14. Royal Date
Chapter 14
Royal Date
The next morning was Friday. She’d made no appointments. She had the whole day free. Liliana knew what she had to do. She grabbed a handful of the pay cards out of the bag of money that Marilyn gave her, put the new cell phone Alexander gave her in the teal velvet drawstring bag that matched her cloak, and caught a cab to the Willoughby's house.
The people in Janice Willoughby’s neighborhood put extra effort into keeping their lawns green. Nature cooperated with them vividly this spring. The tall shady trees sheltered colorful hostas. Early blooming flowers like irises and daffodils lined the sidewalks. Each house had a nice big front porch, most with chairs or porch swings on them to enjoy the lovely weather of Fayetteville.
In the Willoughby's driveway sat a toddler's bright red toy car and a couple of bicycles of various sizes. Liliana cast a wary glance at the big tree with the tire swing. The grass grew particularly green and lush around it.
Janice answered the door when Liliana knocked. "Madame Anna? What are you doing here?"
"You should call me Lilly."
"I thought your name was Anna." Little Kayden, who was about the same age as Marilyn's son, Simon, peeked out at the spider-kin around his mother's leg.
"My name is Liliana. My clients call me Madame Anna. My friends call me Lilly. You should call me Lilly."
Janice smiled brightly. "Oh, that's so sweet. Thank you, Ma ... um ... Lilly." Her hand dropped to Kayden’s head in a caress that seemed automatic.
"I need help." Liliana stroked the velvet of her wrap. The little boy's hand stroked the denim seam of his mom's pants leg.
"You've been such a great help to me,” Janice Willoughby said. “Anything you need. Just name it."
"I need to be pretty."
"But you're already pretty.” The rabbit-kin bristled. "Who said you weren't pretty?" She seemed ready to fight whoever dared to say such a heinous lie.
Liliana smiled at Janice's knees, warmed by the rabbit's protective instinct, even if it was misplaced. "I have a date tonight."
Kayden grinned back at her, peeking around his mother’s knee.
"Oh, Anna, I mean, Lilly!” Janice clapped her hands together and bounced on her toes in their sneakers. “You have a boyfriend? Girlfriend?"
"Boyfriend," Liliana clarified. She winked at Kayden.
He scrunched up half his face trying to wink back.
The rabbit-kin bounced even more, making her ponytail swing. "That's wonderful." She pulled Liliana into her house by the hand. "Tell me everything. Where did you meet? What's he like?"
Kayden ran away as Liliana followed Janice into a living room littered with puzzles and toys. Wendy the dog barked at the spider-kin until Janice shushed her by tossing a stuffed animal. The very big, shaggy blonde dog made the toy squeak repeatedly as she bounded into another room.
"I met him in a parking lot.” Liliana found that first question easy to answer.
“In a parking lot?”
Since she didn’t want to elaborate, she tried to answer the other more difficult question – what was Alexander like. “He is complex and intriguing, tall and handsome, scarred in body and soul but stronger for it. He is smart and honorable, but very dangerous. He makes my knees wobbly when he kisses me."
"Well, that all sounds wonderful, except for the dangerous part." Janice steered the spider-kin around a Lego construction that looked and moved kind of like her room-bot. She pulled the spider-kin toward the communication center in one corner of the room.
"I like dangerous men.” Liliana found Janice’s living room as alien as a moonscape. “It's a species trait. My sister Isabella married a Komodo dragon-kin assassin. My father Simon was a lion-kin prince. One of my mother's sisters married Ghengis Khan."
"Well, I can help you get ready for your date, but I don't think I particularly want to meet your new boyfriend."
“He would not harm you. He strictly follows rules and laws, whenever they don’t interfere with his best interests.”
“That’s um, good to know, I guess.” She started punching buttons that brought up holo-projected menus above the comm center. "So, do you have a budget for this that we need to stick to?"
Liliana showed her the handful of pay cards she’d pulled out at random. Many of them were pre-loaded cards with specific denominations stamped on the front.
The rabbit-kin laughed. "With that, I could get you ready for a date with a king."
"He is only a prince," Liliana told her.
The rabbit-kin looked at Liliana for a long moment. "You have a date with a tall, handsome, dangerous prince, who you met in a parking lot?"
"Is his rank important to date preparations? My father and first mother taught me proper royal court etiquette, but I did not think any of that applied at this point."
