Twelve
Far too quickly, Tryst returned with a scroll and a dagger for me to sign. “Remember, Princess, you’re the one who wanted a binding contract.”
I took the knife without responding. Sheryl had called to her mate and Gray would be returning shortly. All I needed was enough time to sign before he could muscle it away from me, but before I paid the price, so he could witness it.
“Don’t push him, Tryst. He has very little patience for the ways of the Fae, and a trickster like you only puts him more on edge.” I heard howling from the trees and knew Carl and Gray were close. Heart pounding, I cut my thumb and pressed it to the parchment before handing both the knife and contract to Tryst for his signature.
"Blood contract. Gods, I never thought I'd have to do something so barbaric again after ballpoint pens were invented," he groused. But he pricked his thumb and signed, mumbling about getting blood on his suit.
Ignoring him, I left the tent to wait for Grayson. His energy hit me before I saw him, hot and angry, and I braced myself for an attack.
But he raced past me and to the cabin, his sleek black form skimming ow to the ground as he ran around me, giving me a wide berth. The air crackled with electricity as my apprehension grew and I headed toward the cabin to intercept him before he attacked Tryst.
“What the hell have you done?”
I stopped in my tracks as he stormed out the door straight at me. I found myself wishing Tryst had been closer to him, but I controlled my urge to back down and braced myself.
“I’m doing what I must to help my people.”
"You were already getting in too deep with the Fae, and now you're signing your soul over to the one person you know to avoid dealing with."
I held up my thumb, already healed but with flecks of blood still marking where I’d cut myself to sign. “I’m not a shifter, Gray. I’ve got to represent my own people, just like you do yours. Stop treating me like I don’t understand the ramifications of my actions. I reached professional level diplomacy and survival before you ever even considered being a leader among your kind.”
"I know you think the sacrifice is worth it, but you're losing sight of reality. The Fae don't care about you. They don't have your best interest in mind. I do." Something over my shoulder caught his eye and made him stop speaking.
When I turned, Rosalind was staring at us, her face cold and closed off. Shit.
“I think you need to keep your opinions about my kind to yourself. I’m a goddamned Fae royal, and you act like we’re barbarians.”
“That’s not what I meant. I thought you hated the caste system of the Fae.”
“I hate how the wee folk are treated. But this is who I am, and you don’t get to decide if I help them, or if I live as a Fae. Come on…I thought you believed in me.” My voice was ragged with humiliation and heartache. Gray was everything I had ever dreamed of, but his ambition to conscript every shifter in the country to the coalition meant more to him than even me.
Suddenly, all those hopeful females back home started to look like more of a threat than I’d allowed myself to think.
I held my hand up and called out to Tryst, who stepped forward carefully, one eye on my seething boyfriend. “He can’t kill me. He knows that, right?” He whispered, but I knew Gray had heard him.
"He might try. Let's get this over with before I decide the contract can wait."
Without hesitation, Tryst wrapped one arm around me and pulled me against him, tight enough that I couldn’t help but notice at least part of him was happy with our arrangement. His mouth found mine, lips soft at first, then hard, insistent, until I opened to him. He used his tongue and his teeth as though he were eating me from my mouth down, and I tasted blood as my sharp canines struck home on his tongue.
“The hell.” He jerked back and touched the blood pooling at the corner of his mouth.
"My payment and my insurance." I wiped his blood from my mouth with a tissue and slipped it into my pocket. "Now I have your blood and my insurance of your best behavior. Unlike common opinion, I haven't forgotten the teachings of my coven or the blood magic I learned at my aunt's feet."
I spun on one foot, glaring at Grayson. His face a mask of that careful, curiosity I'd expect to see from a predator in the wild like he was wondering if I was worth hunting. The detachment was another twist tightening the vise around my heart.
The woods called, and Tryst's blood sang in my veins, the sheer immortal power of being Fae, even if his magic was bound, was more than I'd planned on. I raced into the trees, holding back hot, angry tears until I was far enough from the camp that the shifters, all with super hearing, wouldn't know.
Ahead of me, a sapling under the canopy of larger trees glowed with a soft, green light. A unicorn tree, Portia had told us as children. Like the burning bushes of the Christian God, the trees were a mark of the Goddess of the Fae. They marked places of great magic, or where creatures of magic could be found.
I swiped the embarrassing wet tracks from my face and cautiously moved toward the tree until I could reach out and touch the trunk. The lowest branches brushed my hair when the breeze stirred them, and I knelt to avoid being tangled in them and breaking them.
When I finally rested my fingers against the papery bark, a vision played in my head, of a dark place, caverns and tunnels, and mushrooms that glowed in the dark. The prison. I saw a door, not the hole I’d been lowered into, but a heavy wood and iron door that could be opened, freeing everyone inside.
In my vision, wolves ran with me, and a great black cat led us all. Grayson.
“Okay, fine. I get it. I need him, and he’s supposed to lead us. But goddamnit he makes it hard to want to follow sometimes.”
