Idris touched her elbow lightly. “Are you okay, Flint?”
A flash of warmth traveled up the crook of her elbow, and she had to jerk her arm away. She tried to do it discreetly, but there was nothing really discreet about yanking back from someone.
He frowned.
“I’m… I’m fine. Just got a weird—” Yeah, she wasn’t finishing that thought. Shaking her head, she gave him a weak smile, laughed it off, and rubbed her forehead. “I’m hungry, haven’t eaten for hours. And I have to find my friend.”
“The darkness?”
She sucked in a sharp breath and almost grabbed his hand with joy until she remembered she really didn’t like what happened to her when he touched her. “You’ve seen him? My Abel?”
“Your Abel?” He cocked his head. His mannerisms sort of reminded her of the bird skulls around his neck. “It is a human?”
Biting the corner of her lip, heart racing nearly out of control with excitement, she nodded. “Sort of. He’s like me. Human but more.”
He blinked, and the glow of his eyes emanated warmth. He had such pretty eyes. Deep, penetrating, and probing… Like I could tell him anything…
Alarms went off like crazy inside her, and she growled as a rising thrum of anger suffused her limbs, causing her robes to start to shudder from an unseen wind. He was moving inside her again, that strange tug, the weird connection she’d sensed earlier.
“What are you doing to me?” She took a giant step back and held out one rose-tipped hand. Her nails now looked more like thorns than claws, and the air smelled of flowers.
Kestrel whipped back around and the knives he’d had aimed at her earlier were back again.
“Stand down, mutt.”
She snarled as a rumble tore through her middle and lightning sparked from her own flesh. The hall was empty save for them and a spreading black cloud of darkness that rumbled menacingly with heavy rolls of thunder.
Idris held out his arm, not toward her, but at Kestrel. “Drop your knives. She will not harm me.” He didn’t turn to look at the other fae; his eyes stayed glued to hers. “She cannot.”
Flint jerked her gaze back toward his. “What have you done to me?” she asked again.
“What do you feel?” he asked her back. The cadence of his voice was gentle and soft.
She tapped her chest and it felt heavy. Because centered inside her she felt the pureness of Cain’s soul, but there was something else now and it was growing.
An awareness of something deep and penetrating and completely alien.
“There’s something in me.” She frowned. She didn’t want to say what she was about to say, but she had to say it. “You. I feel you.”
He nodded slowly. “You should feel me.”
“Why?”
It was Kestrel who spoke up. “Because he is your consort.”
56
Flint
“My what!” she shrieked, and now there was lightning in the clouds and it was sparking violently against the walls. But the stones were absorbing all the impact so that she didn’t even feel the sizzle or spark of its power dance along her flesh.
She’d read enough romance novels in her day to know that consort probably meant mate. Which was bad—it was really, really bad.
Rolling his eyes, Kestrel glared at Idris. “We do not have time for games. Get your ward under control before we speak to The Ciardah.”
“I am gonna rip your balls off for breakfast and feed them to Crystal if you don’t shut your mouth!” she shrieked at Beelzebub. She really, really hated him.
But from one blink to the next he was gone. Just poofed out of existence.
“What the hell is going on here?” She shook her head, denying what she was seeing. None of this was real. She’d hit her head hard. She was still stuck in the dirt. Abel had somehow escaped from his cage and had eaten her and now she was dead and in some crazy form of purgatory meant to make her go completely insane.
Dragons. Fae. Roses for nails… “Where are my ruby slippers?”
“What?” Idris frowned before latching onto her shoulders and shaking her gently. “Calm down, Flint.”
She whimpered.
And then she was ashamed she’d whimpered, because she wasn’t the whimpering type. She was the badass type who could scale a wall like a monkey and walk a tightrope blind and throw a wicked knife and grow vines from her own skin and…
“Is this real? Am I dreaming? Or is this real?” She couldn’t believe she’d actually asked that. Because what delusion would admit to being made up, right? She gave a strange sort of laugh, and wow, she was seriously about to lose it.