Janice snorted. "Having never dated a handsome prince, I don't really know. Knowing men, though, if he's kissed you enough to make your knees wobbly, then I suspect you're past worrying about how to do a proper curtsey."
"That’s good, but I already know how to do that anyway."
In a matter of a few minutes, the rabbit-kin used the comm center to call one of her neighbors to watch her children for the day and instructed the house AI to make several appointments.
Liliana found the disembodied voice disturbing. She decided that no matter how much money she had, she wouldn’t purchase a house AI. The soulless, chillingly polite voice reminded her of HAL 9000 from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001.
Janice and Liliana spent the entire day getting ready for the spider-kin's date. Janice took Liliana to Raleigh for shopping first, to pick out a new dress, a matching bra and panties set, new shoes, and jewelry, and a tiny, beaded pocketbook that she particularly liked. A salon was next. Her hair and fingernails were carefully trimmed, shaped, and adorned.
The spider seer also got her makeup done for her. She bought all the makeup. She asked the woman to show her how to do it herself, including a less dramatic style for days when she wasn't going to a fancy restaurant. Until then, Liliana hadn’t known there were different ways to do makeup based on the occasion or time of day. She had only ever used stage makeup in her circus days, but now she felt a powerful need to be extra pretty as often as possible.
The spider-kin could not imagine trying to learn all this date related stuff without a friend like Janice to help her. While various strangers poked and prodded, Janice bombarded her with dating advice.
Janice and Lou Willoughby had a happy marriage. The rabbit-kin knew far more about relationships than Liliana could possibly learn in one day, but she listened, and tried to remember all of the many rules and cautions. It was a lot to absorb and much of it made no sense. Some of it even seemed contradictory.
When Janice dropped her at home at six, one hour before the date was due to start, Liliana sat on the edge of her armchair carefully. She was afraid to move for fear she would mess up something that she had paid a ridiculous amount of money for someone to prettify. She opened her fourth eyes. Afraid to look into the future at her date for fear she would see disaster, Liliana decided to watch her prince instead, to see how his day had gone.
She missed some important things while being primped. Detective Jackson questioned the Kodiak-kin that John subdued while Alexander observed behind a one-way mirror. The big man from Alaska got some of the details wrong about the various victims who had been ripped apart while they were camping on the southeast edge of Fort Liberty along the banks of Bones Creek.
The evidence said that they’d caught the culprit. Detective Jackson accessed his arrest records from Alaska. They showed he had a history of angry brawls. He knew two of the victims.
Only two?
Liliana used her fourth eyes to look back at all six victims. The first four had saws or axes in their hands when they were attacked.
Why did most of the victims have cutting tools?
She saw each of the first four victims cutting living tree branches for firewood. Then a roar of rage, screams and blood and … Liliana closed her fourth eyes shuddering.
Focus on the hands and arms of the killer. She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and looked again. The long arms that tore at the victims were bark-covered, the bark peeling in strips to give it a shaggy appearance.
Ah, a Fae. Or something? It looked like an actual tree. Definitely not a bear-kin.
With that in mind, she asked another question: Why? Why did this Fae attack four campers?
A forest spirit, a Green man, woke in a vision with the barely faded colors of the recent past. He’d been sleeping for decades in an ancient hickory that housed his spirit. Many of the trees in that forest had faces within. They were dormant dryads and other Fae. When he saw the campers callously hacking at trees that might be sleeping people, the old man lost in a world he didn't understand, went mad with rage.
She saw Alexander standing next to Detective Jackson as she spoke to reporters, "There is no further danger. The murderer is in the custody of Fayetteville police."
"We were happy to help with the investigation," Alexander added. "We're confident the forests are safe again."
That was not accurate, but it wasn't Alexander or Detective Jackson's fault. They had no way to know. Liliana would have to tell them.
The angry forest spirit had roots sunk in the land that chose Alexander. The Fae prince should be able to calm him, convince him to end his killing spree.
The insistent knock on her door finally brought her back to herself. She looked at her clocks. It was 7:13. Either Alexander was late, or he had been knocking on her door for a while.
She looked out with her fourth eyes. The prince was about to knock her door down.
Liliana quickly opened the door. "I am sorry. I was lost in time."
