by Karen Lynch
I could feel all eyes on us as we walked away from the picnic. That was something I’d have to get used to if I wanted to be with Lukas, but it was a small price to pay.
Footsteps behind us signaled that Conlan and Faris had accompanied us. They stayed back out of earshot but close enough to react to any threat. Kaia sped past us, darting in and out of the tall grass and making me smile at her antics.
“It’s so peaceful by the river,” I said when we were out of sight of the group and all we could hear were birds and the water lapping at the bank. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
He took my hand, lacing our fingers together. “Then we’ll come back soon but without bringing half the court with us.”
I laughed at the trace of vexation in his voice. “Oh, come on. Roswen and her friends are fun. And we’re alone now.”
“Not quite.” Lukas changed course and pulled me down into a large patch of calaech flowers growing along the river. Before I could utter a word, we were lying on the mossy grass and hidden from sight. Above us, the reddish blooms looked like a ring of fire against the blue sky.
Lukas rose up over me and brushed away the hair that had fallen into my face. “Now, we are alone.”
My lips parted eagerly, and he did not make me wait. He brushed his mouth against mine once, twice, with agonizing slowness before he swept his tongue inside. I kissed him back fervidly as if it had been weeks, not hours, since we made out on his bed. My fingers raked through his hair, and the answering rumble in his chest made me want to roll him over and climb on top of him.
Lukas suddenly let out an “oof” and fell forward, crushing me with his weight. I wheezed as he pushed up on his hands and something landed on the ground behind him. Instead of the alarm I expected to see on his face, he was grinning.
Then he rolled off me to lie laughing in the grass with Kaia standing over him. He scratched the side of her neck, and that was all the invitation she needed to squeeze into the sliver of space between us.
I laughed and turned my face toward Lukas. “This is the third time someone has interrupted us today. Do you think the universe is sending us a message?”
“Yes. It’s telling us we need to get better at hiding.” He propped himself up on his elbow again and gave me a sensuous smile that promised no one would disturb us next time.
A thrill of anticipation went through me. It was probably for the best that Kaia had stopped us before things got more heated. Lukas and I couldn’t have gone any further out here in the open with Conlan and Faris standing guard. The thought of them knowing what we were doing in the grass sent heat straight to my cheeks.
Lukas reached toward me and plucked something from my hair. It was a calaech flower that had broken off its stem. Holding the base of the bloom, he glided the soft petals down the side of my face and across my lips. I breathed in the flower’s mild spicy fragrance, and lost myself in his warm blue eyes.
“Do you remember the morning we found you on North Brother Island?” he asked, surprising me with the shift in conversation.
I arched my eyebrows. “How could I forget?”
Lukas’s eyes took on a faraway look. “When Faolin told me you were one of two hunters presumed drowned after a kelpie hunt, it felt like he had punched me in the stomach. I convinced myself it was guilt for not repaying you after you had warned us of the assassination plot. After we found you, I told myself my debt to you was repaid.
“Then the men attacked you in your apartment the following night, and I wanted to kill them for hurting you. I could no longer deny that I cared about you. Somehow, you had slipped beneath my defenses, and I never saw it coming.”
I started to speak, but he pressed a finger to my lips.
“You didn’t want to become Fae. It killed me to know you were hurting and that I couldn’t go to you after the conversion. But at the same time, I was selfishly happy because I wouldn’t have to give you up. I brought you to Unseelie, but I allowed my father and Faerie’s problems to keep us apart. I won’t do that again.”
My throat tightened, and the only response I could come up with was, “Good.”
He smiled. “In two weeks, my father and I will go to Seelie to continue the discussions about the barrier. I’ll have work to do here until then, but I intend to spend part of every day with you. We can do whatever you want, but I am going to court you as you deserve.”
“Is Fae courting the same as dating?” I asked a little breathlessly.
He tucked the flower he was holding into my hair. “Yes.”
