2. Land Bonds
Chapter 2
Land Bonds
Liliana made a small, surprised sound, but did not pull away. Alexander kissing her seemed like an excellent idea. She just hadn’t been expecting it.
His big hand cupped her cheek as he pushed gently against her lips until she opened them for him. He licked into her mouth as his long fingers buried themselves in her hair.
Holding a handful of her thick hair at the base of her neck, he tilted her head back a bit more so he could kiss her even more thoroughly.
Alexander Bennett is very good at kissing.
Liliana wasn't sure what to do. She never kissed people with her third eyes closed, but the prince had threatened to shoot her once when she looked into him with her third eyes. His eyes were closed, so if she opened hers, he wouldn't know. Technically, she had not given him her word that she would never look into him, only that she would stop doing it at the time.
She opened her third eyes, the smallest ones, like black pearl tears, so she could see the rich overlapping colors of his multi-layered soul.
He liked kissing her. The warm glow of pleasure overlaid all, but that enjoyment was just the surface. A complex web of different motivations lay underneath. There was a growing tinge of acid green fear, not of her, though. While he doubted his danger before, he was beginning to believe her. Gaining her as an ally seemed to be his primary motive for kissing her, a cold calculated ice blue logic that was at odds with the rest of his emotions. Firework sparkles told her he found her amusing. The image of her in his mind emphasized grace and intriguing mystery. The image was sexy and dangerous. Her fierce nature appealed to him just as his did to her. But in that view of her, she saw him recognize her value as an ally. She saw a willingness in him to bed her for that reason alone. Using seduction, he could gain what he wanted from her.
Liliana closed her third eyes as she pulled away from him. He was quite exceptional at kissing, but she did not like many of his reasons for kissing her.
He raised an eyebrow at her in question as she pulled away.
"I had three parents," she said. She knew that the statement was a leap from one part of her divided brain to another that he wouldn’t be able to follow but didn’t know how to build the bridge verbally.
He chuckled at the seeming non sequitur. “How did that work?”
“My mothers both loved my father and each other. They were happy for a long time.”
“I see.” Alexander sat up straight. “You’re aware of my affair with William Eliot, then?”
She nodded, pleased that his agile mind built the bridge for her.
“Does me being involved with another man disturb you?”
Liliana shrugged. “I had three parents. Unlike my mothers, I only want men. I could want two men. But I don’t like lying.”
“Ah, you are uncomfortable with me pursuing my interest in you without his knowledge.” Alexander put a hand to his heart and bowed slightly in respect. “No lies involved. Our relationship isn’t exclusive. He sees others as well.”
She knew that. While that should have been reassuring, William Eliot’s relationship with her best friend Pete’s frequent work partner, Sergeant Giovanni, did not look like a good one.
Liliana stood up abruptly. She walked to one of the rose bushes, the biggest of all, on the edge of the clear, low herb circle, across from the bench. It was robustly healthy and covered in blossoms. She inhaled the rich fragrance from a large multi-colored bloom. From a creamy white center, the petals edged to scarlet as if each flower had been dipped in fresh blood. Double delight was one of her favorite rose varieties, but a pampered hybrid like that required great care to thrive. "Did you plant these?"
He walked up very close beside her, stroking one of the swollen buds with the tip of one long finger. The flower opened slightly for him, although it stayed a bud, not yet fully developed, the barest promise of a flower to come. The stem twined around his fingers. He plucked it, parting the stem without effort. The bud gave itself to him, rather than being torn from the parent plant. “When I first came here, I found the roses already here, struggling to live, choking under creeper and brambles. It must have been a garden, but it had been abandoned by whoever lived here before. It took a year of work to get everything blooming again."
"Why didn't you use your magic? You could have made the flowers bloom in a day."
He shrugged. "Gardening is relaxing. I dig in the dirt and, with some cooperation from nature, I make something beautiful with my own hands. It feels right, good. Maybe it’s in my blood. My father's ancestors were sharecroppers and enslaved farmhands before that. Bennetts have been coaxing the earth to grow good things in North Carolina for four generations." He pressed the flower's stem into her palm. It uncoiled from around his wrist and coiled around hers instead. Though thorny, the long stem didn't hurt her.