Alexander stopped, shoulder still turned to shove the door. "I thought something happened to you." His eyes raked over her from the toes of her ballet slippers, up her slender legs, bare, rather than wearing her usual tights. The hem of her new dress was so short it barely covered the lacy underwear. The dipping sweetheart neckline barely covered the lacy push-up bra that matched the underwear and enhanced her modest décolletage. Her hair, as black as the satin dress, was pinned up in softly draped ringlets with sparkling emerald and diamond hair pins that matched the dangly earrings and delicate choker necklace she wore.
Liliana thought having her hair up made her neck look like a giraffe's. Her face was all exposed with her gigantic cheekbones. And the makeup the woman at the salon used made her eyes look huge. She looked like a cartoon dressed for a funeral.
Janice had insisted that a "little black dress" was just the thing for a fancy date, but Liliana always preferred bright colors. The emerald necklace and hair pins were the only part of the outfit the spider seer actually liked. The shoes were nice, too. Janice insisted that Liliana should get high heels, but she'd drawn the line there. She couldn't fight, climb, or run in high heels. So, instead, Liliana got a new pair of black satin ballet slippers with extra-long ribbons that crisscrossed her calves all the way up to her knees.
Alexander stared at her for several seconds, his face full of some dark emotion. She thought maybe he was angry.
"I'm sorry," Liliana said.
"For what?"
"For...not really knowing how to dress for a date."
His hands fisted at his sides. That definitely looked like anger. She must have really messed up, and they hadn't even made it out the door yet. "Liliana, look in my head right now."
"I thought you didn't like it when I did that."
"Just do it."
She opened her third eyes to see the image of herself burning in Alexander's mind like a torch flame with the blaze of his passion. His one strongest thought was that she wanted to have sex with him, and her bed was only a few feet away. Only three things kept him from sweeping her up and carrying her straight back to her bed. One was his iron self-control, which allowed him to let the other two rule his actions. He had promised both her and himself that they would have at least one proper date. He wanted to know more about her than that she made him feel like a horny teenager and she could kill the strongest lion-kin in the pride.
Neither of those would have been enough to restrain him without the third reason. He didn't want to risk the short-term psychological effects of her venom. The idea of losing control of his mind and his actions, even for a few minutes, disturbed him deeply. Even so, his deep desire made him wonder if it might not be so bad to lose control for a while with her.
Liliana smiled, delighted. "I did okay, then."
"You look breathtaking." He extended his arm like a perfect gentleman, but she’d seen the barely restrained fire behind his brown eyes.
He had given her a compliment. She was supposed to complement him in return. He wore his dress blues, the jacket so dark it was almost black, the pants brighter blue with a gold stripe down the outside of his legs. "You always look elegant. You look even more elegant than usual."
That seemed acceptable to him. So far, so good.
The car waiting for them wasn’t camouflage painted and didn’t have gigantic tires. It was sleek and small with a long, curved hood that flowed into a smaller curved cab and trunk. It reminded her of cars she hadn’t seen in many years, but this one was practically an artistic sculpture with wheels. It was a lovely shade of green like pine needles.
Alexander held the door for her as she sat down low in a cream-colored leather interior. The dash had analog gauges. There was no sign of a screen or an auto-drive.
“I like this car,” Liliana said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car like this.”
He started it up with a soft vroom that most cars these days didn’t make. “My dad was big on Jaguars. It’s a classic E-Type in British racing green. We used to work on it together when I was a kid.” He pulled away from Liliana’s house, his car smoothly taking the corners. “When they changed the emission laws, I modified the engine to run on hydrogen and hybridized it. The trunk is full of batteries.”
Liliana petted the leather interior. “It’s lovely. My second mother was jaguar-kin.”
He chuckled. “My father would probably have been delighted to meet her.”
Liliana smiled to herself, imagining what Ixchel would have thought of a man whose favorite kind of car was this graceful, agile vehicle named after her kind. She would have been intrigued, at least.
They didn't speak as Alexander drove to Raleigh, driving with a hint of a smile, both hands on the wheel. He seemed relaxed, content to guide the pretty machine along their route.
Liliana checked on the Green man. He’d settled to sleep near the roots of a dryad's tree. He would do no more harm tonight.
Alexander looked over at her at some point. His lips curved in a small, pleased smile.
Liliana tilted her head. "What did I do that pleased you?"