I bit my lip as my stomach fluttered nervously. When I opened my mouth, I couldn’t stop the words that tumbled from me. “Does this make you my boyfriend? I’ve dated, but I’ve never had a boyfriend. Are boyfriends and girlfriends even a thing in Faerie?” My face flamed, and I clamped my mouth shut to stop my rambling.
Chuckling, he dipped his head to kiss me long and slow until I forgot to be embarrassed. When we finally came up for air, he said, “I am whatever you want me to be.”
“Vaerik,” Faris called, and there was no mistaking the laughter in his voice. It wasn’t hard to guess what we were doing down here.
“Yes?” Lukas answered.
“There is a storm coming. We should head back before it hits.”
I shot up to a sitting position. “A storm?”
“Not the kind you think. It’s a rain storm.” Lukas got to his feet unhurriedly and held out his hand to me.
“Oh.” I took his hand, feeling foolish. Of course, they got rain here.
Lukas pulled me up and smirked as he brushed grass and dirt off me. He took my hand, and we walked to Faris and Conlan, who smiled knowingly at us.
“Did you enjoy your walk?” Conlan asked me when we drew near.
I smiled back. “Immensely.”
We headed toward the group, and Lukas pointed out the dark clouds in the distance. “It’s coming in from the ocean, and those storms bring the most rain. They usually hang around for a day or two and give the valley a good soaking.”
Roswen and the others had also seen the approaching storm. They were packed up and ready to leave by the time we returned. Lukas’s sister took in our joined hands and practically beamed at us. His father would not be so happy about us dating, but at least, one member of his family approved.
Tennin looked pleased as well, and he winked at me as he took his reins from one of the grooms. A few feet from him, Rashari stared at us with a sour expression. Whatever she’d hoped to accomplish today had not gone as she had planned. I was not at all sorry to be the cause of her disappointment.
Lukas mounted and lifted me to sit in front of him again. I leaned back against his chest, and it felt more intimate after our time alone. I sighed happily as we started home, neither of us feeling the need to fill the silence between us.
We were still a few miles from the mountain when the first raindrop hit my face. Lukas spurred his tarran into a gallop, but there was no outrunning the storm. We were both soaked to the skin and laughing by the time we made it home.
He dismounted and helped me down. “I’m sorry the rain ruined our outing,” he said as he brushed dripping hair off my face.
“It didn’t.” I smiled up at him. “It was a perfect day.”
“Was? It’s not over yet.” He took my arm, and we headed inside. “Dinner tonight?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. I think I’m having dinner with my boyfriend.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Yes, you are.”
Chapter 17
I looked down at Gus’s huge shadow on the water and sighed. I never thought I’d get sick of seeing the ocean, but this flight had proven me wrong. We’d left the island hours ago, and there was still no land in sight.
Closing my eyes, I focused on much more pleasant thoughts, most of them involving Lukas. The last two weeks with him had been some of the happiest of my life. We’d spent time together every day doing whatever I wanted, whether it was training, visiting town, teac
hing me to ride, or talking. He had refused to attend more of his father’s special dinners, opting to dine alone with me in my quarters. And we ended each night making out on my couch until I thought I would combust.
While Lukas’s kisses and touches left no doubt how much he wanted me, he had taken it no further than that since the morning after the royal dinner. He kept our alone time out of the bedroom, and to my eternal frustration, he went back to his quarters at the end of the night.
I wondered if this was how Fae courting worked, but I didn’t have anyone to ask. Though Roswen and I were friends, there was no way I was talking to her about me wanting to have sex with her brother. I missed Violet so much, and I wished I could talk to her about this. She would know what to do.
Lukas, the king, and the Unseelie contingent had left yesterday for the meetings in Seelie. That gave me two days to figure out how to talk to him about us when he got back. If he was waiting until I was ready for sex, I had to let him know I was. Or I could jump him and show him what I wanted. I smiled to myself. The latter option sounded a lot more fun.