She looked down, embarrassed by the simple gift. "You are a prince descended from slaves."
His chuckle was bitter. "My mother's people, especially my half-sister, Aurore, never let me forget that. My mother could care less about my ancestry in general, but I also inherited mortality from my human father. To Queen Titania, mortality is an unforgivable flaw.”
Liliana inhaled the delicate fragrance of the rosebud as she looked around with her second eyes. The vivid aliveness of this place made it seem almost like a third presence. She tilted her head to one side.
On impulse she opened her third eyes, the ones that saw minds and souls. Everywhere Liliana had ever gone, rivers of green life energy ran just below the earth's surface, like blood vessels in a living body. In some places she had been, the rivers in the earth were thin, the pale Green sluggish. In the Fayetteville area, the rivers were particularly strong. In the last decade, they had pulsed even brighter with glowing health.
In the ground beneath her feet, the earth was filled to bursting with brilliant Green living power. It flowed in a gushing stream away from this point as if she stood at the center of a great spring. If the Green rivers were blood vessels, then Liliana stood on the beating heart of the world.
"The land chose you here," she whispered. She closed her third eyes before glancing up at him.
He looked impressed. "I wondered if you would be able to tell. There aren't many people who would understand."
"How did it happen?"
His eyes looked somewhere far away.
Liliana opened her fourth eyes to follow him as best she could.
"One night, I couldn't sleep, so I came out here to relax. I pulled weeds for a bit. The moon was full, so it was easy to see what I was doing, but I still managed to cut my hand on a thorn from this bush. When the blood fell on the ground, I ..." Alexander shrugged after a moment.
With her fourth vision, Liliana saw him on his knees on that night a decade past. Green rivers flowed up into him, lifting him until he floated free. His mouth opened in a silent scream of agony or ecstasy. Green flowed through his veins like blood, glowing through his human skin until his obsidian Fae form burst free. The Green fountained from his translucent stone form back into the deep earth.
"I can't describe it really, but you wanted to know me. This place is as much a part of me now as my hands or feet."
Looking up at the face of the Fae prince, his face filled with peace and contentment, silvered on the edges by moonlight, and surrounded by the warm, sheltered garden with the rich scent of roses, Liliana had a horrible thought. The land was part of the prince. The prince was part of the land. "What will happen to the land if you die?"
"I honestly don't know. Nudd has been trying to teach me, but he isn’t Sidhe, so his knowledge is spotty." He made that bitter chuckle again. "No one among the Sidhe in Europe saw any reason to teach me about land bonding. The mortal descendant of slaves wasn't supposed to ever be chosen." He put a hand in her hair, leaning down as if he wanted to kiss her again.
She needed to think. Alexander kissing her made that very difficult.
Liliana strode back up the path.
After a moment, he caught up to her. He opened the gate for her. They walked in silence side by side back up the twisting path to his back door.
While he closed the sliding glass doors behind her, she looked down at the flower in her hand in the full light of his living room lamps. It was an ivory-colored barely open bud with traces of red at the edges of the petals.
Lovely, delicate, and new. She would have to take care not to damage it. "I saw you kill Andrew Periclum."
He didn't try to get close to her again. He stayed behind her at the back door.
Her second eyes let her watch him without turning around. The broad spectrums of her second sight made him look otherworldly, like a demon from a nightmare, his warmth glowing in colors that were not red against the cooler not-blues of the curtains behind him
"Killing the king of the North Carolina lion-kin pride," Alexander told her, his deep voice expressionless, "would be politically unwise."
"True," Liliana said. "But Andrew Periclum broke his word to you, killed soldiers under your command with his experiments. He tried to kill Doctor Nudd who was sworn to your service. You couldn't honorably allow that. You used your bond to earth and fire to end his life without physically acting against him."
"Who do you intend to tell about that?" His gun no longer pointed at the ground. It was aimed at her back.
Liliana sighed, exasperated, and shook her head.
"What?" he asked.