"I just realized another thing I like about you."
"What is that?"
"When you have nothing to say, you don't say anything. You don't feel the need to fill silence with meaningless words."
"People who do that can be very tiring." While grateful to her friend for all her help, the day had been exhausting with Janice talking to her every moment. Liliana much preferred the nice rabbit-kin woman in smaller doses. "When do they ever have time to think?"
Alexander chuckled. "Exactly."
The restaurant he took Liliana to was crowded in the front with people waiting. The spider-kin made a small sound of distress. She tried to hide behind the prince's taller body.
He put an arm around her shoulders to pull her in close to his side instead.
Liliana closed all her eyes. She let him guide her. She focused on keeping her hands still. Janice had admonished her repeatedly not to play with her clothes. Apparently, it was unladylike. Liliana had to avoid doing it during her date or she would embarrass Alexander.
She opened one human eye as he stopped walking.
He spoke to a tall, elegant woman who wore a black dress a lot like Liliana's, except the woman was tall enough in her spike heels to almost look the prince in the eyes. The top of Liliana's head didn't even reach his shoulder. The woman looked comfortable in her black dress.
The spider seer had to remind herself that the prince had his arm around her, not the other lady.
"Reservation for two. Bennett."
"Yes, of course, Colonel. We have your table ready."
His strong arm on her shoulder guided her out of the crowd of waiting people. They passed through a softly lit restaurant filled with diners and bustling servers. They stopped at a table in the very back next to a window. It looked out onto porch seating that was empty in the chilly evening. The table was cradled in a shallow alcove that isolated it from the rest of the restaurant. No one would be able to see or hear them once they sat down, as if they had dinner entirely alone.
Liliana smiled up at her prince. He’d said he would take care of her.
Alexander managed to look smug, despite his expression remaining virtually unchanged.
"You knew I had trouble with crowds."
"You did mention it, and I saw your difficulty in the hangar."
"Thank you." It was incredibly considerate of him. It probably cost a small fortune to reserve this specific table in such a popular restaurant.
The menu was all in French, which was familiar, but the food was still mostly unfamiliar. She had eaten very simply when she lived in Europe. Circus people didn't have a lot of money to spend on fancy food.
Alexander ordered for them both in French.
The waiter answered in French, asking if they would like any appetizers, and what sort of wine they wanted.
In the same language, Liliana requested the toast with tapenade appetizer. If the other food was too strange or too rich, at least she could eat the bread and olive paste.
" Parlez-vous francais ? Alexander asked her, surprised.
" Oui. Ma mère m'a appris à parler Francais ."
"How many languages do you speak?"
"Only eight, fluently." Liliana shrugged. "I know some Russian and Norwegian and a smattering of some other languages, but mostly just the curse words and simple things like 'Hello' and 'Where is the train station?' I'm not fluent, but I know a little Romani. When I was young, I had many Romani friends." Friends long gone.
"Which eight do you speak fluently?"
"As I said, my mother taught me French. She also taught me German and English. I only learned a little of her native Egyptian, sadly, not enough to be fluent. I learned Greek, Latin, and Arabic from my father. My second mother taught me Spanish and Portuguese as well as a Peruvian Indian dialect that I do not remember well, but I could probably pick up again if I were around people who spoke it."
"You continue to surprise me. Have you travelled a lot?"
"I have not left the United States for the last eighty years. I have been in Fayetteville for nearly four decades."
He shook his head with a wry expression. "You barely look twenty, but you're over twice my age. That's difficult to reconcile. Where were you before you came to the states? And what made you decide to come?"
"I grew up in a travelling circus. We toured all over Europe and into Russia for many years. When World War II made most of Europe unsafe for us, the whole circus came over on a big boat. Himmler's red wolves killed my parents and many of my family and friends. There was a bounty on the heads of all spider seers. The Roma were being rounded up into camps. My first mother’s visions saw they would all die there.” Liliana carefully did not open any eyes. She didn’t want to see into that awful time again.
“No secrets were safe from spider seers,” Liliana said softly. “So both the allies and the axis powers wanted us dead. Nearly every spider seer I knew of was slain. My second mother smuggled me out of Europe hidden in a cage with two of my lion-kin brothers and some true lions." Liliana fiddled with the tablecloth under the table where it wouldn't be obvious. She would never forget that time of her life, but she hadn't actively thought about it in many years. The constant presence of fear and grief had faded with time.
