by D. D. Chance
“You speak as if you know her well.”
We rounded the corner, buffeted back by a stiff breeze, and a moment later, Celia stood before us, once more in human form.
“This way,” she directed, pointing toward a large building across the courtyard. “And another thing—while you’ve got the look of the lesser Fae, nobody’s gonna believe you’re Laram. You guys are way too high and mighty.”
“Well, we are the high Fae,” Niall pointed out, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Celia rolled her eyes. “Good for you. If you want to actually stay hidden, though, could you maybe take on the guise of a Seline cat, like me? I’m just saying, it’d be better if the guards didn’t realize that the divine king of the universe was in their midst. Cheaper, anyway.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “They would not dare to bargain with me. They wouldn’t be so stupid.”
“Yo, Riven District,” she shot right back. “This isn’t your realm. It’s not even the monster realm. It’s something a little twisted and shoved into the corner. I’d maybe not forget that, if I were you.”
Annoyance flashed at her warning, but I said nothing, because she was right. How much difficulty had I caused my people by not paying attention to what was going on in my own realm, somewhere other than on the battlefield? Why had I not kept greater tabs on what was going on in the realms adjacent to ours? I’d only come to power two years ago, granted, but there was work I could have done, steps I could have taken, if I had looked for them as opposed to simply fighting the next battle that presented itself.
“Here we go,” Celia muttered, and I focused on the building up ahead. It was fully lit, with guards stationed at the front doors and lights in the windows.
Niall frowned. “I thought you said this was the sneakier way to get in.”
“I didn’t say that,” she countered. “I said this was how you get in without walking into a trap. You let them know you’re coming, there’s no reason for them to spring on you, right?”
It made a certain kind of sense, I supposed, but only a certain kind. “What is the advantage of appearing like a Seline?”
“For him? Nada, but it’d amuse the hell out of me,” she said, hooking a thumb at Niall and batting her large, heavily lashed eyes. “For you, you’re coming to get your wife, or whatever you think the human witch is to you. She’s run away, and you need to demand her back. Lots of chest beating and growling would probably do you well, and my race can be kind of a pain in the ass in that way. Very possessive. They’d buy the act from a Seline.”
She eyed me as a new thought seemed to strike her. “Did you bring money?”
I scowled at her. “Of course not,” I said, while Niall humphed.
“You’re the High King of the High Fae. You don’t travel without funds,” he corrected me, and he opened his jacket to reveal the thick bars of gold lining his jacket. Only a Fae could carry that weight around as if it were nothing.
Celia whistled appreciatively. “Well, okay then. I’m thinking I deserve at least one of those bars if we get your girlfriend out of here alive, and I’m thinking you need to promise that to me now, before we go any further, to make things nice and official like.”
Niall turned to her. “One bar or two?” he asked with such lazy unconcern that I looked at him more sharply. I immediately caught what he was trying to do, but didn’t have to fake my urgency in moving the negotiation along. “Niall,” I said, “we do not have time to dicker over the value of Belle’s life. Give the cat what she wants in return for her service.”
Niall shot me a black look that Celia didn’t miss.
“Two,” she said. “For whatever you require to get—Belle, is it?—back. I can show you how to get out of the Riven District. You’ll be safe if you do what I say.”
“Then I conscript you into the service of the High King’s guard,” Niall said as I shifted with agitation. “Payment will be rendered the moment you get us out of this godforsaken hole and your service to us is complete.”
“Excellent,” Celia began.
I took advantage of a movement at the door of the warden’s building to interrupt. “What’s that?” I demanded, squinting at the door as Niall leaned into Celia.
“So you agree?” he asked.
But Celia was distracted by me, and she nodded quickly. “I agree, I agree. And that would be our cue to move forward.” She sent a look to Niall. “Do you know anything about the Seline?”
He shook his head a firm no, humoring her. It didn’t matter that both of us felt that Celia was truly human—she had adopted the glamour of a Seline, and we’d roll with that for as long as we needed to.
“Okay. There’s a reason why I’m in the Riven District. My kind are terrible to our females. They use us only for mating, then showboat around and ignore us after that unless another male takes interest, in which case, they kill us. If any of us make the mistake of wanting a male other than the one who designates himself as our lord and master, we also die and so do our offspring. My mother was one of those unfortunate females. I entered the District rather than get offed.”
Niall blanched, but Celia kept going, poking her finger at him. “So this is how this is going to go. You’re my owner, I’m your property. Try not to embarrass me, okay?” She reached out and hooked her hand into Niall’s belt and gestured him forward. “Act like you’re dragging me along.”
Niall reached back and held her up by the scruff of her neck, his thick, meaty hand bunched in her tunic. “Does that hurt?” he asked, his voice sounding a little strangled.
“Only a little,” she huffed, and they set off, with Celia wailing with impressive vigor.
“She was right there. I didn’t let her go. She hit me. It wasn’t my fault!” She flashed in and out of her cat glamour, yowling with outrage, and Niall struggled with her, but kept a tight hold. By the time we reached the front doors, we’d drawn a crowd, the heavily hooded guards apparently enjoying the show.