“Flint, you are a halfling, and it is no wonder that your mind is at war with itself. But this is real. I am real. As are you.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, she shivered, clutching her fingers tightly together. “I desperately need to believe that is true.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Look deeply at me, feel the connection. Ground yourself to this world and let go of the other or you shall surely lose yourself.”
She really didn’t want to touch him, but she couldn’t deny that the warmth of his touch was making her feel more centered again, less chaotic.
Frowning, she felt sick to the pit of her stomach. And not because it wasn’t working, but because it was. She really had no idea what was happening to her.
Idris glanced over his shoulder. “I feel The Ciardah’s call. You must go inside now, Princess.”
She was still so confused, still so—
“We will talk more. But not here. And not now. You must speak to your grandfather—”
Clenching her molars together, she shook her head. Every second she stayed there she felt weirder and weirder. Hot and cold. Fine and then very not fine.
His thumb rubbed gently across her bare arm, and she sucked in a sharp breath as a tidal wave of warmth suffused her limbs, making her feel boneless and peaceful and—
Flint shook her head sharply. “I love Cain, and I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but I can’t—”
She caught the merest flicker of a flinch before he said, “I will find you once you are finished within. Do me a favor, Princess.”
“Favor?” She wasn’t doing any favors for him. Whatever this place was, her bones felt like they were literally screaming inside her to run as far and as fast as possible. “I’m not going to do you any fa—”
He shook her just slightly. “Trust no one. There is none in this court you can trust.”
Hearing those words from a perfect stranger was like a fist to the gut. She was cold from head to toe and wanted to run away. Wanted to leave this place of nightmares and never come back.
But Abel, she needed to find Abel.
“Can I trust you?” Again, dumb question. Because who would admit to being untrustworthy? But there was something about Idris, something that called to her on a visceral level.
A feeling that was… right, and that Cain would totally go ballistic over if he knew.
Cain.
Just thinking about him brought a lump to her throat.
“You shouldn’t,” Idris admitted softly. “But I won’t hurt you, halfling. I can’t. Now go. And whatever you do, keep your eyes off the dark stone.”
“Dark stone?” she muttered to herself.
Then he stepped away from her, and that was when she spotted the doorway carved into the rock. The pulse of magic wasn’t just a spark; whatever was in the room radiated such intensity that she felt like a powder keg that only needed one spark to ignite.
Idris nodded and gently pushed her forward. “Do not let him tell you no. Remember who you are, what you can do, and that in this world there is always a way so long as the trade is of value.”
A wash of golden light encased him, and the only thing—person—in this place that she hadn’t felt completely terrified of vanished from her sight the same way Kestrel had.
But he’d left something behind. In her pa
lm rested the heavy weight of a golden ring. It was hammered gold, thick, and masculine-looking. Carved into it was the exact same type of filigree scrollwork that she’d seen on his body.
That ring did the same thing to her that looking into his eyes had done. She felt focused and grounded and much less manic.
Turning toward the door, she took a moment to take in three deep breaths. She still felt the prickles of fire running along the soles of her feet, still felt the beat of wild magic fluttering at her like the vengeful wings of a bladed raptor, but the whispering madness was gone.
She could think clearly.
Chin held high, Flint walked through the door. What she saw was wilder than anything her imagination could have conjured. Where once she’d been in a castle, now she was in a glen full of ancient oaks that towered into the nighttime sky like silent sentinels. Up ahead was a clearing lit only by the bright glow of moonlight. And falling from the heavens was a waterfall. The sound of that rushing water was like the sweetest symphony to her ears.
Slipping the ring on her thumb, she took the final steps toward a raised dais ahead of her. Rose vines crawled out from the ground beneath her feet.
The ground shook, big silvery veins of lightning ignited, and a floral-scented breeze whipped through the branches above, causing a cascade of golden leaves to rain down around her.
