Elf-Shot Book 6 in The Twilight Court Series

by Amy Sumida

  “Princess,” Hinrik bowed.

  “Your Highness,” Dagur bowed and added a secret smile.

  “Now, I have a warning of my own for all of you,” I said, startling them once more. “I was born a peacekeeper, but I was trained to be a killer. If war is what you want, then I will give it to you, and I will use the advantages human technology has given me. Things like infrared vision and thermal imaging cameras. I know your tricks, and there will be no hiding from my iron blade.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So that went well,” Killian mused as we trudged back to Hrafn.

  “I'm going to have some choice words for Danu when we get back to Fairy,” I growled.

  “I just don't understand,” Ainsley said. “She's supporting the elves and Moire? Why?”

  “That's only if what they said was true,” Conri grimaced. “The elves could be lying.”

  Cat huffed.

  “I don't think they were lying either, Cat,” I gave her a scratch. “I wish I knew why Danu thinks this war is necessary. She can't possibly agree with what Moire stands for.”

  “We will watch the elves for you, Princess Seren,” Soren stepped up to me. “If there is any change or movement, I will notify you.”

  “Thank you, General,” I shook his hand, and gave him my contact information. “I appreciate you coming out with us today.”

  “I'm just glad I could be here for you,” Soren smiled. “And I'd be happy to stand beside you again. I'm only a phone call away,” he took my hand and kissed it gallantly.

  “Yeah, we get it, you're a smooth-talking vampire,” Killian rolled his eyes. “But do you sparkle?”

  Soren ignored him.

  “I may take you up on that, General,” I said seriously. “The elves will be a difficult enemy to fight.”

  “We like difficult, don't we?” Soren turned to his team, and they all gave us toothy grins. “We're with you, Ambassador. But please just call me Soren.”

  “Thanks again, Soren.”

  I watched him return to his vehicle, but he didn't get in it right away. Instead, he spoke with his team, and a few of them walked back into the woods. Soren glanced back at me and winked. Then he got in his van, and the remaining biters drove away. My group got into our own van in silence. Hrafn stared at me expectantly.

  “We need a treat, Hrafn,” I said instead of giving him any information. “You think you can take us somewhere to relax for the day?”

  Hrafn smiled brightly, “I know just the place, Princess.”

  We went back to our hotel first, so I could check out. Then Hrafn drove us down the coast. We went quite a ways before suddenly veering inland. The area became rocky and black, almost alien. I began to wonder if Hrafn's idea of a treat was far different from mine. Then we pulled into the parking of the Blue Lagoon.

  For all of you unfamiliar with Iceland, the Blue Lagoon is a geothermal hot springs. It's a little touristy, but it was worth it. They stopped us at the entrance, demanding reservations and refusing to allow Cat inside, but Hrafn took care of it. Not only did we suddenly have passes, we also had complimentary spa treatments, and a night's stay in the nearby hotel. I lifted impressed brows at Hrafn.

  “Don't worry, Princess,” Hrafn smirked, “It's a minor enchantment, she won't be fairy-struck for long.”

  We were led into the lagoon by a private tour guide and shown first to a VIP lounge, where we were brought complimentary swimsuits and robes. Evidently, we'd been experiencing Iceland all wrong. This was the luxury side of Iceland, and as much as I like to think of myself as a tough extinguisher, everyone enjoys a bit of pampering. Otherwise, they wouldn't call it luxurious, they'd call it something else, like drudgery. Nobody likes to drudge.

  After we were clad in our swimsuits and fluffy robes, we were taken down to the hot springs; several pools of vivid, pale blue, steaming water, hazy with silica. Wooden platforms led out to the water, slatted and slick. A man-made waterfall poured into the pools from the surrounding black, rock basin. Bridges connected the group of pools, and there was even a bar. As soon as the steam slid over my skin, I began to relax.

  First, we all had massages. In the hot water. On floating mats. I may have told Hrafn I loved him. It became rather hard to concentrate. All that steam made the world surreal. My worry floated away with the tension in my muscles. I was starting to seriously consider buying a house in Iceland. A house as close to the Blue Lagoon as possible.