Alexander held his hand out to her across the table. She let the tablecloth go and took his hand instead. His long fingers held hers, rubbing gently. She watched the movement. It was soothing, like her scarves, but warmer, better.
"Considering how you danced and how you fought Bradley, I'm not surprised you had a circus background. Even when fighting for your life, you looked like you were performing."
Liliana was grateful for the shift to less painful ground. She took a breath, let the old sadness go, and smiled up at the ribbons on his chest. She knew he enjoyed watching her fight, even though he had been afraid she would die. "I wish you had seen me fight Pete. When I fought the lion, I was confined by the dome cage. My battle with the Celtic wolf was like being on the trapeze again."
"You fought Pete?"
"That is how we met. He thought I was a murderer. He tried to kill me."
Alexander's jaw clenched. "I’m sorry about that. I should have trusted you when you said you weren’t the killer."
She shrugged. "You didn’t know me."
"Why didn't Pete kill you?"
"I defeated him."
"Why didn't you kill him, then?" Alexander leaned forward. He seemed fascinated by the story.
"I looked into him and didn't want to kill him. He has a compassionate soul filled with love for Ben Harper."
"How did you convince him you weren't a murderer?"
"I bit him."
Alexander's face went through a series of subtle expressions. Liliana recognized, surprise, then anger, curiosity, then back to anger. Anger seemed to be the one emotion the prince expressed freely. "You bit him." His voice showed no emotion at all.
Liliana had begun to learn more about him. When his voice went all bland and flat, he was carefully hiding his often very intense feelings. "The killer Pete sought was a spider-kin who killed her victims by biting them. I bit him to prove that my bite was not deadly, so I could not be the killer."
"And he let you?"
Her cheeks heated with shame. "He did not. I ..." Liliana swallowed a sip of water, took a deep breath, and admitted what she had done. "I forced him." She ran the tablecloth between her fingers under the table where she hoped Alexander wouldn't notice. The linen fabric was rough, but the movement was soothing in its familiarity. She looked down at her lap, watching the movement.
"That bothers you," he observed neutrally.
"Pete has forgiven me, but it is not an act I am proud of."
He nodded slightly. "I'm glad."
"You're glad that I bit Pete against his will?"
"I'm glad that you're ashamed of it, even though you were under extreme circumstances."
Oh. Alexander had been keeping his distance from her ever since she told him she wanted to bite him. "I give you my word that I will not bite you unless you give me permission."
His lips twisted in that way that made a dimple appear on one side. Not amusement, irony. "I already know that you keep your word scrupulously. If you’d said that earlier, we might not have left your house."
Liliana smiled as she remembered what he was thinking when he picked her up. "I really do want to bite you, though. If we talk, learn more about each other, then you might let me."
He sipped his wine, then set down the glass. "Liliana, I don't think there are enough words in the world to convince me." Colonel Alexander Bennett was not a man who liked giving up control.
"I have three years. I am patient."
"What happens in three years?"
"In three years, I will be one hundred fifty, an adult, and my body will change. If I have not chosen a mate, my body will impel me to mate with the nearest strong, fierce male to produce a spider seer child. I would much prefer to choose my mate."
Alexander chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "You know, it's generally considered bad form to discuss children on the first date."
Liliana cocked her head sideways. She had broken an important social dating rule. Somewhere in the endless stream of words Janice Willoughby flooded her with, the rabbit-kin had mentioned that rule. She said something about it scaring men away. Liliana considered the unseelie prince smiling at her over his wine glass with banked heat in his eyes. "You are not easily frightened."
"No, I'm not." He took a sip of wine. "Three years."
"If you and I are still together in three years, then I will choose you to be the father of my daughter." The spider seer desperately wished either that she could open her third eyes in the public restaurant to look into his mind and heart, or that he would be more overtly expressive. Her prince was all subtlety and hidden layered motives. He was far more accustomed to hiding his emotions than expressing them. She had to work hard even at the best of times to parse the complex language of expression.
"Can't you just look into the future and see if I will be?"
"It's difficult to look into my own future. My actions alter it constantly. Plus, your future is very hazy. Several paths of probability lead to your death within the next week. Some of those paths lead to my death as well. Death tends to overwhelm my sight. I have a hard time seeing more than flickers of possibility past that point."
