slumped to low garrisonlike buildings. A full two-thirds of it was crumbling, yielding to the passage of time. The remaining third had been restored.
The ocean frothed and foamed beyond it, crashing into rocks far below. The entire estate was a study in angry slates, broody grays, and dark, tension-filled shadows, broken only by that wan intermittent lightning flickering high above.
We landed atop a low turret and I moved away from him, hugging myself to stay warm, my hair whipping about my head in the wild salty breeze. “Why is it so cold and gloomy here?” I had to speak loudly to be heard over the wind. “Is it because of you?”
“Sean. We affect the climate with our mood. His mood has been foul for a long time. The sun hasn’t shone on my keep since a few weeks after his arrival. What grass remains for him to test himself on is pale and sparse. He said last week if he runs out of grass within my kingdom, he’s leaving.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “To go where?”
Christian shrugged. “I’ve no idea, lass, and he wouldn’t say. He’s not speaking to me right now. Perhaps into Faery, or the Unseelie kingdom, perhaps into the Silvers and beyond. We can’t lose him. We have to get him back somehow.” As my teeth began to chatter from the cold, he said, “But let’s get you inside, lass. It’s warm within. I’ll see you fed and set you on the path to Sean.”
* * *
π
I shivered as I picked my way up crumbling, dusty stone stairs. During a hasty meal of cheese and bread, Christian had told me a bit more about Sean, concluding with directions on how to find him. He felt it best I approach alone, as Sean could feel Christian as he drew near and grew even angrier. Then the bloody clouds consume the entire castle, inside and out, he’d told me. It’s not pleasant.
As I’d wandered the eccentric keep, crammed with towering stacks of ancient books and manuscripts, chests and bottles, Ryodan had texted repeatedly and I texted back, answering his questions about Dani, wanting desperately to call him and find out what was going on. But I had my own battle here, and from what Christian had told me, it was going to be a difficult if not terrifying one.
I paused to catch my breath before topping the last few rounds of the spiraling stone staircase. Sean had retreated to the ruined part of the castle, the far tower where, Christian told me, he was wont to loom, a brooding dark shadow, staring out over the sea.
Unlike the rest of the castle, which Christian kept toasty warm somehow, it was freezing here. I tugged the woolen throw Christian had given me more snugly around my shoulders as I finished my climb.
Then only a door remained between me and Sean.
Two long years plus change had passed since I’d last seen him.
I paused again and closed my eyes as Ryodan’s words from long ago floated up in my mind. Words I hadn’t heeded, and suddenly I was back in his office of glass, staring down at Sean, and Ryodan was saying, If you don’t tell Sean that Cruce is fucking you while you sleep, it will destroy what you have with him more certainly than any job in my club could. That, down there, he’d pointed to Sean serving a drink to a pretty, nearly naked Seelie, is a bump in the road, a test of temptation and fidelity. If your Sean loves you, he will pass it with flying colors. Cruce is a test of your fucking soul.
He’d also said: Your god may love soul mates but man does not. Such a couple is vulnerable, particularly if they are fool enough to let the world see how shiny and happy they are. Their risk rises tenfold during times of war. There are two courses a couple in such circumstances can chart: Go deep into the country and hide as far from humanity as possible, hoping like hell nobody finds them. Because the world will tear them apart. Or sink up to their necks in the stench and filth and corruption of their war-torn existence. See things for what they are. Drop your blinders and raise the sewer to eye level; admit you’re swimming in shit. If you don’t acknowledge the turd hurtling down the drain toward you, you can’t dodge it. You have to face every challenge together. Because the world will tear you apart.
Right on both counts, Ryodan, I thought with a sad smile. I should have listened. But I’d been ashamed. Afraid. It had been utterly against my will, but I’d enjoyed it. What does a woman do with that? I’d told myself over the years that it wasn’t my fault. I’d been used at the hands of the most powerful Fae prince in existence, who could make me think I was feeling anything. Still…the shame. I’d never wanted another man inside me but Sean. Yet I’d hungered for Cruce in a way I’d never hungered for Sean. Even if that was an illusion he’d forced upon me, I could still taste the memory of it. And I hated Cruce for that!
