Sophie Oak - Beauty

And it had been fairly easy since the villages were empty of guards. They were all patrolling around Aoibhneas now, a phalanx Lach wasn’t sure they could break through without some loss of life.

Roan looked up from his tablet. “Can I help you, Your Highness?”

“You can tell me when we’ll be able to get my wife home. The Seelie princes are due here any day now. You know that they’re just waiting for a big enough hole in the wall to come through with an army.”

“I’m doing my best.”

It was said with Roan’s clipped efficiency, but something about the way he said it made Lach suspicious. “Tell me why we’re moving the way we’re moving. Aoibhneas is in the opposite direction.”

Roan’s eyebrow raised and his mouth turned down. “Every time we attempt to move to Aoibhneas, we get cut off by the guard, Your Highness. We talked about this last night. We’ve moved from village to village in an unorthodox path in order to deceive the guard as to where we are going.”

“We’re not deceiving anyone since you allow my wife to be put on display. She’s making speeches. She’s making herself a target.”

“She’s building her brothers an army.” Roan looked over to where Bron stood. “She needs to feel like she’s a part of this. Can you not understand that?”

“He’s right, Lach. You can’t understand.” Duffy stood at his side. “You don’t know what it means to want to fight and not be able to. I know I’ve played around, but we all know I wouldn’t be able to do anything at all on the battlefield except let warriors trip over me.”

His brother’s sorrow made Lach’s heart clench. He’d never meant to make Duffy feel that way. And he’d certainly never meant for… He wasn’t going to think about that moment in anything but the broadest of terms. “You saved me, Duff.”

“By throwing my body in front of a cloud.”

Gillian got to her knees in front of Duffy. “You saved Lach with more than your body.”

Gillian’s words were a bit shaky. Lach was rather glad to see it. She’d been as shut down as Bronwyn for days.

Duffy flushed and looked toward the ground. “It pretty much felt like me body.”

“It wasn’t your body that made you leap in front of that cloud. It was your strong, brave heart.”

Duffy shook his head. “I ain’t brave, Gilly. Not for a second.”

She put her hand out, lifting his face up to hers. “How can you say that?”

“Because I ain’t never said the thing I wanted to say. I won’t say them. I’m small and insignificant. I know how Bron feels. She wants to fight, but no one will let her. They’ll pat her on the head and tell her she’s doing fine. They might let someone train her so’s she doesn’t complain too much, but when it comes down to it, she’s not going to be allowed to fight.”

“Damn it, Duffy. It’s not the same. And I was just trying to protect you. Can’t you understand that? I didn’t want you to die.”

“But, Lach, there are some things that are worth dying over. Haven’t you figured that out yet? You would die for Bronwyn. Do you think she’s less a woman than you are a man? Do you think she doesn’t want her life to matter?”

What the hell was Duffy talking about? Didn’t he understand that everything he’d been doing was about how precious Bronwyn was? How precious he himself was?

He was about to answer when a little trilling alarm went off and Roan’s whole body shifted to full alert. He had a sonic blade in his hand in an instant, and he and Harry pulled Gillian behind them.

“I have alarms set up all over. I placed them before we settled into camp. It could be a deer or it could be Torin’s guard. The last village said their guards had been pulled out just the day before to hunt for the princess.”

Lach was happy to see Shim hauling ass back to camp. He grabbed Bron and forced her behind them.

Dante walked in, his hands in the air. Kaja was at his side, in her wolf form, her delicate nose in the air.

A large man was behind Dante. He was at least Lach’s height at six foot five. He had an Unseelie look about him, and Lach would bet he wasn’t a pure sidhe. Emerald-green eyes and pitch-black hair made a stark contrast to Dante’s reddish blond.

“Dude, I told you we’re not Torin’s guard. I showed you my fucking fangs, man. I’m a desperate vampire looking for a consort. Do you know any? Because I will pay.”

Kaja growled a little.

“I’ve learned not to believe everything a person says. People lie, even when they have knives to their backs.” The dark man looked around. “You have women here. Why the hell do you have women here?”

“I’m ridiculously wealthy. I keep an entourage with me, even in faery forests. The men are here to ensure my safety and the women are here to do what women do.”

Gillian huffed. “As if I would touch you, Dellacourt.”

The dark man stiffened. “Dellacourt? Are you one of the vampires who’s related to our kings?”

A little laugh came from the trees above. “Yes, he is, Master Zane. He’s the billionaire playboy turned fairly ruthless political advisor. And the wolf beside you is his wife.” The phooka. Of course. It was chaos. Naturally the phooka showed up. It was in its tree form, hanging upside down from one of the low branches. “I believe I mentioned we could call them allies.”

Dante breathed a deep sigh as the man named Zane let him go. “I was giving into Kaja’s need to hunt when this asshole jumped me. When did the lemur thing start talking? You know we’re in a faery forest. It’s really best to shoot anything that talks and ask questions never.”

Lach felt Bron trying to get a good view, but he wasn’t certain anything had been settled yet. He blocked her, unwilling to expose her at all.

Zane sheathed his incredibly large knife and looked at Dellacourt. “So all that talk was bullshit. You don’t need a consort. You have a wolf.”

Kaja changed, her transformation so quick if he blinked he would miss it. “He has a consort, though after calling my friends cheap women, he might not get his meal tonight.”

Dellacourt shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around his wife’s shoulders. “I am sorry, lover. They are very expensive prostitutes. Is that better?”

“Much. One would always rather be expensive. Queen Meg taught me that.”

“Too bad she didn’t teach you to bite the people who pull a knife on me.”

Kaja shook her head. “He wasn’t going to use it. He’s protecting his son. And someone else. There are still two more out there. I could smell them. They’re afraid. And on the run. Fear is easy to smell.”

Zane turned back to the forest. “Nathan, you can bring Charlie out now.”

A second man, this one slightly shorter but just as fit, his brown hair curling over the edges of his tunic collar, walked out of the woods carrying a young man in his arms.

“I told you I would bring you to safety,” the phooka said.

Nathan struggled a little with the body in his arms, but he seemed resolute. “You told us you would take us back to Aoibhneas.”

Shim moved forward. “You’re the Harpers’ friends. The one whose boy was taken by Torin.”

Bron moved, sidestepping Lach and slipping toward the newcomers. Gillian moved, too, though Roan and Harry did nothing to stop her.

“She’s very good with white magic,” Roan said. “Why don’t you bring the child over here to the bed?”

Roan tossed the cube to the ground and in an instant it was a full-size air bed. Nathan gently laid his son on the top. The boy looked to be more of a young man, roughly fifteen or sixteen. He was malnourished, his body a mass of gangly arms and legs.

Nate put a hand on his son’s head, smoothing his hair back. “He was taken when we brought our wine to the marketplace. We’re isolated. We hadn’t heard that Torin was laying claim to all bondmates. Honestly, we didn’t know he could bond.”