  “Princess Seren, you are the best princess in all the worlds,” Conri groaned through his deep tissue massage. “I'm so grateful you accepted me into your Guard.”

  “Thank Hrafn,” I moaned. “He's the one who brought us here.”

  “My pleasure,” Hrafn smiled from his nearby massage raft. “Literally.”

  “Why don't we live like this every day?” Killian trailed his hand through the water, then over to mine. I was so relaxed, I let him twine our fingers together. “You're royalty, you can live however you want, right? And you don't even need money, you can simply fairy-strike people.”

  “No, I have stupid things, like duty,” I whined.

  “I hate duty,” Killian grumbled.

  “No one likes doody,” Conri made a face. “For one thing, it stinks.”

  We giggled at Conri's joke because we were all so very happy. Hot water and a hard massage can do that to you. We lounged, and swam, and had mud fights with the healthy mud. Healthy mud! I even put it in my hair. And no one looked at us like we were crazy because they were doing the same damn thing. It was one of the best days of my life. Who knew Iceland could be so fun?

  Several hours later, we were all still cavorting in and around the springs, but somehow I found myself alone in a little nook with Killian.

  We were both tipsy from the numerous alcoholic beverages we'd consumed, which the heat and soaking had made even more powerful. I was in that hazy happiness of warm, loose limbs and languid drunkenness. I leaned back against the rocky edge, and let my body float out before me. My eyes drifted shut, but I knew Killian was close. So I wasn't surprised when his hand slid up my thigh.

  “Killian,” I murmured, and made a half-hearted attempt to push him away.

  Instead, his body replaced his hand, pushing in against me until I was between him and the smooth wall. Wet muscles are the best, aren't they? Hard and slick. I sighed and leaned into him. Thick fingertips glided across my collarbone, up my neck. I leaned back further, letting them trail over my jaw, and along my cheek. The pad of his thumb rubbed over my lips. I bit it. It was all the encouragement he needed. Killian moaned and pressed his lips to mine.

  The contact jerked me out of my languor. I pulled back, staring at him from only an inch away. What the hell was I doing?

  Killian was stunning in his human glamour, his eyes a vivid green. But I found that I missed the slit pupils, they had become a part of him for me. His wings were still there, a raised design under my roaming hands, and that was a little comforting. I tried to stop myself from touching him, but it was like stopping myself from finishing a hot fudge sundae. Impossible. I was just acting on autopilot.

  “Damn it all to hell,” I swore and pushed him away. “It shouldn't be so difficult to be faithful to someone I love.”

  “Raza's not the only one you love,” Killian put his hands gently on my hunched shoulders and started to massage them. “It's okay, Seren. I won't push anymore. I don't want to upset you or drive you away. It's just hard to resist touching you.”

  I looked over the serious lines of his face. Was it true? Did I love them all? Was that why I was so fickle? I thought of Raza and my blood raced. I loved him. I absolutely did. He was dangerous, beautiful, and just a little wicked. Yet making love to him could be surprisingly tender. Raza was amazing. But then there was Tiernan, and all the love we'd shared. He'd been a bastard, but I wasn't entirely innocent myself. And now he had recognized his mistake. He put himself between me and an arrow, and that wasn't even the first time Tiernan had saved my life. H
e faced the Sluagh with me... twice. One mistake didn't erase all the good Tiernan had done. It didn't destroy the love I had for him.

  But Killian had come late into this drama. He had no claim on my heart, no history that allowed for this intensity between us. Yet it was there. Killian had muscled his way into my life and then demanded that he be allowed to remain. He'd stood by me, fought for me, and never once faltered. I felt something for him, something beyond this draw of the flesh. I had to face that, and come to terms with what I wanted from him and Tiernan. Most importantly, I had to speak to Raza.

  “This goes no further,” I whispered. “Don't touch me again, Killian. Not unless Raza gives us his blessing. This is wrong right now, and I refuse to be wrong when it comes to Raza.”

  “But you will speak to him?” Killian asked.