"I'd nearly forgotten what you said in the parking garage when I confronted Periclum. I didn't take your warning seriously at first. Now, I know to always take what you tell me seriously." He sipped wine thoughtfully. "So, either I'll die in the next week, or you'll save me, and spend the next three years trying to convince me to let you bite me." A ghost of a smile teased the edges of his mouth.
"I hope it will not take that long. I really want to bite you."
His lips quirked up further. "I gather biting is sexual for you?"
Liliana thought about that for a moment. "It is more intimate than a kiss, but not like sex."
"How is it different?"
"It is an expression of emotional attachment, just as sex can be. Sharing venom is how a spider seer binds her mate to her. Seer magic affects the paths of fate. Once we share venom, our fates will be linked. When we have shared venom for a long time," Liliana hesitated. She didn't want to mention the extension of his life but needed him to know as much else about it as possible. "Our lives will be bound to one another forever."
"I’ll never let anyone put a binding spell on me, Liliana."
"It's not like a wizard's binding spell. The effects are far more subtle. There is no element of coercion. Fate will simply make our life paths intersect frequently. We will often meet unexpectedly. We will find ourselves in endeavors where we will be more successful together than apart. Things will happen that make it easier or more advantageous for us to spend time together." The non-physical effects of venom were subtle enough that most people thought they were coincidental. That made it difficult to explain. "Have you known people who desired each other, but never seemed to get together at the right time, or who got jobs on opposite sides of the country and never saw each other again, as if fate were against them being together?"
Alexander nodded. "I’ve seen that happen."
"Venom causes the opposite effect. It will never force us to be together, but it will make being together easier. It will make it so that if we choose to stay together, that choice will not be sabotaged by chance events. Chance will instead flow in our favor."
"You bit Pete. How has it affected him?"
Liliana looked down. "My life and his have been closely intertwined since I bit him. It might not have been so strong an effect if I bit him only once, but I bit him again, with his permission, to save his life when the widow spider venom nearly killed him. If we do not share venom again, the effect will eventually wear off. For now, though, even though his heart belongs to Ben Harper, Pete is also mine."
Alexander leaned forward. He smiled his small, pleased smile. "You want to bite me so you can claim me as yours."
"I have seen inside you. You want to claim me as yours as well. You want to use sex to do it. I want to use venom."
"So, you don't want to have sex with me after all?" His eyes sparkled with amusement. He was teasing her.
"I want sex with you so much I can barely think of anything else." She grinned back at him. "But I also very much want to bite you."
"I'll consider it."
"I'll be patient."
The tapenade arrived. Liliana cheerfully bit into the crunchy toast, wondering how hard it would be to make this at home. The difficult part would be getting the olives that grew so well in Greece and Italy imported here. The flavors reminded her of green islands and sea so blue it almost hurt to look at.
She would enjoy having it more often.
She saw the same enjoyment on Alexander’s face.
Liliana remembered a piece of advice that Janice gave her about dating. She had been answering questions all evening, like she was accustomed to, but that meant her own life had been the main subject of discussion. Janice advised her to ask her date questions, to get him talking about his own life. She said that men preferred to talk about themselves. If she thought about it, there were a lot of things she wanted to know about Alexander.
"You have European Fae court manners, you speak French as if it were native to you, but you said your family is from North Carolina for generations." It wasn't quite a question, but it put into words some of what she wondered about him.
"My father was career military. He went into the diplomatic corps after he put in his thirty years." Alexander crunched and swallowed a small round of crusty bread coated in colorful olive paste. "I grew up speaking French as much as English. My father was stationed in Algeria for a while, then Switzerland. He had a diplomatic post for many years in Belgium after he retired from the service. I went to school there. I've spent some time on the ground in Chad, as well. We have French, German and Arabic in common. I'm also fluent in Russian, Pashto, and Swahili, and I speak enough Spanish to get by."
"When did your father meet your mother?"
Liliana saw a muscle jump as Alexander's jaw clenched. "They got together when he was still active military, posted in Poland. When the Queen of Air and Darkness dallied with a mortal, as she had done hundreds of times before, she never expected to get pregnant. Fae have children so rarely." He drank half a glass of wine at once. "She wanted nothing to do with a mortal child who would die in less than a century."