She turned to face him so she could see him in normal colors. "You keep pointing guns at me. It's making it very hard for me to like you."
The corners of his mouth quirked.
Liliana realized something then. That tiny twitch of lips was a genuine amused smile. The broad smile he gave her just before he kissed her was for show, a politician's charm. But that tiny twitch, the one her comments kept putting on his face, was as real as the warmth she’d seen when he stood in his garden.
As that subtle smile touched his face, the tip of the gun barrel dipped half an inch. "I suppose that does make it difficult," he said, with more amusement in his deep voice.
He was not going to shoot her. She didn't need her third or fourth eyes to be certain of that. "You like me," she said, surprised.
"I did kiss you," Alexander pointed out.
"You kissed me because you calculated that it was to your advantage."
"And because I like you."
"Why?" She tilted her head to one side. She understood her value as an ally, but she did not see why a Fae prince or a US Army Colonel would enjoy the company of a socially inept spider seer.
"You say exactly what you mean. Everything out of your mouth is the absolute unvarnished truth. I'm not used to that. It's ... refreshing."
"I like you, too."
"Why?" His lips quirked in that genuine smile as he turned the tables on her.
"My father was lion-kin. Andrew Periclum was an unworthy king of lions. Simon of Nemea would have cheered to see him get blown into bits. I wanted to cheer, too. He hurt my friends."
She tilted her head to the other side. There was a lot more to it than that. She wasn't certain when her opinion of the prince had shifted. The kiss hadn't hurt. It was very nice. But there was more. "I was raised to respect men of honor. You keep your word. You honor your obligations, even when it isn't easy or pleasant. You protect my best friend, Pete, even though you worry he might treat you as an enemy if he knew what you were. You made Siobhan a court guardian to make her happy, even though other seelie Fae have treated you badly. And you look good with your shirt off."
He barked a startled, genuine laugh.
Liliana thought about what she said that might be funny. "I shouldn't have said that last part out loud."
"I'm not offended, Liliana." The way he said her name was a caress, filled with the genuine smile he refused to show. He set his gun down on the little table by the door next to the bowl that held his wallet, phone, and keys, and stepped close to her.
He didn't call her Madam Anna like her customers did, nor Lilly like her friends did. He made his own unique category that included only himself, neither friend nor client.
Both of his huge hands pushed her hair back from her face. He put his thumb under her chin to gently coax her face up.
Liliana looked at him with her human eyes, seeing the handsome surface, beginning to know the complex layered soul that lay beneath, even without her third vision to help. His eyes were not pure shining blue like Pete, her favorite wolf-kin. The deep brown in his eyes mixed with flecks of gold and streaks of black held far more fascination for her. They were complex eyes that could change with the light or the time of day, or the mood of the man behind them. "You put the gun down."
"You made your decision."
Liliana nodded slightly without dislodging his hands from her face. She liked them there. "I will fight for you."
He bent down, his eyes starting to close.
"I have already decided. You don't have to kiss me again to convince me."
"But I want to kiss you again."
"If you kiss me, I will look into you," she warned him. "I always look when kissing. I like to see into people when they kiss me, so I can see their feelings and share their pleasure. I stopped kissing you before because I didn't like some of your reasons for kissing me."
He stopped, body curved down to reach her much shorter stature. The subtle smile disappeared. "I told you to stay out of my head." His touch on her face was no longer gentle.
"I apologize for not asking permission first, but I did not expect you to kiss me. You surprised me."
"Apology accepted. You won't do it again." His hard voice made it sound like an order.
But Liliana did not like kissing when she couldn’t properly see the person doing it. "I give you my word,” she swore precisely, “that I will never look into your mind without your permission, except when we are kissing."
His jaws tightened. He stood to his full height, his hands dropping away from her face and hair. "Then I think we're done here."
Liliana nodded. "I will go home now."
His reaction to her warning was what she expected from him. She should not feel disappointed.
But she did.
She wanted him to kiss her again. She just wanted him to do it for the right reasons.
The spider seer sighed and left.
Her decision was made. That was what she came for, wasn't it?