Chapter 8
“NO WAY. NOPE. Not gonna happen.” Isidore pulled her helmet back over her head. “When you said we were going to a safe place, I never expected you’d mean anywhere near your family. Your parents farm is only twenty miles from here. This is insane.”
“You just don’t want to meet my family.” Nico tugged at the strap under her chin, but she batted his hand away.
“Damn fucking right, I don’t.”
“For now, it’s just my little brother, Drew, and my cousin, Aron.” He pointed to the log cabin tucked far off the main road near the edge of the woods.
“This is putting your family in danger, and we agreed we wouldn’t do that.”
“My family is in danger regardless.” He looped his fingers in the belt holes of her jeans, heaving her toward his chest. “You’ve been using your drops, right?”
“Yes, but we don’t know how effective it is now that my dormant royal fairy personality is taking over.”
“Can witches track royals?” he asked with an arched brow.
“Not yet.”
“What about fairies?”
“If we have something of theirs, and my father has lots of my shit.”
“Do you any reason to think he has any idea—”
She covered his mouth with her hand, his whiskers tickling her palm. “I’m afraid your family won’t accept me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” He removed her helmet, draping it over the handlebars of her motorcycle. “You’re going to be family. They will love you like I—”
“I’m not ready to hear those words.”
He laughed. “I’m not sure I could have choked them out anyway.”
She slapped his shoulder. In less than twenty-four hours, she’d found out what life was supposed to be like. What normal was, even if none of this was normal.
It felt that way.
He pushed back a piece of her hair before fanning his thumb under the cut on her cheek. “I need to plan with them, so we can get your sister. They are the best Twilight Crossing has to offer. We need their help.”
She rested her hands on his hips, feeling his strength as he held her close. “It’s one thing for you to help me, but everyone else? I don’t think it’s right to expect them to walk in the line of fire, for me.”
“It’s not just about you.” He kissed her nose. His affection overwhelmed her at times. The way his hand glided across her skin or glanced at her from across the room had been something she’d never had from a man in her life. No one she’d ever come across touched her so tenderly, or kissed so gently, much less made it their life mission to make her happy and to protect her.
No one.
“We need to get Coral within the next thirty-six hours, sharing your drops while we put everything else in place, so we can trap your father, and the other high ranking officers committing crimes.”
“We don’t know if the drops will work on someone who isn’t a warrior.” They’d gone over all this before they’d left the cabin in Lake George, but she still wasn’t sure any of it would work.
“That’s why we gave one drop to the witches at the camp, to see if they can make the exact same batch, or at least find a way for it to work on a seer.”
He had a calm answer for everything. Made her nerves fray like yanking at a single thread and unraveling an entire shirt.
“We’re sure Coral can do her branding ceremony with the Coven of the Raindrops?”
“They will welcome her with open arms.” He frowned, taking a step back. “I should tell you they offered to welcome you as well.”
“As a warrior?”
He nodded.
“No. I never wanted to be one in the first place.”
“It’s your witch destiny.”
“I think we decided that it was to be a traitor and protect your family,” she said, palming his cheek. Her heart swelled with love. She thought it might burst from the intense heat.
“You’ve been a witch for twenty-one years, I would never ask you to abandon that part of your life.”
She patted his cheek. “My wolf mate, you forget I was planning on running, turning my back on my coven, and risk being hunted for the rest of my life. I was trained to be a warrior, but I was forced to protect the wrong things. I’ve made MY choice, or fate made it for me, doesn’t matter. I’m here.” What kind of babble was that coming from her mouth? She woke up feeling different and figured it had been from a night filled with the kind of pleasure a person probably spent their entire life trying to find.
However, there was something else going on inside her.
“All right then, let’s go meet the family.”
She groaned. But before she could protest some more, the front door slammed shut.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” a young man, perhaps a year or two older than her, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a clean-shaven face said as he bounced down the porch steps. “James isn’t thrilled you had to leave the party, but he called a bit ago, and said if we need him, he’s in.”
“I hope you told him to just go on his honeymoon.” Nico laced his fingers through hers as he tugged her toward the porch. The young man had softer features than Nico but had the same dark eyes.
The air expanding her lungs burned as she exhaled.
The man nodded. “So, you must be Isidore,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Drew.”
She raised hers and immediately a white trail like fog floating in the air, wrapped around his as she took it in a firm handshake. Concentrating on the speckles, she willed them to disappear.
They didn’t listen.
Then she called them back.
That they seemed to understand.
“You weren’t kidding about her being a royal fairy.” Drew shook his hand.
“Did I hurt you?” She frowned, mentally scolding the electricity that zipped through her veins, giving her a little understanding of what they were.
They weren’t anything other than an extension of her emotions and a hint of her fairy magic.
She blinked. This is strange as fuck.
Relax. Nico squeezed her hand.
Drew laughed. “No pain, but it is an odd sensation. Daphne has been able to control it, but the babies, not so much.”