The vision was over, but the soft warmth of the Goddess’ touch remained, and for just a second, I thought I heard laughter. I sat under the tree long after its glow faded, reveling in the contentment that comes from being brushed by the divine.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I muttered to the night sky. “It has to be. The Goddess ordains the quest, what better sign is there?”
It will be all right, Morgana, but it will be difficult, and painful. The voice in my head that wasn’t my own served to bring me back to reality with almost physical pain.
I slid my small athame from my boot and cut my palm, placing it against the tree trunk. Once an offering had been demanded from the gods of men. Danu had never asked for anything but obedience, but it seemed proper to make an offering in light of the outpouring of personal attention I’d been receiving of late.
To the south, wolves howled, and then more to the east, the direction of the camp in answer. The hunt was closing in on something. I hadn’t realized how far I’d gotten. I’d never intended to leave the marked pack land.
“Morgan!” Gray’s voice came just ahead of something large thrashing in the underbrush. He appeared a few seconds later, before I thought to answer him, his face scratched, holding one arm against his side. “There you are. I thought he’d taken you. I thought I’d find you torn…” He stopped babbling as I cupped his face in my hands.
“What happened, Gray? Are Pen and Rosalind okay?”
"He got to the camp. One of the guards was found, his throat torn. I followed his scent, and he blitzed me, got my arm. I'd shifted to find you…"
"Okay. Let's get back to camp." My vision could and had to, wait. I did my best to brace him over my shoulder, but the height difference made me feel useless to help.
“We can’t go back until they clear the land between us and camp. The pack is clearing it, but I have to get you to safety until they have him or the way back is safe. I can’t move my arm yet. It’s going to take time to heal.”
Time’s one thing in increasingly short supply.
“Then where do we go?”
He jerked his head toward the west. “Carl showed me a series of shallow caves just on the other side of those trees. Small enough to be easily warded and too shallow to hide nasty surprises like rear entries.”
He tilted his head up and sniffed the air, then nodded to me.
“Are you sure it’s safer to move farther from camp?”
“They’re on lockdown right now. It’s safer for all of us if we don’t interfere with it, and let the pack do their thing. They won’t let anyone near Penelope, and Puck’s back in camp, so he’s safe too.”
It made sense to stay away, so we didn't set off a scare, but all I could think of was getting back to my people and wrapping them in magical cocoons so nothing else could hurt them.
“Is this my fault? Did I bring this on them by chasing Farley?”
“Don’t even think that.” He sniffed again and picked a cave from a set of three, the one with the highest arch to its entry. “Because of you and your resources, they were warned he was coming. Without you, he might have decimated the pack in their sleep, instead of only losing one wolf.”
He grumbled about it, but I made him wait outside the cave while I summoned a witch-light and checked the inside. Deemed safe, I gathered the closest fallen twigs and branches and started a small fire, then warded the opening of the cave against any intruders.
Once the cave began to warm up, I tore helped Gray out of his jacket and tore his shirtsleeve at the seam, slipping it down over his arm. I used the torn fabric to clean some of the blood away, marveling as I watched the claw marks raked into his shoulder close almost fast enough to see. “You’re healing nicely.
“Mmm.” He tugged me into his lap and nuzzled my hair. “I like it better when you’re worried about me, instead of pissed at me.”
I snorted and twisted in his arms, making him wince in pain. “I bet you do. Just to be clear. I don’t like having to worry, just as much as I don’t like…I don’t like that you treat me like we’re both shifters.”
“Yeah, I know. We’re patriarchal, and even though you hate your aunt, you’re used to women being in charge.”
“I’m not going to argue reverse sexism with you, Gray. I’m just glad you’re alive.”
He shifted me, so I straddled his legs and rested his head on my chest. "I second that. When I caught the faint scent of your blood…I couldn't even make myself think about it."
“Sorry, Love. That was my offering to the Goddess. No homicidal maniacs involved.”
I climbed off him, took our coats, and laid them on the ground, patting the empty space next to me. “Since all is forgiven, why don’t you come down here and keep me warm?”
In the blink of an eye, he was wrapped around me, his arm slipped under my head for a pillow. "Rest with me until the wolves sing the all clear. Just stay with me, where I can keep you safe. That's all I ask. Trust me to stay with you and keep you alive, instead of leaving me behind again."
I thought of my vision, of the warning of the Goddess to let Grayson lead. Shit, sometimes I hate it when he’s right. He wanted to keep me safe, but I wanted the same for him, and Pen, and Puck and all the weird and wonderful beings I’d been picking up. But to do that, meant to go into the unknown alone as I had always done.
The gentle, admonishing laughter of the Goddess made more sense as I laid there listening to her quiet voice in my head.
The enemy is stronger than any you've fought before, and those in need of help too many for you to help alone. Your days of solitude are over Princess of the Fae. That is the burden of royalty, you've chosen and now must bear.
But that time was yet to come. I snuggled closer to the hard, warm chest so my cheek was pressed against his skin and his scent filled my nose and heated things much lower in my body. I’d chosen to be a princess, returned to Fairy without invitation and unknowingly demanded a birthright I’d never properly considered.
Still, it was mine to demand, and I would apologize to no one for taking it.