  “I will try.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I was lying awake in my bed later that night, watching the lime-streaked sky through the window of my chic hotel room, when my cell phone rang. I always brought it with me when I traveled in HR. And frankly, it was a hell of a lot more convenient than scrying.

  “Yes?” I answered.

  “Ambassador, this is Councilman Murdock.”

  I sat up in bed.

  “Yes, Councilman?”

  “Could you come back to San Francisco? We've made some progress with the investigation.”

  “So have we,” I said. “We'll be there in a few hours.”

  “Oh, I was hoping you could travel over with twilight.”

  “Twilight is hours away, Councilman,” I explained. “We're in Iceland at the moment.”

  “Oh, I'm terribly sorry! It must be... oh hell, I don't know the time difference. It's 5:30 in the evening here.”

  I glanced at the bedside clock, “1:30 AM in Iceland,” I laughed. “The sun also rises later here, dawn was around 9:30 this morning. So don't expect us for another eight hours or so.”

  “Alright, thank you, Ambassador. My apologies again for waking you.”

  “It's fine. Good night, Councilman,” I hung up the phone and looked to Cat. She had lifted her head to listen to my conversation. “We leave in the morning, go back to sleep.”

  She laid her head back down but continued to watch me. I knew she could feel my unease. I had hoped to head back to Fairy right away. I needed to talk to Danu... and Raza. Though it was the later that kept me awake. I hadn't decided if I really wanted to bring this consort thing up with Raza. I mean, what would I say? 'Hey, honey, I know we've talked about this, and I said I didn't want to, but now I think I want to sleep with more men.' Yeah, that didn't sound so good. How did you bring up polyamory delicately? To a possessive dragon-djinn, no less?

  I tossed and turned, trying to get past my moral hangups to the truth beneath. Was this right? Or was I letting my desires seduce me into doing something that would hurt the man I loved? Was it fair to Raza? I wasn't about to give him the same kind of leeway. That didn't seem fair to me. Ironically, a lot of fairy rules weren't fair. One of them concerned the consorts of queens. Fairies had a pretty open view on sex and relationships. Pretty much anything goes as long as everyone is consenting. Except for royals. When royalty married, the king gave up his right to have consorts. The queen could have as many as she liked, so long as her husband approved, but not the king. Why not? Children.

  You knew, with absolute certainty, that any child born of a woman was hers. Yes, there were several ways to determine paternity, but they'd been falsified in the past... and had led to war. So now the rule was, queens only. Unless you felt the Call of Danu, which always resulted in a child, and therefore, the paternity wasn't in question. I may not be a queen, but I was a princess, and that was nearly as good. My children would be heirs to a throne.

  Anyway, it made the issue of Raza wanting the same freedom moot. He couldn't have it. Period. That didn't stop me from feeling like I was trying to get away with something though. And what would Raza think? What would he feel when I told him? The thought of hurting him made my stomach twist. But the thought of never being with Tiernan again... and never being with Killian ever... well those didn't feel so great either.

  “Goddess damn it all!” I snarled and woke Cat, who had just started to fall back asleep.

  She stared at me with obvious puka annoyance.

  “Well, what do you think I should do?” I grumbled. “I bet you don't have these problems.”

  Cat huffed a lock of fur out of her face, and tried, once again, to get to sleep.

  “That's what I thought.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  At dawn, we said goodbye to Hrafn, thanking him for our mini-vacay, then we twilighted over to the San Francisco Council House. They were waiting for us in the Council chambers, and this time there was enough room for my reduced Star's Guard to join us.

  “Tell me,” I said as I took a seat.

  That's when Tiernan and Bress walked in.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” I asked them.

  “I called them in, Ambassador,” Councilman Murdock said. “I also scried King Raza, but he said he trusts you to handle the situation.”

  “He's good like that,” I continued to stare at Tiernan.

  Tiernan looked completely healed. He should be, there were healers in Fairy who could bring you back from Death's door without even a bruise on your knuckles to show that you had knocked. Tiernan was dressed in human clothes, as was Bress and the rest of my Guard, and he looked amazing in them. That wasn't surprising either, Tiernan looked amazing in everything, and in nothing at all. What surprised me was the way he stared at me like there was no one else in the room... and I was wearing nothing.

