Tiago kissed her cheek, her temple. “How did you get away?”
She laughed a little, hardly more than an exhalation of air. “I was misbehaving. I’d snuck out to meet a boy. He wasn’t acceptable, and I wasn’t supposed to be seeing him, and it was really just a typical stupid teenage prank. I spent most of the night with him trying to decide if I wanted to have sex or not. I decided not, and I slipped back into the palace, and that was when I heard something. It sounded like people running in the hall, only they sounded quiet and furtive. My brothers’ rooms were next to mine, so I went to check on them, discovered their bodies and ran to find help. Then I saw soldiers kill my mother, and I felt Power flare from Urien and my father’s battle, so I knew I had to run. I slipped out the way I had come in.”
Her apartment had a private walled courtyard with fruit trees and a marble fountain. Several of the apple trees grew within a few feet of the wall. Some weeks previously, she had stolen a rope from the stables and fashioned a rope ladder so that she could indulge in her illicit romance. Leaving had been a simple matter of climbing a tree and throwing the ladder over the wall.
Tiago pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth as he thought. Adriyel was the seat of the Dark Fae demesne, deep in the heart of one of the largest tracts of Other land in the continental United States. He had never been to Adriyel himself, but he had heard that the journey to the palace from any one of the passageways took several days by horseback. He had to clear his throat before he could speak again. “Chicago was founded some years after you crossed over. In the early 1830s, if I remember correctly.”
She nodded, watching her fingers as she traced his strong, sturdy collarbone. “Most European settlers called the area Fort Dearborn, which was built in 1803, and the American Indians called it Chickagou.”
“Getting from Fort Dearborn to New York would have been hard enough.” My God, the more he thought of the journey she must have made, the more it made him shudder. “How did you get from Adriyel to Fort Dearborn?”
“I went to the stables and stole a graewing,” she said. “I wasn’t used to riding one though, so it was a pretty wonky flight. I managed to get it close to the crossover passage before we crashed. It was injured so I was able to get away from it.”
He swore under his breath. Graewings were a winged species that bred in Other lands. They looked like giant dragonflies. Like their miniature cousins that fed on mosquitoes, they were efficient predators, but they fed on creatures much larger than mosquitoes. They were dangerous mounts, for not only were they difficult to control, but their flight capabilities were much like helicopters. They could dart forward and backward, or rise and fall straight in the air. Accidents from riding a graewing tended to be fatal. If the fall didn’t kill the rider, most likely the graewing would. The Dark Fae had an elite force of fifty troops who were graewing riders that were traditionally led by their monarch. Urien himself had been famous as a proficient rider.
A body shouldn’t feel so many things at once, Tiago decided. He wasn’t sure if someone could explode from so many powerful emotions, but from the way he was feeling it seemed possible. He unclenched his jaw so that he could talk. “Okay,” he said. “It happened a long time ago. You survived. That’s all that matters.”
She kissed his warm bare shoulder. “I just realized something,” she said. She sounded drowsy now. “I always dream about my brothers. I never dream about my mother or my father. I mean, in the dream, I just know they’re dead. I wonder why.”
“Aside from the emotional impact of finding your brothers’ bodies, that was when you discovered how your life had changed,” Tiago said. “You had to have been going into shock by the time you saw what happened to your mother.”
“Maybe that’s it. I also always dream about hearing Urien’s footsteps as he hunts for me, when the only footsteps I really heard were soldiers running through the palace. Anyway, after I escaped, Urien built the mansion and walled the grounds around that passageway, and of course he built outposts at the other passageways too so that he could control the traffic to and from Adriyel. I know I’m prejudiced against him, but it always sounded a bit like putting up the Iron Curtain to me.” She yawned. They had stayed up all night, and she had already been exhausted, and talking about the nightmare and the memories left her feeling wrung out.
Tiago said quietly, “Walking back into the palace is going to be difficult.”
What else could she say to that but the truth? “Yes.”
He ordered, “You must tell me whenever the memories bother you. And you must swear to me you’ll never ride a graewing again. I don’t even want you within fifty feet of one. Understand?”
“That seems a bit extreme,” she muttered. “It wasn’t that bad. They’re just so fast, and while I’d seen them in flight lots of times before, I didn’t know what I was doing. Anyway, I’m s’posed to. Tradition. Need flying lessons first though.” Her eyelids drifted shut.
“I don’t care about tradition. If you ever need to have a flying mount, you will ride me,” he said. He could protect her that way, and if she ever got dislodged, he could catch her before she fell. He frowned. Maybe they could create a harness for him to wear that she could use as a saddle. With a seat belt. And she was going to have to wear a helmet. And a life jacket if they ever had to fly over water. Would a parachute be too much, just in case?
“Fine. Whatever.” She groped along his face until she could tap his mouth with an admonishing finger. “Shush now.”
“All right, faerie.” He pressed his lips to that slender pink-tipped forefinger. “You sleep.”
By the time he eased his weight off of her again, she had fallen fast asleep.
The Dark Fae mansion and its eighty-acre tract of land lay a half mile northwest of Chicago’s downtown Loop area. The grounds were bordered by a tall stone wall topped with rolls of barbed wire. The area had changed so much over the last two hundred years. Niniane didn’t recognize anything in the stylish surrounding neighborhood as their SUV approached two tall iron gates.
This time Rune drove and Aryal rode shotgun. All of Niniane’s things had been packed in suitcases and rode in the back, along with Tiago’s duffle bag. Rune and Aryal had already sent their things ahead. Rune had dressed up for the occasion: the jeans he wore didn’t have holes in the knees. Aryal wore her usual outfit of fighting leathers and weapons. Tiago rode with Niniane in the backseat. He was dressed in a clean black T-shirt and fatigues, and of course he was armed as well. His hawkish face was alert and relaxed, his dark gaze constantly moving over their immediate surroundings.
She flashed back to earlier. She had awakened with the awareness of his long, powerful body lying next to her, one of his hands resting on the narrow frame of her rib cage. Even before she had opened her eyes, she knew she faced a day filled with profound differences. She had stirred and turned to him, and discovered he was already watching her, his expression pensive and strange with rare tenderness.
He had not spoken. Instead he kissed her. Then he eased her out of his T-shirt and caressed her breasts. He had taken his time as he bent his head farther down to lick and nibble at her most sensitive areas, her throat, the inside of her elbows, tonguing her navel ring as he learned what pleased her. Then he suckled her, tugging and nipping with erotic care at her nipples as he scraped the edge of his fingernails lightly along her skin until desire for him rose to that keen sharp, sweet ache that made her feel crazed, outside of herself, but he would not enter her no matter how she begged.