Gus growled, and I opened my eyes to stare at the horizon. I squinted. Was that land? Please, let it be land.
Last night as I was having my first solo dinner in weeks, Aedhna had come to tell me that today, I would take the ke’tain to the Mab desert, which happened to be on the other side of the Ellyon Sea.
Fortunately, I had a drakkan who could make the trip in six hours instead of the three days it would take by ship. Unfortunately, flying in the claws of a drakkan wasn’t the most comfortable way to travel, and my whole body felt cramped from being in the same position for so long.
Half an hour later, I could make out a white land mass in the distance. At first, it looked like we were flying toward a glacier, but as the details became clearer, I realized it was huge sand dunes.
It was another twenty minutes before we reached the coastline where the water was a pale aquamarine and waves rolled against a blindingly white beach. Vegetation here was sparse except for a few clumps of grass, and the wind felt hot against my face.
The flat beach soon gave way to the desert dunes that stretched as far as the eye could see. The air turned arid and gritty, and I had to close my watery eyes against the glare of the sun off the white sand. Gus had known where to take us in the mountains, so I’d have to trust him to find the hidden ke’tain in this vast desert.
We flew for another hour before we came to a small canyon. On the canyon floor, dozens of columns of white rock rose from the ground. There was no pattern or uniformity of size to the columns, so I assumed they were natural formations. Aside from some spiny bushes, there were no signs of life in the canyon.
Gus circled the columns and found a space big enough for him to set down. We had been in the air so long I felt the landing in every one of my stiff joints. He put me down, and I fell back on the sand. I was going to need a few minutes to recover before I got to work.
“Ouch!” I scrambled to my feet and touched the back of my neck, which felt like I’d pressed a hot flat iron against it. The ground was so hot it had burned me. I crouched and held my hand a few inches above the sand. It was like hovering over a hot stove.
Standing, I surveyed my inhospitable surroundings. Aedhna sure knew how to pick places to hide her ke’tains. Now I needed to find the one I was looking for.
I walked to the nearest column. It was roughly four feet in diameter, and up close, it appeared to be made of some kind of porous rock with tiny holes in the surface. Circling it, I discovered a hole on the other side big enough for me to fit into. A faint clicking came from inside, and I took a step closer to listen.
Something moved inside the column, and I heard the unmistakable sound of claws on stone. I jumped back, my heart racing. No way was I going in there. I’d seen Pitch Black, and it had not ended well for those people.
I walked among the columns, making sure not to get too close to any of them. Once again, Aedhna had not been specific about the exact location of the ke’tain. All she’d said was that I would know when I was close to it. So far, my spidey–sense was not tingling.
I approached the two biggest columns, which I had been avoiding because they also had big holes in them. I had no desire to see what lived inside those creepy dark holes.
Keeping a wide berth, I studied the columns. There was nothing to mark them as special, but then Aedhna wouldn’t have made it easy to find the ke’tain. I’d hoped the ke’tain I carried would be drawn to the other one like it had in the cave, but so far, it wasn’t picking up anything. I was going to have to get closer.
I stepped up to the columns, trying to block out the scratching sounds echoing from the holes. The moment I stood directly between the columns, the ke’tain in my pocket began to vibrate softly. I didn’t move as the ground rumbled and the sand in front of me sank, slowly revealing a set of stone steps disappearing into darkness.
I pulled out a laevik crystal and went down the first three steps with it held before me. It illuminated the bottom of the stairs and the floor of what looked like a tunnel.
She wouldn’t have sent me here if it was too dangerous, I reminded myself. She needed me to do this for her to save Faerie, and I still had one more after today. With that encouraging thought, I descended the rest of the stairs.
The first thing I noticed when I reached the bottom was the drop in temperature. It was over one hundred degrees outside, but down here, it felt about thirty degrees cooler. The second thing I noticed was that, unlike the tunnel in the mountain cave, this one was not a natural structure. It was also much shorter. After ten feet, it opened into a low round room with a smooth stone floor.
