Chapter Six
“Please tell me you did not actually sleep with my best friend.”
Arabella kept her voice low so that Rachel wouldn’t hear her from across the pool room. She had just dived into the water and was paddling around.
“I already told you, my lady,” Cinaed said roughly, keeping his voice down as well. “I did not bed your best friend in the very short time during which you were gone. Mind you, it wasn’t for lack of desire on her part.” He was pissed that she kept asking, but she still wasn’t quite sure she believed him. Especially with the way his eyes tracked Rachel’s every movement in her skimpy bikini—the one that Cinaed had conjured for her. Arabella was wearing one just as revealing, but somehow Cinaed only had eyes for Rachel’s curves.
“Just keep it that way, all right?” Of course, she had used Rachel to distract Cinaed, but that was as far as she wanted it to go. Things would get seriously messy if Rachel were entangled with Cinaed. And Arabella’s mind was already a mess as it was.
“Aye, my lady. I keep my promises.” But he was biting his lip as Rachel climbed out of the pool, dripping wet. “She’s not the kind for me, in any event.”
That ruffled Arabella’s feathers. But then again she was on edge already. “What are you saying? My best friend is awesome, and anyone that says otherwise is a damn liar.”
His eyebrows rose. “Awesome? If by that you mean tremendously good at being quarrelsome and ornery and sharp-tongued…” He faded off as Rachel approached. He blinked and seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes off Rachel’s chest, which was barely concealed by the thin green stretch of triangular fabric trying to contain her ample breasts. Arabella didn’t know what he expected, but perhaps Rachel’s nipples standing at attention due to the chill of the pool room after climbing out of the warm water wasn’t exactly it. Rachel had a towel, and Arabella was sure her best friend knew exactly the picture she was presenting because she sure as hell wasn’t using that towel to cover up anything.
Cinaed’s lips were parted, and Arabella wouldn’t be surprised to see drool dribbling down his chin.
Rachel looked Cinaed up and down—he was likewise in a swimsuit but had declined to join them in the pool. Then she flicked a look to Arabella. “What are you talking about?” she asked, suspicious. As if she didn’t know they were talking about her. Rachel was too savvy for that—she was just trying to bait Cinaed.
“Just what I should do about Lucian,” Arabella said, trying to steer clear of the high-voltage tension that was still bouncing between the two of them.
Rachel scowled. “Well, I told you—fuck that guy!”
Mission accomplished in the distraction department, Arabella thought, wryly. But that wasn’t exactly the answer she wanted. She had been struggling all day with what to do and getting no closer to an answer. After talking to Leonidas, she’d come back to the apartment and argued with Rachel about this whole situation—the treaty, True Love, whether Arabella had any chance with Lucian after he had pushed her away so many times, and the whole tragic nature of his situation, now that she understood it. But Rachel was having none of it. And had loudly said so. Repeatedly.
Arabella had wanted to go immediately and talk to Lucian, but Cinaed had told her the truth about his endless patrols, so she knew he was exhausted. He needed time to rest and to think, and supposedly, he had gone to his lair to sleep. So she waited… and waited… and when she couldn’t wait anymore, she worked up the courage to go talk to him… and he wasn’t even there. He had left the keep. With a little probing, she found out he had gone to the city. She couldn’t believe he was hunting demons again so soon, and just on a lark, she decided to check his WildLove app. She still had the login. Sure enough, he’d lined up a dozen women to have hookups with that night.
When Rachel had seen it, she’d gone ballistic.
Arabella sighed. “I know you think I should just give up, Rach—”
“Ari!” she cut her off. “He’s off fucking other women. What else do you need to know?” She threw a glare at Cinaed.
He cringed and didn’t say anything. Which really should tell her everything she needed to know, if even Cinaed thought it was hopeless. Rachel turned back to her. “Not that this place isn’t like a glorious five-star hotel, but I’m ready to leave at any time. Midnight swims are awesome…” She gestured at the sparkling moonlit landscape outside the windows of the pool room. “But you don’t need this hot mess of trouble.”
She was right—Arabella didn’t need the trouble. But it wasn’t just her life, or even her love life, at stake here. “This is about more than just me, Rach. This is kind of save-the-world time.”
“Pft.” Rachel stuck out her tongue. “Let someone else save the world. Besides, you don’t know that brother of his isn’t making all this shit up. How much of this treaty business do you really know is true?”
“I saw the fae for myself,” she pointed out.
Cinaed was back to just shaking his head as if Rachel were ridiculously clueless. To be fair, her best friend had only just learned about dragon shifters and demons and the fae this morning. It was entirely reasonable for any person to be doubting at this point. Doubly so for Rachel, who was a natural doubter.
“Prince Zephan is real,” Arabella said. “The fae are real. And they’re definitely not people you want messing with humanity. Which Prince Zephan would do just for shits and giggles, because that guy’s an asshole. He makes your exes look like sweethearts. Never mind if he actually had a reason to mess with humans, which he very well might, given that we are part of this treaty thing. This is a real problem, Rach.”
“Aye,” Cinaed agreed a little too eagerly. “And my lady is the only one I’ve seen have an impact on my prince in a long, long time.”
Arabella raised her eyebrows at that new piece of information. Once Leonidas had broken the shroud of secrecy around all this, Cinaed seemed to think that liberated him from his vow of silence. Or maybe it was seeing Lucian nearly turn into his wyvern form. That had freaked him out as much as it had Leonidas.
“Hey, McHottie,” Rachel said with bite in her voice. “You don’t get a vote on this.”
“Well, I should,” he threw back, his eyes finally locked on her face and not her chest. “It’s clear neither of you understands a thing about love.”
Arabella grimaced. “Well, he’s right about that.” How would she even know she was in love? Much less True Love?