And then she was no longer alone. In the next bolt of lightning three figures appeared before her—two men, and one woman of such incomparable beauty that Flint wanted to cry to look upon her.
She was svelte and very tall for a woman, easily six feet, though she didn’t tower over the males beside her as they were both themselves very tall.
Silvery-blond hair fell in a lambent wash down to the backs of her knees. A crown of leaves rested upon her head, and poking up from them were twin horns covered in velvet.
She wore a sheer, buttery-yellow sleeveless gown that had a long slit up one thigh, and her eyes were the deep blue of the ocean.
It was obvious she was fae, but it was also obvious she was nothing like the kinds of fae she’d seen so far. She was light, and airy, and…
The names suddenly came to her. Flint was dark fae, which meant this woman was—
“You’re light court, aren’t you?”
The beautiful fae smiled, and Flint shivered. She remembered the stories Mother had read. Just because they were light didn’t make them any less threatening than the dark. In fact, sometimes the greatest evil was hidden behind a beautiful exterior.
One of the men beside her cleared his throat. Flint finally took notice of the men and frowned immediately. She recognized one of them.
Short brown hair with tricolored eyes and a steel-gray Armani suit. Devilishly handsome, but there was also something slightly sinister about him if she could just jog the memory loose about where she knew him from. She’d seen him once before…
Snapping her fingers, she gasped. “You’re Death.”
He was the man who’d led her grandmother to a chair in the hospital room when Flint had woken from her coma.
He grinned, showing off a set of pearly whites. Her heart fluttered, and it was all she could do not to take a giant step back. Just the idea that that man was literally the grim reaper gave her the willies big-time. It wasn’t that she hadn’t grown used to living around monsters, she had, but Death was in a totally different ballpark.
“How did you find me here? What are you doing here? You’re not fae.”
Snorting, he inhaled deeply. “I prefer to be called Dean. And you should know there are no boundaries I cannot cross. As to why I’m here”—he glanced at the final man—“ask your grandfather.”
Eyes widening, Flint turned to study the final newcomer. He looked nothing like the red-haired stud she’d seen in her vision.
The Ciardah was, well, there were no words to encompass the sheer magnitude of his presence.
Black-skinned—but not like human black—he was polished ebony. Like shadow that gleamed. His eyes were an electric shade of blue, and his hair was snow-white and fell as long as the light fae’s did, down to the back of his knees. In his hand he carried a gnarled wooden staff.
Drawing comfort from Idris’s ring and the vines slithering between her ankles, she gazed at the three of them and then bowed. Deeply.
Dean chuckled when she stood up. “What are you doing, girl?”
The way he said it, like she’d amused him, made her cheeks blaze scarlet. She knew she shouldn’t have bowed. She should have remained aloof like she’d been before. Somebody really needed to write that “how to be a good fae princess” manual already.
Deciding the best bet was to pretend like she wasn’t currently frazzled, she sniffed and shrugged. “Bowing. Seemed like the thing to do at the moment.”
The Ciardah—’cause there was no way she could ever think of someone like that as her grandfather—frowned deeply. “You never bow. You’ve the blood of the Royal House of Dragons running through your veins. They bow to you.”
Ouch. Snap. Already impressing ol’ Grandda. Not.
Curling her lip just slightly, she said, “Great. I’ll jot that down.”
She really shouldn’t act like a smart aleck right now, but this place had a knack for bringing out the worst in her.
“Look,” she huffed, “I’m here for one thing. To find my friend and go back home.”
“No,” The Ciardah intoned.
And really, intoned was totally the right verb ’cause when he’d spoken, the world had literally trembled beneath her feet. The winds had cried and the waters had roared.
Dude was megastrong. Like Superman-on-roids kind of powerful. Even her vines were responding to the power in his voice, dancing and curling their way toward him and away from her.
Traitors.
