Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
T he murmuring of voices caught in Nate’s subconscious, trying to lure him to wakefulness. He hovered at the edge of sleep, his head already pounding. Had he gone out and gotten drunk?
His mouth was dry. He should get up and drink something.
The voices became louder.
“I don’t think ‘Bramhede’s Musings on Magic’ would wake anyone up. It’s putting me to sleep,” a deep voice said.
“Keep going. He needs to hear the language to absorb it,” a woman said, as though not expecting any argument.
“You broke him. You’ve drunk a pot of tea, spoken to your sisters, and the moon is past its zenith, and he hasn’t woken.” The man didn’t seem to care about her authority.
“He’s not broken. But it seems he’s never encountered magic before, and his mind needs extra time to process.”
Process what? Why were they talking about magic as if it was real?
The man started talking again, and it was clear he was reading the book on magic.
Where was he? Nate groaned and tried to sit up, only to find his hands bound. Panic flared bright and sharp in his chest as Rohan pushed him back down.
“Take it easy,” the man murmured.
Nate blinked a couple of times before his eyes focused on the…the…fuck. Everything flooded back and hit him hard enough to steal his breath.
The minotaur smiled. “You’re awake. I guess you were sick of Bramhede, too.” He placed the book on the floor.
Nate stared at him. Up close, he had impossibly long dark eyelashes. He shouldn’t be thinking about eyelashes when he was staring at a mythological monster…who had been nothing but kind to him. It wasn’t English the man was speaking, or Welsh, or even French—and he only spoke enough to get around and order food—yet he understood what they were saying. “How is…”
“I think he can understand us.” The minotaur seemed excited. His ears twitched, and he glanced at the woman who was leaning against the large desk.
“Can you, human?”
Nate nodded. “How?” he asked in English.
“Try again in Tarikian,” the woman said as if he should be able to magically speak another language… Oh. Magic.
Finding the right word wasn’t that hard. No more difficult than finding it in Welsh, easier than finding it in French. “How did I learn while I was asleep?”
He spoke slowly, the sounds and inflections feeling strange on his lips and tongue even though he made them as though he’d been speaking the language all of his life.
“I sped up the process with magic,” the woman said, as though that should answer his question instead of raising ten others.
“I don’t understand.”
She walked over. “When learning a language, one listens for the intent and feels the magic. I opened those pathways in your mind, and Rohan read to you so you would hear the words.”
Rohan. That was the minotaur’s name.
Nate wasn’t sure if he should be grateful or concerned that he could understand and speak the language. She spoke of magic as if it were real. Five days ago, he hadn’t thought vampires or any of the other beings were real, either. Why not magic?
“What is your name, human?” Rohan asked.
“Nate Lee.” Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as though they were going to stamp his passport. “Where am I?”
The woman peered at him. “We want to know where you’re from and how you got here.”
Rohan lifted his hand. The thick gold cuff on his wrist, engraved with the now familiar knotwork, glinted in the light. It was the same knotwork that decorated the neckline of his tunic. “We will answer some of your questions to put your mind at ease before you answer ours.” He glanced at the woman. “Perhaps some more tea and food to ground him after the magic?”
Her lips pressed tight together, but she walked towards the door as if obeying an order.
“You are in my library, in the palace, in the city of Calla, on a world we call Tariko,” Rohan said, answering every possible variation of Nate’s question.
If he was in a palace and this was Rohan’s library… “Are you a prince?”
“I am. My brother rules the city.”
Nate glanced at the rope around his wrists. At least it was no longer around his neck. “Why am I here?”
“We would like to know that too,” the woman said as she sat on the arm of the sofa Nate lay on.
Rohan gave her a look before answering Nate’s question. “The city guard caught you stealing. Instead of letting them arrest you and sentence you to a year and a day of labor, I paid out your debt.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw your shoes and realized you weren’t from here. The Strega,” he nodded at the woman. “Asked that I keep watch for things that don’t belong.”
They already knew he didn’t belong here. That was a good thing. Maybe they’d help him leave. “So I can go home?”
“Where is home?” The woman, the Strega, asked. She wore black, and her dark hair was done up in a bun, which was held in place with two elaborate silver clasps.
Nate considered her for a moment, then answered the same way Rohan had answered him. “A country called Wales on a world we call Earth.”
“And how did you get here?”
“I don’t know. I went hiking with two friends, and there was some thunder and a rockslide. I woke up here. Alone.” Injured but wearing his daypack, which held a first aid kit and food that had bought him a couple of days. He’d searched for his friends but hadn’t found them. He hoped that meant they were on Earth. Which was a weird sentence to even contemplate.
He wasn’t on Earth.