“Hey, fuck you,” Rachel said to Cinaed. He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands like he wasn’t sure why he even bothered to try. Rachel turned back to her. “Seriously, Arabella, do you even hear yourself? Lucian’s off with other women. He is banging them as we speak. And you still want him? Sister, that’s not love. That’s sickness and obsession. Codependent bullshit. You know this.”
She wasn’t wrong about that. In fact, those were the exact words that kept cycling through Arabella’s mind every time she tried to tease out all the pieces of this big hairy mess.
“I know,” Arabella said. “And yet…”
Rachel gave a noise of disgust and crossed her arms. “There is no and yet in this. Just a whole lot of Nope.”
“All I know is that everything you’ve said is true… and yet, I still want to be with him. More importantly, I really believe I’m the one to heal his heart, which is what he’s going to need to mate and having a chance at making a dragonling. How can I believe that so strongly, if it isn’t true? How can I have this delusional belief that I’m the one to fulfill this grand treaty?” She was waving her hands around and doubting it all over again, now that she was saying it out loud. “It all sounds crazy. And yet… you should’ve seen the way he looks at me…”
Before Rachel could open her mouth in protest again, Cinaed took a step forward, coming between the two of them. He looked Arabella square in the eyes. “What is love but obsession with another person more than anything else in this world? What is love but a sickness in your heart when the other is gone?”
Rachel muscled her way forward, shoving on Cinaed with his big bulky muscles as if she could physically push him off to the side. “What do you know about love, McHottie?”
This brought the red up to his face in an instant. He turned and glared down at her shorter form. She crossed her arms and stood staring up at him, dressed in nothing but her wet bikini and her defiant stare. Arabella held back her smirk. She was absolutely sure they were loathing each other right now—and just as sure that if she let Cinaed off the leash, they would be locking lips and other parts very shortly. The sizzle was red-hot between them.
“I know it because it was taken from me.” Cinaed’s words held such passion that they wiped the smirk off Arabella’s face. Her heart stood still, listening for more. “I know it because I had it ripped from my life when I was just a young dragonling. It was taken from my father, who loved my mother and raged against the brutal men who took her from him. Those same men took them both from me. I don’t believe in love because it’s a figment of my imagination—the whole treaty was built on the idea of True Love. It’s a magic that plainly exists for anyone with eyes to see. It is as real as the magic I breathe from my lips.” He turned, pulled in a breath, and blew dragonfire across the pool. It curled blue flames that roiled and boiled the water wherever it touched, then dissipated into mist.
Arabella stood stock still, not breathing. Even Rachel look stunned—not so much for the magical display, but the passion and the deepness of the hurt behind it.
Cinaed turned back to them, his face full of grief and anger for the loved ones he lost. “And I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t believe in the magic of love.” He gave Rachel a scorching look, and for once she had no retort. She just stood there for a moment with her mouth hanging open.
The air grew thick with the tension between them. They were either going to kiss or—
“Hey, why don’t you just fuck off?” Rachel said, taking a step back and scowling.
Or fight.
“Don’t tempt me, woman.” He looked like he might grab her and throw her in the pool. Or kiss her. Damn, it was hard to tell with these two.
Rachel scowled. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Hello? Remember me?” Arabella butted into their obsession with each other. She didn’t want them sleeping together, but she wasn’t sure fighting was any better. “We’re talking about my problems? Oh, and the fate of humanity?”
Cinaed pulled back from his anger a little quicker than Rachel, but Arabella had managed to grab both their attention again.
She dropped the sarcasm from her voice. “Cinaed, I’m sorry about what happened to your parents. And I don’t know if I believe in this True Love thing, but all of you do. The fae do. Dragons do. It has to be real, and I know it’s important. But I’ve only got one chance to try to do this again. I might not even have that. It might already be too late. And now that I really know the stakes… this is just too important to let go.”
“My lady,” he said, his voice solemn. “If there’s anyone who can do this, it’s you.”
She nodded. “I suppose. Maybe. But if it’s possible… if I can somehow win Lucian’s heart and convince him it’s time to try to love again… if I can be the one that, through love, can finally give him a dragonling that can save the world… how can I say no to that? I can’t. Even if it might kill me.”
Rachel was just shaking her head. Cinaed’s lips were pressed tight, as if he’d run out of things to say.
Arabella’s gaze was drawn out the window to the soaring mountains painted silver by the moonlight. She drifted to the glass and pressed her hands to it. This was Lucian’s world—filled with magic, perched in a castle of glass on the top of a mountain. Who was she to think she could ever fit in here? Much less that she was the one to fulfill some kind of world-shaking treaty? It seemed like madness.
A small glint caught her eye in the distance. Something was moving out there— flying — and when she watched for it again, she caught the golden flash of a golden wing soaring through the night and headed for the keep.
“Cinaed,” she whispered, gesturing him over with a wave of her hand.
He joined her at the window. “That’s him, my lady.” He looked to her, waiting to see what she would say.
She looked down. She wasn’t dressed for some kind of big confrontation—she was still in her bikini and a white t-shirt she had thrown over it as a cover up. All of it was soaking wet. But none of that mattered.
“I need to talk to him, one way or the other,” she said to Cinaed. “Because it’s stupid and childish to just ignore what’s happening with what’s at stake here.”
Cinaed slowly nodded and said, “Go to him, my lady.” He dropped his gaze to her body then bounced it right back up again to her eyes. “Just as you are. He won’t be able to resist you.”
She flushed with heat, and it seemed like cheating, showing up half naked at Lucian’s door. But she didn’t care—she would do whatever it took to get him to listen. She turned, and her bare feet made wet smacking sounds as she skittered across the stone floor of the pool room.
If she hurried, she would get to Lucian’s lair before him.