“It’s not much different than magic, only it has a bit of a mind of its own. It wants to spread love and joy, but it can be deadly,” she blurted out, not knowing where all this newfound knowledge came from. Her mind filled with images of the past.
And not her past.
“What’s happening?” Drew whispered.
“I have no idea, but maybe we should stand back.” Nico tried to pull his hand away, but she wouldn’t let go.
Couldn’t let go.
Can you hear me? she projected through screaming that filled her brain. A dozen people or so, pointing and yelling at her. But when she saw her reflection, it wasn’t really her. Looked like her, sounded like her, and her outfit was badass with some armor thing around her middle and a cool piece on her head. Kind of looked like Wonder Woman.
The people in front of her called her Arjuna.
Barely. You have a red glow around your body and your eyes are pure as snow. It’s not an attractive look for you.
I don’t know about that. You should see what I’m wearing in this weird dream-like thing. Her head felt like someone had jabbed her temples with freezing cold ice picks, but it didn’t hurt. It only fueled her need to seek out more.
Now you’ve piqued my curiosity. Describe it to me in detail.
Totally inappropriate under the circumstances. I feel like I’m in two different worlds, being tugged and pulled at. I’m no longer liking this.
How do we stop it? Nico asked, his voice filled with concern.
I haven’t a clue.
One young man stepped forward from the crowd, shouting at her, holding a vase of some kind. He pointed the cork, holding it closed, then held it up as if it were an offering. A picture formed on the base. Isidore squinted. It looked like a painting of a celebration of some kind, but in an instant, it disappeared in a rage of fire and smoke.
She focused on Nico’s energy, trying to grab the particles of his mind into her vision, or whatever the fuck it was. Seemed like something that would happen to her sister, only Isidore looked into the distant past, not scrolled the future of possible outcomes.
Who the fuck is Arjuna, and where the hell did you just take me? Nico asked. She could see him standing on the outskirts of the scene playing out in front of her like an old film with jagged edges. One person in the group turned and pointed at Nico, who snapped into the vision like the last piece of a puzzle.
Herod! the man yelled as the group fell to their knees, bowing.
‘Please get us out of here,’ the crowd yelled.
Isidore? Nico called from across the vision. Can you pull us back to reality?
In the vision, she raised her arms and wiggled her finger. A long trail of sparks following a green fog floated across the vision, coating Nico. She snapped her arm back and Nico’s body, in her mind, was at her side. Focusing on the real ground her foot stood on, she pushed the vision as if she hurled it back to the past.
Her knees buckled as the green, lush woods that lined the cabin in a small town in Vermont blinked in and out of focus.
“Whoa,” Nico said, scooping her up into his arms as he stumbled to the steps.
“Dude, you’re almost in as bad of shape as her,” Drew said, helping them both to the porch. “Mind telling me what the hell that was all about?”
“It was a vision of some kind, but not sure what,” Nico said, smoothing his hands over her hair as she tucked her face into his neck.
Her heart slowed to something that felt as though she might black out. The world around her spun as if she were the earth and the rest the sun.
“She needs to rest,” Nico said, his voice and gentle touch lulling her into a quiet place.
Her eyelids grew heavy, and she gave up trying to focus on anything other than birds chirping in the background. A warm blanket of something wrapped around her, and she curled up as close as she could to Nico, drawing on his strength. The details of the vision, for lack of a better word, became clearer and clearer as her body regained its normal vigor.
Something told her the image on the vase was more important than anything else. She concentrated on replicating the image and what she saw jolted her heart into hyper speed.
“Nico,” she said, with a sudden rush of urgency.
“I’m right here.” His fingers tangled in her hair, her head resting in his lap.
She blinked open her eyes, surprised to see wood walls and a dresser on the far end of what appeared to be a bedroom. Adjusting herself to a sitting position, she eased back on the pillows.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Only about fifteen minutes, actually,” Nico said, tracing his thumb under the cut on her cheek. “Are you feeling better?”
She nodded. “What about you?”
“Whatever that was, didn’t affect me quite like it did you.”
“At first, I thought it was about the past, considering the way I was dressed.”
“That was hot.”
She let out a long breath, shaking her head. He hadn’t seen the vase, so she gave him a pass, this time. “You noticed they were all fairies in my mind, right?”
He nodded.
“They are trapped somewhere. Being held against their will. They were reaching out to me.”
“They called you Arjuna.” Nico said, lacing his fingers through hers before kissing the back of her hand.
“That means foremost warrior in an old Hindu Myth,” she said, remembering a story her mother used to tell her when she was a little girl about a great female warrior who saved a group of special people when they’d been held captive by an evil monster. “And Herod is the Greek word for Warrior God.”
“In this vision, I’m a God?”
“Don’t let it go to that fat head of yours,” she said, tapping his temple with her finger. “We need to set them free.”
“We can figure all that out after the Spring Fling.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think the Spring Fling will happen without them,” she whispered, her gut churning in knots. “The twins will be stillborn if we don’t free them.”