He was on Tariko. And while he understood the word, he had no concept of the place. Was it another planet?
The woman considered him for several seconds. “It appears you found a doorway to our world…or one opened.”
Rohan gave her a troubled glance.
“What does that mean?” Nate asked. Should he be worried?
It was Rohan who answered. “It means that in the past, travel between our two worlds was easier and more common. Then, when we stopped going to your world, it became harder for humans to travel here.”
“Elves and vampires aren’t creatures of myth. They came from here?” He was having this conversation with a minotaur; the answer was right in front of him. Of course, they weren’t mythological. “Why did you come to my world?”
“Trade, adventure… To scare unsuspecting humans.” Rohan grinned.
Nate was sure that might have been funny if he hadn’t magically learned a language while passed out in a strange palace. “Then how do I get home?”
There was a knock on the door, then a woman with pointed ears and a pronounced nose and jaw, like a short muzzle, bustled in carrying a tray of food. Nate’s stomach grumbled. He hadn’t eaten a proper meal in too many days.
The woman gave him a wary glance, her yellow eyes seeming to absorb everything she needed to learn about him—which was nothing good—in a few seconds. She placed the tray on the desk, nodded at Rohan and the Strega, and left.
“Since you were caught stealing food, I am assuming you are hungry.” Rohan stood in one graceful movement that shouldn’t have been possible for a beast…man his size. He gently pulled Nate up so he was sitting on the sofa, his feet not touching the floor, and then walked over to the desk. Which gave Nate a chance to observe him.
Rohan looked like a man, except for his head and his hooves. A very tall man who liked bodybuilding. Nate considered himself average height for a human man. Rohan towered over him. He must be seven feet plus horns. Nate had always liked taller guys. Something twitched beneath Rohan’s tunic, and it took Nate a full two seconds to realize it was a tail.
And another two seconds to realize he was far more curious than revolted.
Rohan returned with the plate of food and a cup of tea. “Let me hold it. Magic can make you shaky if you aren’t used to it.”
His voice was so soft and deep that if Nate closed his eyes, it would be very easy to imagine him whispering all kinds of naughty things. He swallowed. What was wrong with him?
Rohan held out the cup, and Nate took a cautious drink, expecting the tea to burn his tongue, but it was the perfect temperature as if Rohan had added cold water to the cup.
“Thank you.” He’d be able to hold the cup if his hands weren’t tied. He picked up one of the…he didn’t know if it was a pasty or a folded pizza…and as he did, his hands trembled the way his grandfather’s had before his death. He almost dropped the palm-sized pastry thing.
It was only as he chewed that he realized neither of them had answered his question. “I can go home, right?”
His gaze flicked between the Rohan and the Strega. He didn’t even know what a Strega was.
“That depends on the magic that brought you here.”
“And there is the matter of the theft,” Rohan said.
“I stole to survive. I didn’t understand what the people were saying. And some of them…” He bit off the words. A minotaur prince had rescued him. Saying he wasn’t a person was the wrong thing. Rohan was a person. He read books and played the harp and held the teacup so Nate could drink. He was already nicer than his last ex, though that was a very low bar, and given that they’d only dated for three months, even calling him an ex was a little over the top.
“Weren’t human?” the Strega finished for him.
Nate’s cheeks burned, so he concentrated on stuffing the rest of the pastry thing into his mouth. It tasted amazing, full of mince and soft cheese and herbs.
“There are humans here, Nate. Their families came from your world a long time ago, so they will be as strange to you as I am. The Strega was human once.” Rohan held up the cup.
Nate took another drink. “What do you mean, once?”
“After I was chosen and passed the trials, I gave up my name and everything else to be one with the magic and my sisters. We are all Strega.” She stood. “Tomorrow, you will take us to where you arrived, and I will see if I can determine your fate lines. At the moment, they are too tangled to read, which is my fault for giving you language.” She paused. “Remember, Nate Lee, you are an untrusted guest of Prince Rohan.”
His mouth dropped open, not sure if she’d just threatened him.
“The palace guards and staff will not allow you to roam. You are either with me or the guard I assign to you.”
Nate nodded, not sure what else he could do. “I am a prisoner.”
“You are not familiar with our ways.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if you did, you would not have stolen from the family of a city guard vampire. They wanted your blood to pay for your crimes. You cost me a lot of coin.”
“Then why buy me?”
“I didn’t buy you. I bought your crimes, so you repay me, not them. Unless you would rather service a vampire in all ways. After a year and a day of giving blood, there may not be much of you left.”
“So, I can’t go home until I repay you. How do I do that?” He had nothing.
Rohan sat back on his hooves. “We will see what the Strega says tomorrow.”