  “Your father sends his love,” Bress said into the awkward silence.

  “Thank you, Cousin,” I waved a hand to some empty seats at the table. “Please, join us.”

  Bress nodded and sat, but Tiernan took up a position directly behind my chair. The chairs to either side of me were already taken by Killian and Conri, and I guess Tiernan didn't want to sit further down the table. He crossed his arms and looked to Murdock. Cat got up to whine at Tiernan until he relaxed enough to pet her. Then she plopped on the ground between us, making it clear that she considered herself to be my guardian first and foremost. Tiernan gave her a little smile.

  “Now that we're all here,” Murdock sat, “we can get to it. I don't want to waste any time. I know how important a fresh scene is when using psychometry.”

  Killian perked up, “You have someplace for me to investigate?”

  “Yes, but let me explain what we've discovered first,” Murdock held up a hand.

  “Of course,” Killian said. “Sorry for the interruption.”

  “We did a background check on the human who was elf-shot,” Murdock waved away Killian's apology. “And we found something suspicious, so we delved deeper.”

  The human council members were all staring at me with grim countenances. All except for Councilman Simmel, of course. He gave me a wink and a wave.

  “He was a weaponsmith,” Murdock went on. “Not exactly a common profession.”

  “He actually forged weapons?” I asked.

  “Swords and axes and stuff?” Killian added.

  “Yes,” Murdock nodded. “And arrows.”

  We all went still.

  “Fuck!” Killian cursed.

  “What sort of arrows?” Tiernan asked in a deadly voice.

  “Now that is the correct question to ask, Lord Hunter,” Karmen set his sharp stare on Tiernan. “Well done. See me after the meeting for your prize.”

  “Iron arrows,” Murdock dropped the bomb, and every fairy in the room gasped. “He was one of our suppliers. We go through intermediaries, so we didn't catch on to his identity at first. Mr. Morris supplied us with an assortment of iron weapons, including arrows, though that was rare. Extinguishers usually deal with fairies one-on-one. We haven't been to war in centuries, and arrows are range weapons.”

  “So Morr
is was targeted on purpose,” Killian said.

  “It would seem so,” Murdock agreed. “But we haven't found any connection to the previous victims. They may have simply been killed to mask the reason for the attack on Mr. Morris.”

  I heard what Murdock was saying, but it was background noise to my own thoughts. I knew about extinguisher weapons because I'd been an extinguisher. What I was processing was something that had never occurred to me; the possibility that an extinguisher weapon could be used by a fairy.

  “It's the perfect weapon for one fairy to use against another,” I said softly.

  My voice may have been quiet, but everyone heard me. The fairies all stared at me in horror. I looked to them as Murdock hung his head. He already knew what I was about to say.

  “The shaft can be made of aluminum,” I explained, “completely safe for a fairy to handle. If used carefully, the arrowhead need never be touched. And there are crossbows now which can shoot an arrow with nearly the same strength and accuracy of a gun.”

  “And they can be fired rapidly,” Murdock added. “It's basically a bullet that can kill fairies, and be used by them.”

  “I don't know why the extinguishers don't carry them,” Councilman Ray Teagan muttered.

  “Moron,” Karmen coughed.

  “Teagan,” Murdock growled. “I just said we-”

  “No, I'd like to answer him, Councilman Murdock,” I held out my hand. “I believe I'm the only one in the room who has first-hand knowledge of being an extinguisher.”

  “Please, by all means, Princess,” Murdock smirked.

  He'd seen the Seren show before. So had Teagan, for that matter. He should have known better than to buy another ticket.

  “The reason why extinguishers don't carry these 'fairy guns',” I said coolly to Teagan, “is because we are not assassins. We do not take down a target from a distance. When we're given an extinguishment order, we approach the fairy and inform them of their crimes first. They're given the opportunity to dispute the charges, and in some cases, the order is reevaluated.”