“What’s your business?” one of them called, lisping the final s of the word with a curious inflection. “Unless you want us to kill your female. You’re Seline right? We can arrange a hunt. They’re good sport.”
I stepped forward, drawing the guards’ attention. “I have reason to believe my property got loose and found its way into this building,” I said roughly. “I’d pay you for your trouble to get her back.”
“The warden likes to keep the peace,” the guard said, and Celia went quickly silent as Niall shook her roughly, earning him an approving nod from the guard. “What’s your property’s name?”
No sooner had he asked the question, though, than an ear-splitting screech broke free from the building beyond.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Belle snarled, and I didn’t hesitate. I raced forward.
7
Belle
I’d fought my captors with credible strength, not so hysterically that they might end up concussing me, but enough to look like I was legitimately afraid. I’d mostly been happy for them to bring me anywhere that was closer to the front door of this building, since I had no idea where I was going. After the first zap from their monster-realm Tasers, they’d at least laid off those. Maybe they required a recharge?
And how did those things work, anyway? That was some pretty hard-core magic, if the retinal aftereffects I was rocking were anything to go by. I thought the monster realm didn’t have that kind of firepower.
When the guards brought me to a room that I knew would be filled with light during the day, given all the windows that lined the walls, I almost wept with relief. I hadn’t realized how much being in enclosed spaces bothered me. It had never been a problem before, but then again, I hadn’t spent a lot of time underground. Even my brief forays into the In Between had been specific and focused. Get in, shuffle my charges to their next way station, usually right outside a portal to a friendly coven that was nowhere near Boston, then get the heck back out.
The crowd of guards split, and I ab
out choked. All the other guards had been covered, making me wonder about what they looked like under their hoods…I should have been careful what I wished for. This guy had his hood off, and his full-on lizard features freaked me out so much I damned near peed myself.
What in the hell?
I forced myself not to shrink away, but stared stolidly forward as the creature’s own curious regard focused on me. He wasn’t unattractive, exactly, though his scaled golden skin stretched down into a long snout, and his sharp, inquisitive eyes kept lidding and unlidding themselves in rapid succession, leaving me unsure of what exactly he was looking at and when. His body was that of a man’s, except for the long luxurious tail that stretched out behind him, making me wonder exactly how his pants were made. But his hands were long and smooth fingered, tipped with talons. Not scary in and of themselves, but as I finally glanced down at what he held…
It was a book, but not just any book. The abomination in the lizard guy’s hands smoked and boiled with a profusion of writhing, slimy bugs that sizzled into puffs of oily smoke. I vaguely sensed that the effect was illusion magic, but the stench of the book alone made my eyes water. The only reason I didn’t pass straight out was that I feared they’d throw me bodily onto the thing, and I’d burst into flames.
I jolted back, which made the guards on either side of me clamp down heavily on my arms. I began to kick and struggle in earnest as they hauled me forward.
The lizard guy held up the book, and I gagged in genuine horror. “Get that away from me,” I practically shrieked.
Unmoved, he clicked his eyes at me, then glanced down at the book.
“You know this book? You can read from it?” he asked. “You can teach me?”
What? No. No way. “You can see what it is all on your own. It’s a freaking hellmouth,” I snapped back, hysteria building as he edged the thing closer.
“I could make you read it,” he said, and his lips parted as a long forked tongue slid out, then retracted. “I could force you to do whatever I wanted.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” I struggled more vigorously because I knew where this guy was going with his comments. What was up with these realms of magic that physical bonding was such a big deal? No wonder the magic academies of Boston were so screwed up. Their approach to managing their magic clearly had been influenced by the monster realm and the realm of the high Fae, and the goddess only knew what other realms the academies had access to, an entire network of crazy bearing down on one small section of Boston. The city had become Ground Zero for freaks.
“Where did you find her?” the lizard warden asked, slanting a glance away from me.
“Cellblock C,” the guard standing next to me said, though I had no idea what kind of creature he truly was, since his head remained covered by his heavy hood. Not human, I was pretty sure. So far as I could tell, Celia had been right. There were no true humans in the monster realm. They were either slaves or food, or they were booted back to the human realm, definitely the worse for wear.
The warden slanted a glance at me. “There are no captives in that block,” he mused. “Only old, defunct magic, left behind by the wizard. That magic that hasn’t worked right since he installed it. Perhaps I have done him a disservice all these years.”
He stepped closer to me, eyes clicking open and shut in a rapid rat-a-tat. I cringed back, a combined repugnance to his own scaly weirdness and the book he held.
“I like the scent of your fear,” he murmured, and a good five more strands of my hair turned white.
A sudden explosion of sound and movement had everybody turning, and my eyes snapped wide as a tall, barrel-chested man thrust his way into the room, his clothes rough, his manner rougher, a great mane of tawny hair whipping around his head. But even though I didn’t recognize him, exactly, I knew that this was Aiden, High King of the Fae. My Aiden.