The spider seer reached across the table. She held Alexander's hand, rubbing his fingers the way he had done hers.
He looked up suddenly as if she startled him but didn't pull his hand away.
Liliana thought Janice might have been wrong about that piece of dating advice. Her prince seemed far more comfortable when her life was the subject of conversation, not his. She should steer the conversation onto less painful ground, as he had done for her, but there was one more thing she really wanted to know. "Did your father know who she was?"
He shook his head. "He knew she was Fae. His best friend in the service was beast-kin, so he knew about Others. He knew what a Fae was, but he didn't know ..." His grip on Liliana's hand tightened a little. "They killed him for having a queen's son, and he never even knew. She was just a beautiful Fae he had a fling with once. A few months later, she handed him a baby and told him it was his."
"I'm sorry," Liliana said. "How old were you when he was killed?"
"Sixteen." He smiled at her, a broad, entirely false smile, shrugged as if it didn't matter, and pulled his hand away from hers to pour himself some more wine. "It was a long time ago."
Even Liliana could understand such a blatant attempt to change the subject. She tried to think of something to ask that would follow logically in the flow of conversation but would not pry at the painful subject of his father's death when he was an adolescent. "How old are you now?" was the best she could come up with.
His smile faded to something a little more genuine. "Isn't there a social rule against asking that?" He was teasing her by using her own phrasing back at her.
"I think that rule only applies to women," she teased back. "And I already told you how old I was, so, you owe me an answer for balance."
He chuckled, then bowed his head to her to concede the point. "I'm fifty-eight."
"You look like you are not yet forty."
Alexander shrugged and sipped more wine. "Fae blood is good for something."
"The land chose you. Sleeping Fae are awakening in a hundred-mile radius and wandering into Fayetteville looking for a leader. I would say your Fae blood is stronger than your mother credits."
"Titania doesn't doubt the strength of my blood since it's hers. She simply sees it as fleeting, and therefore unimportant." He shrugged. "With my short life expectancy, no European Fae court will ever recognize mine. They will simply assume they can outlive me and take what they want from my wrinkled corpse."
Liliana fell silent, considering that. The server brought their food.
Should she tell the prince that her venom would extend his life indefinitely? She probably should, but she didn't want to. She considered him a strong possibility for a potential life mate. She could not imagine spending her life with someone who stayed with her only because of the calculated advantages of her venom. Yet, it would fundamentally change his life. He should have the right to choose immortality in full knowledge. Perhaps, he already had chosen. "There are various magics that extend life. Do you want a Fae lifespan? Have you considered seeking one of those magics out?"
He nodded. His face blanked. His feelings on this subject must be very deep. "I have. Magic always has a price. I haven't found any form of immortality that has a price I'm willing to pay."
Liliana fell silent while she ate her meal.
He wanted immortality. Most methods that extended the lives of mortals involved dark, blood magic. He wasn't willing to sacrifice the lives of others to extend his own. She was glad to know that there was a limit to what he would do to get what he wanted. She was also very glad that he had already chosen to seek immortality.
If he became her mate, then he would be as long-lived as a spider-kin. There was no blood magic involved. Liliana was the price for the magic. But she was unwilling to be a means to an end. He would either choose her or not, for herself. She would not use immortality as a bargaining chip. But if he chose her, then she could give him something special, something he wanted very badly. She smiled to herself.
The food was delicious, although very rich. She ate less than half of it.
"Alexander?" she asked, finally, as she realized she was just pushing food from one side of her plate to the other. She knew that dates were intended to help people know each other better in order to enhance their relationship. She did know more about Alexander now than she had before. He knew more about her as well. On dates in the past, nearly everything she said had damaged her relationships, rather than enhancing them. This time, even her comment about the blood fire time and children had not seemed to dissuade Alexander from wanting her. She wondered if asking him personal questions had made him uncomfortable enough that he no longer desired her. "Do you still want to have sex with me?"
He set his fork down. His stare had that hard, dark look that was almost like anger, but not. "Absolutely."
"This has been the least disastrous date I have ever been on. I would like to go home with you now and have sex."
He raised a hand to get the attention of one of the servers. "Check, please."
The server brought a tablet computer. Alexander authorized payment with his thumbprint.
"I had intended to take you dancing," Alexander said as he escorted her to his car.
