her.
“I’m an exile. I have plenty of time to practice.”
“Where did you learn?”
“Here and there.”
She almost grinned, knowing he was remaining vague to irritate her.
“I have a sister,” he said.
She glanced over in surprise. “You do?”
He laughed and regarded her with eyes that were now deep gray. “Is that any stranger than a human niece for a masquerada? Isindle stays in the Queendom.”
“Do you see her often?” Michaela could have bit her tongue off the moment she saw Cormac’s face go blank. She hadn’t meant to be deliberately cruel and had forgotten his exile.
“No. Tell me about Ivy and why she thinks you’re her aunt.”
“She doesn’t. It’s a term of endearment. She knows me as a family friend.” Although she watched over all Yao’s descendants, she rarely made herself known. It was too difficult to explain her lack of aging. From the first, though, Ivy had spoken to her heart.
“Are you?”
“I knew one of her ancestors.” Michaela skirted around the issue, not wanting to discuss Yao.
Incredibly, Cormac seemed to respect her reticence. “She seems happy,” he said. “You must watch out for her.”
Michaela laughed. “Ivy wouldn’t like that.” Which is why she didn’t know.
He shut his eyes. “When has that stopped you from doing anything?”
* * * *
Cormac kept his eyes closed.
He didn’t like going to Michaela’s box in the sky any more than she wanted him in it. Like a proper fey, he made his home in a tree. Not the great oak of his forest—he prevented himself from instinctively touching the pendant at his throat—but a perfectly serviceable chestnut tree he’d found in the hidden depths of High Park. Keeping himself isolated (not that other fey would risk being seen with him) was necessary to hide his physical need to be close to the dolma.
That he was a caintir, a forest talker, was a secret he could never allow out. Queen Tismelda would have him clapped in irons in the bottom of her dungeon. The caintir’s deep connection to the dolma—the world and its living things—far outstripped that of all other fey, making them both powerful and dangerous. Tismelda would have considered his mere existence a challenge to her throne. Not even Isindle knew, though he was sure his sister suspected.
He was the last existing caintir in or out of the Queendom and had survived because he’d buried his ability so deep he often wondered if he’d lost it forever. The only other he’d known was the bitch queen’s own sister, Kiana, an extraordinary feywoman who could effortlessly impress her will on the dolma. Animals had done her bidding and trees would flower at her word. Kiana had secretly trained Cormac to do the same, all the while covering for both of them so Tismelda would never know of their existence as caintir. With a fierce sense of loss he remembered the communion he felt when he opened himself to the world, and sent his mind to fly with the birds and hunt with the wolves.
That had ended when the bitch queen had holed Kiana up in a room devoid of any natural element and watched without mercy as Kiana’s very skin and bones had faded and turned to dust.
Kiana had forced him to swear on his tree that he would remain hidden after her death and he had done his best to avoid the slightest lure of his power. It had been so difficult during the first years he thought it would send him mad. He stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. Only fear for Isindle helped him persevere. He monitored every action to ensure he didn’t give himself away, fighting the enticement of wood whenever possible, knowing he could lose himself in a single touch. A physical ache filled him when he thought of how complete he had felt in discuss Yao.
Correction: Michaela skirted around the issue
those days with Kiana.
He opened his eyes to watch Michaela weave expertly in and out of traffic. Like everything else she did, she drove well. How old was she? Younger than he was, that was certain, but there was a wariness around her eyes he’d seen in other arcane beings. She’d seen many things, and few of them had left happy memories.
She loved that Ivy girl, though. He considered Michaela under this new light. To be able to love like that after so many years was unusual, and many arcana avoided love, especially love for a human. Experiencing the death of a loved one hurt as much the tenth time as it did the first, even after centuries. After a while, the heart couldn’t take it anymore. The scars surrounding it tightened until it was so tough nothing could penetrate it.
Yet impassive Michaela risked her heart to a young human. Seeing Michaela’s unguarded joy as she spoke with Ivy had stirred a primal and almost foreign emotion in him, and he didn’t like it at all.
Tenderness had no place in the fey world.
Not only that, it was laughable. Tenderness for Michaela Chui, the most hardheaded woman he’d known outside of his own queen? She’d see it as weakness.
But she’d laughed so freely when she was talking and her entire face had lit up like a diamond hit by the sun. Seeing her with her guard down had unleashed his instincts to keep her from harm. The fey were almost ferociously protective once they formed a connection. He could take her out of the damn car and dance her over to the big chestnut, where he would wrap her in his arms and…
And what? His priority was getting the proof to show that Rendell had killed Hiro out of spite to prevent him from getting that forest. Seduction had no place in his plans. He tried to hide his sudden iron erection. Knowing Michaela’s hard exterior hid such a caring gentleness was extraordinarily alluring.
This was bad. She’s a masquerada, he thought desperately. Who even knows her true face? Her true self?
“We’re here.” Michaela pointed up to a very modern building, all shiny chrome and bluish sheet windows.
“You live here?” He’d expected something with stained glass and old dark wood. Red and green accents. When she led him in, even the elevator was lined with gleaming black granite.
They stepped out and he almost walked right into her when she stopped halfway down the hall. Before he could open his mouth, she held up her hand in an imperious gesture and motioned for him to stay still.
“I should have mentioned this in the car, but I’ve done my own security,” she said, pressing a button on her keys. A series of soft trills came from the dark apartment and she listened before moving ahead. “All good. Come in.”
The next few minutes were a lesson in paranoia. Cormac watched in increasing wonder as she stood in the foyer and methodically checked through a catalog of security measures she’d installed in every location.
“How do you know if the door has been tampered with?”
Michaela waved her phone. “I monitor the hall during the day. There’s also a motion sensor.”
“This seems excessive.” Was the woman expecting an army? Multiple assassins?
She slid off her shoes and lined them up neatly near the door, which he now saw had been sealed around the perimeter to form a barrier against any gases or powders being forced in. “It’s been a rough few months,” she said.
Cormac followed her in. “Your civil war.”
“It’s not a war.”
“Excuse me. The minor disagreement that split the masquerada into warring factions and forced the Hierarch into mortal combat to keep his throne.”
She didn’t crack a smile. “True, though dramatically phrased.”
A blue light glinted from the balcony door. A motion sensor? “How many death threats have you received?”
“Enough.”