Thea Harrison: Storm's Heart

She asked, “Did you call ho—New York?”

“Yeah. I talked briefly to Dragos and Pia.”

Her head turned slightly toward him. “I like Pia. We didn’t have very long to get to know each other, but I’m already going to miss her.”

“She likes you too,” he said. He carefully curled around her small, tense body and wrapped an arm around her. She started breathing again. It sounded choppy and uneven. He laid his head on his bent arm and hugged her back against him.

She whispered, “Don’t be nice to me.”

“Why not?” he asked, confused. Didn’t Pia just tell him to be nicer? He tucked his nose in her hair. She had taken out those ridiculous pigtails, and her hair was downy soft and loose. She smelled like cigarettes, herbal shampoo and the unique feminine scent that was all hers, all Tricks. Niniane. Whatever. Niniane was a pretty name, he realized. It suited her.

“When you’re nice, it makes it harder.”

He thought of her tearful good-bye several days ago and the round of fierce hugs she had given everybody, himself included, before she left for the airport. He thought of the seventeen-year-old who had lost everything in the world that had mattered to her, and of the many obstacles in 1809 that one small, hunted Fae girl must have faced in getting safely from Adriyel to sanctuary in the Wyr demesne in New York.

He thought of the recent assassination attempt and how she still intended to go live with the Dark Fae, some of whom might still want to kill her, and all because it was far better to have a good person in power than to risk having another Urien take the throne.

He wanted to rip Urien to pieces all over again.

Her hand kept jerking. He raised his head. After a moment he realized she was plucking at the edges of the bedspread. He wrapped his hand with care around hers, stilling the nervous movement. Her fingers felt small, delicate and cold. She tried to pull away from his touch, but he wouldn’t let go.

“How drunk are you now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She sniffed. “I can feel my feet again. My side hurts. Not very, I think.”

She had to be exhausted. He hated that she was in pain. He wanted to offer her medication, but he wasn’t sure what might be safe after she’d downed so much vodka. He told her, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Her head moved slightly. “’Course it will.”

He didn’t know how she managed to make the perky statement sound so awful. He sighed. “You get some rest now.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“We can talk more on the way to New York,” he told her.

She lifted her head. “What?”

“I said I’m taking you back to New York.” He kept his voice patient since she was obviously still inebriated. “And we can talk more on the way.”

She sighed. “Tiago, I’m not going back.”

“Of course you are,” he said. “Your apartment in the Tower is secure, and we can set up a reliable security detail for you while the attack on you is investigated. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”

He tried to think if there was something else he should say, but he wasn’t Dr. Phil. He was Dr. Death, and he thought he had covered all the important bits. He held her a long time. Funny. He was doing it for her, but it felt pretty damn good to him too. She was curvy and soft, and no bigger than a minute. She fit perfectly in the curl of his body as he spooned with her.

Finally her stiff body went lax and her breathing deepened. She was asleep. He eased away from her, one careful move at a time. She never stirred when he stood.

He picked up the duffle he had set against one wall earlier. It held a toiletry kit and a couple changes of clothing in his size, along with a lightweight laptop in a protective case and extra weapons. He slipped into the bathroom and eased the door shut before he turned on the light.

He stripped and showered. After washing and rinsing, he braced his hands on the shower wall and leaned on them. He stood with his head down as hot water cascaded over his neck and shoulders. The wet heat felt good after his flight from New York, and it soaked into well-used muscles. Water dripped off his nose and chin. What a day.

He should do the smart thing. He should listen to what Pia had said, and call New York to have one of the other sentinels come take his place.

He should go with his troops to their next assignment.

He wasn’t going to do the smart thing.

He was going to do the only thing he could. He was going to stay and make everything okay for Niniane. Because he had promised her that it would be okay. And because he didn’t seem to be able to make any other choice.

He turned off the tap when the hot water started to run lukewarm. After toweling dry, he slipped on a clean pair of black fatigues and a black T-shirt. He switched off the light before he opened the door. He waited a moment for his night sight to return then slipped into the room, placing the duffle back against the wall.

He paused to check for her breathing, expecting the same deep, even rhythm of sleep.

Except there was no breathing, no sense of another living presence.

He flipped on the light.

The room was empty. She was gone. So were her shopping bags. So were the keys to the SUV.

So was his Glock.

Fury erupted. “Goddamn you, Tricks!”

Tiago couldn’t have tortured her with any greater efficacy if he had tried.

Coming after her all the way to Chicago to make sure she was okay. Being all mean and barbaric and sexy.

She could handle that. She had lived with and been vastly entertained by it for two hundred years. All of Dragos’s sentinels were mean and barbaric and sexy. Even that weird harpybitch Aryal, who she might have a teensy girl crush on. You know, in a totally hetero kind of way.

But then Tiago had turned nice. She hadn’t known he had a nice speed. She had thought he had only two speeds, the killing speed and full stop.

The warlord sentinel, being nice to her. It burned her skin as if he had poured acid all over her.

He had come up behind her in the dark. He curled that powerful muscled body of his around her, enclosing her, and made her feel safe and warm and cared for. He caressed her hand like he cared. It made her wild to get away from him.

What was he thinking? Returning to New York was out of question. She couldn’t go running back to the Wyr demesne just because things had gotten a little rough. That would be political suicide. She would look weak and unfit to rule, not just to the Dark Fae but to all the other demesnes as well.

He told her everything was going to be okay. Damn it.

How was everything going to be okay? For how long? For a few days or a few weeks, or for however long he might decide to help her out? Then what?

He would get on with his life, that’s what, and leave her a solitary monarch on the Dark Fae throne. Meanwhile she had a hundred second cousins. No doubt some of them were lawabiding citizens, but she would bet a good number of them were every bit as ambitious as Geril or her uncle Urien had been.

Stupid Wyr. Nothing was okay.

She couldn’t run away to New York. Now that she was no longer drunk or in shock, she knew she couldn’t run anywhere else either. All the news networks had been telling the same basic story by the end of the evening. Human police and Dark Fae authorities were collaborating on getting a major manhunt underway to find her.

She’d had her time-out and a chance to react, and now she had to go back to the Regent and meet up with the Dark Fae delegation. There wasn’t any other realistic option. When she had chosen to go public with her real identity, she had started down a path of no return.

The delegation was a traditional triad that was comprised of three of the most powerful officials of the Dark Fae government. The first was Chancellor Aubrey Riordan, who belonged somewhere on a distant branch of the Lorelle labyrinthine family tree. Aubrey had been old when Niniane had been born and had retired from public office about fifteen years before her family had been massacred. In the late 1950s Urien had brought Aubrey back into government.