"I like dancing. Right now, I would rather go to your home and have sex. You can dance with me another time."
He chuckled as he got in the car. "You have no idea how much I appreciate your honesty right now." The trip back to Fort Liberty went much faster than Liliana thought was possible. He risked getting a speeding ticket.
"Oh," Liliana said as they sped through traffic. "I almost forgot to tell you something important. You and Detective Jackson were wrong."
"Wrong about what?"
She quoted, "The murderer is in custody. There is no further danger. The forests around Fayetteville are safe again."
"The bear-kin wasn't the killer?"
"The Kodiak-kin that John Runningwolf captured killed two of the men, but he was imitating the method of the other murders for a personal vendetta."
"A copycat." He nodded minimally. "Who is the real killer, then?"
"Many trees in the forest around Bones Creek are waking up as your influence spreads. A Green man woke before most. He did most of the killing. But the entire forest will slowly wake now. You must speak with the dryads and sylphs, the Green man and the goblins. They will all awaken at once if you ask them to. You should also have the foresters warn people not to cut green wood when they camp."
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. "The trees are waking up because of me. Those deaths are on my head."
"The land chose you." Liliana said. "You did not choose." She put a hand on his arm. "It is true that your aura has been magnified by your bond with the land, but the land doesn't just make you stronger, you make the land stronger. As your bond deepens with Fort Liberty and Fayetteville, the land will flourish. As the land flourishes, beast-kin will be drawn to it. Fae sleeping in plant or mineral form will awaken. This is not your fault. It simply is. The Green man chose to kill because the campers hurt the sleeping dryads. That is not your fault either."
He sighed. "Thank you for that, but if the land had chosen someone who knew the effects of land bonding a little better, this wouldn't have happened."
Liliana squeezed his bicep. "The Green soul of the earth chooses. Your sister Aurore, no doubt, knows all about the effects of land bonding. The land didn't choose her."
"Much to her annoyance, no land in her five hundred years of life has ever chosen her."
Liliana considered that. "You worked the land with your hands, bled to nurture neglected plants. I suspect these are things that Aurore has never done."
Alexander barked a laugh. "I can't imagine her getting dirt under her fingernails on purpose."
"The killings are not your fault. But it is your responsibility, as the land ruler, to go to the forest, to help those awakening to adapt to the new century. You must order them to be at peace with the Normals."
"Tonight?" he asked.
"No one will die tonight. Tomorrow, though, speak to the forest, so no more people will die.
"I'll take care of it first thing tomorrow.”
An issue occurred to Liliana. “Some of the ones sleeping in that forest are European seelie or unseelie Fae. Many more are native and have no concept of that separation. You will need to decide if you will banish the seelie Fae, but they have lived here longer than you or I. The native Fae have been here far longer than that."
Alexander was silent for a while as they travelled. “If the seelie Fae will accept an unseelie ruler, they can stay. I’ll take Lieutenant Runningwolf with me. That should be a sign to the native Fae that the old wars are over. They’re welcome as long as they follow modern laws."
Liliana nodded approval and patted his arm.
"That's what you meant, isn't it?"
Liliana cocked her head sideways. She looked at him from the corners of her human eyes, not sure what he was talking about.
"When you said you would give me useful advice and I could choose to follow it or not."
"Yes. That is exactly what I meant."
"You give Pete advice like this all the time?"
She nodded. "I always give Pete advice if he or those he cares about are in immediate danger. Also, when he asks me. And sometimes just because I know it will help."
"Do you see any danger like that now?"
“There is a strong possibility that you and Pete will come to blows if you don’t soon share with him who you are. Even if you survive the murderer, someone he trusts will tell him dark things about you. He will believe them and seek your life.”
Alexander nodded, face grim. “I always knew that was a possibility. Celtic wolves and unseelie are natural enemies. William warned me repeatedly not to get too close to him.”
Liliana made a rude snorting noise that her first mother would have admonished her for making. “William Eliot was a terrible source of information. Our red wolf has no enmity toward you or any unseelie. But if you will not share your truth with him, he has no way to refute the lies others might tell him.”
Alexander raised an eyebrow. "Our red wolf?"
"I know you think of Pete as yours, just as I do. Telling him who you are would make both your lives less complicated."
"I'll tell him when the time is right."
Liliana sighed. Why am I attracted to stubborn men?