“Why no?” she persisted. “I’m not leaving here without him, and—”
“That’s sort of the point, girl.” Dean spoke up. “He doesn’t want you to go. Ever. Isn’t that right, Ciardah? But you broke the rules by bringing her here.”
Oh really?
Her brows shot high on her forehead, and the blossoms on the tips of her claws quivered. Those things were just so freaky.
The Ciardah gave Dean the type of withering sneer Flint had only ever seen Scarlett O’Hara perfect in Gone With the Wind. It was a killing type of stare, but Dean being Death and all, he merely grinned through it.
“He is right, Dark King,” the light fae said, and Flint quivered, tears instantly coming to her eyes. “The wrong must be righted.”
The sound of that woman’s voice was lethal. So beautiful and lovely and very, very dangerous to a frail psyche. Just the sound of her speaking had made Flint want to do whatever she had to in order to hear her speak again. Hurt somebody. Kill somebody…
What in the eff was wrong with this place? She rubbed her throbbing forehead. Why was everything so freaking intense?
“Ophelia speaks the truth, huntsman. You owe me big.” Dean nodded.
The Ciardah narrowed his eyes. “I care not for the politics of Earth. That is no concern of mine. But she is.”
Whoa, why had that statement just broken her out in a sudden rash of goose bumps? Flint had never been particularly superstitious, but Dad being Italian, she’d grown up hearing the stories of bad juju, and she was getting some pretty major bad juju now.
Dean smirked. “She is my responsibility. And you have no claim to her. Not now. Not ever.”
“We’ll see.” The Ciardah turned, and the full impact of his gaze slammed into Flint so that she felt like she was suffocating under the weight of it.
He moved his walking stick, and that’s when she noticed the dark stone nestled upon the tip of it. It looked like fire danced inside it. Instantly she recalled Idris’s warning and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Whose are you?” The Ciardah asked.
Her heart screamed at her to claim him as hers. To claim these people as hers. But the ring on her thumb blazed sud
denly with warmth and her brain was clear, focused, and centered.
“I am mine.” She forced the words past numbed lips, grateful to Idris for whatever it was he’d given her.
The Ciardah’s face was stoic as he lifted a brow and pulled his staff back. Flint wasn’t sure what it was he’d just done, or had attempted to do, but she was pretty sure it had involved that dark stone.
Dean, however, smirked. “Good girl, looking away.”
Bristling, Flint didn’t think before she reacted.
“You know.” She turned her eyes toward him. “Some might call you a little misogynistic toward women. I don’t need, nor do I want, your little ‘good girl’ pep talks.”
“Only a little?” He winked, lips twitching.
And though Flint hated being talked down to like she was little more than an annoying child, she found herself wanting to laugh at his irreverent attitude.
“So you see,” Ophelia said, and though the sound of her voice still brought tears to Flint’s eyes, she was at least a little more prepared for the mental strain it took to not crack beneath the weight of it, “she cannot be tricked into acquiescence. Now we will talk negotiations.”
So not to keep beating a dead horse here, but she was totally confused. Again.
“Okay. Stop.” She lifted her hands. “Will someone please stop talking in riddles around me and just tell me what’s going on?”
Ophelia nodded. “Princess Callisto—”
“Flint,” she automatically corrected. “My name’s Flint.”
The light fae nodded. “Flint then, you have been pulled into the fae realm by means of trickery.”
She looked at her dear ol’ grandda and snorted. “You don’t say.” She thought of the voice that had screamed in her head to pull Abel beneath the earth to save him. “So who exactly was in my head? Because I was told Abel would get better below.”
Dean shook his head but tossed The Ciardah a knowing look. “The diplomatic answer is for me to say I don’t know, though I’m fairly certain that I do know. But that’s how things work here in Fae isn’t it, O Dark One?”
The Ciardah remained silent. Yeah, Flint would totally bet her last dollar the dude knew who, why, when, where, and how. But good luck getting him to admit to it her if he’d even refused to answer Death.
The Complete Tempted Series Page 65