I knew why Sean was angry. I knew why he was bitter. We know each other’s every gesture, every twitch, pain, fear, hope, and dream. A deception lived and breathed between us, and it had taken on a dark, rapacious life of its own. If I was to have any hope at all of helping him become the man I believed he could be, he wasn’t the only one that needed to face his demons today.
Inhaling sharply, I squared my shoulders and pushed open the door, praying there was validity to the adage “and the truth will set you free.”
* * *
π
“Why have you come, Kat?” Sean said in a low, angry voice, without turning.
He stood on the far side of the circular stone chamber, framed in a tall, narrow opening cut into the stone, the wind gusting waist-length black hair around his body, ruffling the feathers of enormous raven wings. “Leave. Now. There’s nothing for you here.”
If I’d not seen Christian first, and felt his heart, Sean would have terrified me. My love was once a handsome, rugged fisherman, toiling on the ocean, having turned his muscled-from-pulling-nets-all-day back on the mighty, deadly O’Bannion clan. With his black hair, dark eyes, and quick, easy smiles, I’d learned to trust him in that frightened, wide-open state in which I’d spent my earliest years. Of all the people I’d met, his had been the only heart that rang true to me, void of complicity.
Despite his appearance, nearly identical to Christian and Cruce, he didn’t frighten me now. I could feel him, I was close enough. He was lost within, drifting in a land far more barren and wasted than what spread, so ugly and black, beyond these castle walls. His sociopathic cousin Rocky O’Bannion’s credo, inscribed on the back of a watch of gold and diamonds he always wore, had been: Isolate the mark. He’d sworn that every man and woman, regardless of education, pedigree, or wealth, would ultimately fall prey to it; that we couldn’t stand alone. Yet Sean had been perched in dangerous isolation for two years and hadn’t succumbed. That gave me hope. “I disagree,” I said, moving farther into the icy room. “You’re here.”
“I may be. But Sean is not,” he said bitterly. “He’s been gone a long time.”
“I don’t believe you.”
When he whirled in a storm of dark feathers and flashing, alien eyes, I inhaled sharply but stood my ground.
My love, I thought. Oh, my love, I’m so sorry.
Both born into powerful Irish crime families, we’d spent our entire lives running from the darkness of our own blood.
But the darkness had found him.
I hazed the vision of my eyes, the better to focus the gaze of my heart.
“Get out, Kat. I don’t want you here. You’re nothing to me,” he said coldly. “Less than nothing. And don’t bloody do that to me. You don’t want to feel it. Leave now and I’ll let you live.”
If I was nothing, why then was the image frozen in his heart, of the day I’d
insisted he accept me and my child without knowing? The day I’d erected an impenetrable wall between us and shut him out.
I blurted in a swift rush of words because I knew I’d never get it out otherwise that truth, that terrible, divisive truth that had been eating me alive inside, and cut the ties that bound us: “I lied, Sean. I lied to you. Cruce came to me while I slept. He raped me in my dreams. Rae might be his.” I began to weep the instant it was out, I felt as if an enormous pressure, constantly crushing me, had vanished from my soul. I wept with relief, I wept with sorrow. I wept with confliction because I love Rae. I love her with all my heart and she might be my enemy’s child. What do you do with that?
Sean jerked violently, shuddering from head to toe with the intensity of his emotion. Raven-veined ice exploded in the room, sheeting the floor, climbing the stone walls, dripping from the ceiling in dark crystal stalactites. His voice was deafening when he exploded, “Cruce raped—” He broke off, unable to finish the sentence, jerking violently, hands fisting. “That sonofabitch. That son of a fucking…” He trailed off, snarling, body straining from the effort to control himself.
With a mere emotion he’d turned the room into a cave of dark ice. I shivered, crying silently, but stood my ground. He wouldn’t ice me. Not my Sean.
“Fuck, Kat!” he cried then. “Fuck! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, voice breaking. “I wanted to tell you but I was so ashamed. And the longer I didn’t tell you, the longer it went on, the less possible it became.” I didn’t say that I felt complicit. I couldn’t begin to explain how trapped it had made me feel, not without telling him why. That I’d also felt pleasure from it. “You hadn’t begun to change. You were a man, he was a prince. How could you have battled Cruce? What if he’d killed you?”
“I thought she was Kasteo’s!” His voice broke. “I thought you cheated on me with one of the Nine!”
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