The room was about fifteen feet in diameter with a small, plain circle etched into the center of the stone floor that was covered in a fine layer of sand. I stepped inside the room, and my hair lifted, crackling from the static electricity in the air. I was definitely in the right place.
I took the ke’tain from my pocket and walked to the center of the room. After the first step, the bottoms of my feet started to tingle, and by the time I reached the circle, the tingling had become a serious case of pins and needles that had spread to my calves.
I studied the area inside the circle and blew away the sand. It was roughly a foot wide and bore no special markings. There hadn’t been any markings in the cave either, though. I held the ke’tain over it, and the stone began to pulse with energy like it had last time. Leaning down, I laid it in the center of the circle. The moment it touched the floor, I felt the energy signature of the other ke’tain, and my excitement built as I straightened and waited for the hidden ke’tain to appear.
The floor inside the circle rippled once and went still. I stared at it. Had I done something wrong?
Crouching, I reached for the ke’tain. The instant my fingers made contact, the floor began to move again and lose its color. When it was fully translucent, it was like looking into a deep well with a faint purple light at the bottom. The stone under my hand quivered, and then it sank into the floor.
“What the…?” I watched in confusion as it slowly moved toward the purple glow. Was it supposed to do that? In the cave, the other ke’tain had come to me.
The ke’tain reached the bottom and began to glow. Seconds later, a blast of energy came from the floor, knocking me back on my ass. My body went rigid as the power surged through me, and for one terrifying moment, I thought my heart would stop under the onslaught.
When I thought I couldn’t take it a second longer, the power receded, leaving me limp and gasping on the floor. I wasn’t sure how long I lay there before I was able to move. My limbs felt rubbery when I rolled over and pushed up onto my hands and knees. I crawled to the circle and looked down at the pulsing lights of the two ke’tains. There was nothing left for me to do but wait.
It took half an hour for me to regain the full use of my legs. I paced the room, frequently stopping to look in on the ke’tains. A few times, when I got close to th
e walls, I heard faint scratching inside them. I shuddered and tried not to think of what was living in there.
Looking for a distraction, I walked to a section of the floor where my boots hadn’t scuffed the layer of sand. Grinning, I bent and wrote Jesse was here in English in the sand. If someone ever found this place many eons from now, my message would give them a mystery to puzzle over.
After what felt like hours, the blue ke’tain separated from the purple one and rose to the surface. I reached for it hesitantly and cried out when it shocked me. The pain didn’t last long, but it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I tucked the stone away in its pouch, wondering if I would be able to touch it at all when it reached full strength.
I picked up the laevik crystal I had dropped when I’d fallen and walked through the tunnel. At the base of the stairs, I spotted a narrow crevice in the wall at eye level, and I held the crystal up to it. Call it morbid curiosity or the academic in me, but I would never come back to this place and have a chance to see what kind of creature could live in this hostile ecosystem.
I let out a small scream when a black claw shot out of the crevice. It looked like a crab claw, and it made clicking sounds as it grabbed at me. My curiosity fled, and so did I. I sped up the stairs and back into the world of blinding sun and suffocating heat.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I yelled as I ran to Gus.
We were in the air, seconds later, and rising from the canyon. My heart was still pounding when he set off across the desert toward the ocean.
Less than ten minutes into the flight, I detected a faint rumbling sound over the flap of wings. I craned my neck to look around us, but all I saw was sand. Tucked against Gus’s belly, I couldn’t see much of the sky.
Gus dived suddenly, and my stomach lurched. The ground came up to meet us, and I squeezed my eyes shut for the impact. The crash never came, but he touched down a little less smoothly than normal.
He set me on the hot sand, and I backed up as he began digging. His strange behavior alarmed me, and I turned in a circle to see what could have caused it.