I froze, then melted, then practically electrified with need, hope, doubt, happiness, fear, relief—a jumble of emotions that made absolutely no sense. Beneath his wild, flowing, light-brown hair, Aiden’s beautiful face was set into a scowl of intensity, his meaty hands bunched into fists, his eyes searching everywhere, his mouth tight. Searching for me, I knew instantly. Because of course he was.
This ridiculously stubborn, fierce, and brutal Fae had broken into my bar, captured me, and forced me into a service I loathed, had dragged me around and presented me as his property, his divine right…but he’d also watched me with an awe and wonder that made me feel like I hung the moon, he’d tried to do everything he could to ease my way in his realm, he’d touched me, kissed me, and finally made love to me with pure, full, and heart-shattering passion—and in the end…in the end…
He’d let me go free. He’d needed me desperately, wanted me…but he’d released me from my contract.
And now, despite all that, here he was again, obviously trying to save my ridiculous ass, and I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or crumble into a million pieces.
Shortly after his shouting entrance, I saw Niall and Celia barge through the doors, Niall also in full-on ThunderCats mode. He held the shifter like she was a rag doll, while Celia’s eyes went everywhere from her downcast position. Surrounded as I was by the guards, she didn’t see me at first, but I was beyond thrilled she wasn’t already dead. Not a high bar, but a bar nonetheless.
“Wife,” Aiden shouted, striding toward us. The warden’s face snapped my way, his eyes clicking half a dozen times as he chose which lens to fix on me.
“Wife?” he asked, his forked tongue slipping out as if to taste the word. “Really?”
The guards stepped in front of Aiden, holding him back with their staves. I knew Aiden could break those sticks in two, but he pulled up short, his eyes boring into the line of guards, showing absolutely no surprise to see them. Did he know what these things were? Celia had referred to them as Luacra, so she was familiar with them, but they’d certainly never darkened my tavern door.
Aiden finally caught sight of me peeking between their shoulders, and his face hardened as one of the guards spoke.
“A Seline at the front door, my lord. Come to claim his property that got loose.”
“Looosssse…” the warden echoed, his tongue savoring the syllable. “I see the Seline continue with their charming ways when it comes to controlling their mates.”
He gestured, and his lizard guy retinue parted so that he could get a good look at Aiden in his Seline guise. Seline males looked nothing like their females, I decided. Both Aiden and Niall were thick, rough, and swarthy beneath their tawny hair, but the guise seemed to satisfy the warden.
“What will you pay me for her?” the warden asked him, and Aiden stiffened, his scowl deepening.
“Nothing. She’s my property, not yours.”
“From where I am standing, she’s on my territory. She entered my building using magical means, and she can read the book of truth.” He gestured lazily toward the book, now held by one of his underlings, and my stomach turned. Maggots fell from its pages, hitting the floor with squishy pops. “I wish her to read it to me, its pages open on my chest while she rides me—”
“Gross,” I blurted, unable to stop myself as Aiden’s face went flame red with fury. The warden turned to me. He might not know the word, but he understood my meaning.
“So that’s the way of it,” he murmured, his tongue sliding out again on his esses. “Your price just went up.”
This time, I decided against saying anything, because clearly I’d miscalculated. Aiden moved forward, apparently oblivious to the crossed staffs over his chest. I could see the faint line of fire that danced along the sturdy poles. Shock sticks of some sort, more of the wizard’s protections? I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to find out with Aiden as the guinea pig.
“She is my property,” Aiden repeated, the words sounding like crushed gravel. “Even in this lawless place.”
“Far from lawless,” the warden said. “I make the rules here. No one dares challenge me
. Especially not a grubby Seline. But the rule of law says this: I can claim anything on my territory as legally mine if the bond is not paid. And I set the bond. I’ll return your property to you when your wife has finished the work I require.”
I blanched. If this lizard asshole was going to make another gross sex joke, I didn’t think I had the strength to endure. Instead, he took the book back from his mini-lizard, then turned to me. He idly flipped through the steaming book, landing on a page that looked like someone had shat on it.
“Decipher this passage, tell me what it means, and I will let you go.”
I sent a panicked glare toward Aiden. His gaze locked on to mine, fury building there. I wasn’t going to get any help from him. He wanted the barest provocation to lay waste to this entire building, but I didn’t want to tip the hand of the High King in a place like the Riven District. If Celia was to be believed at all, that would cause Aiden and Niall more harm than good.
Instead, I breathed out, leaning closer to the book. The ammonia from the excrement, illusory or otherwise, stung my eyes. There was no way I was going to read the words that remained etched into the book despite the stain overlaying them. I didn’t understand the language, but I knew enough that magic worked whether or not the user understood the words they uttered. I wasn’t about to unleash whatever shittery of bats this desecrated book wanted to serve up.
Instead, I took in the shallowest breath possible, then uttered two spells in quick succession—protection and illusion. As the guards holding me cried out and were shoved away, I bent over double and made a mad dash toward Aiden.
8
Aiden
I had never encountered a creature like the walking lizard that was leering at Belle. I hadn’t known such a creature existed. They were rapidly on their way to becoming extinct, though, as the warden sniffed my mate, picking up on the mix of her emotions, heat, and vitality. Nothing wrong with the thing’s nose, anyway.