Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
HASANNAH
U nhappy with my urge to warn Larry, I wrung out the rag and set it aside, drying my hands and slipping my feet into a pair of house shoes before I exited my apartment. I made it two steps before a baritone voice spoke behind me.
“Lady? Do you require escort?”
I jumped, then twirled to regard the green-and-gold armored warrior who hadn't been there a moment before.
“Um. . .” was not the most intelligent response.
Who could blame me since House Casakraine seemed to fill their barracks with runway models and pop idols?
This one stood as tall as Andrei, with broader shoulders and thighs—the armor was that well fitted. Dark brown skin with a reddish undertone gleamed under the weak lights of the hallway, tightly curled hair shaved in intricate designs on the sides, revealing pointed ears.
“You're one of my. . .quad?”
He bowed, his russet brown eyes watchful as his mouth curved in a diffident half-smile. Real diffidence, not Andrei’s playacting. I realized instinctively that he’d been trying to imitate this man, who I couldn’t view as a threat even if I tried. Dangerous, but not a threat, at least to me.
“Yes, Lady. I’m called Mathen.”
I hesitated. “I don't need an escort. I was going to see the building manager.”
Mathen shifted his gaze away from me, brow furrowing slightly. “Would you consider waiting for Lord Andrei? I can summon him. He would accompany you if you wished.”
“I don't wish. Either Andrei's company, or to wait.” I softened my tone. “It's nothing to concern your Lord with. I don't want to take him away from his business.”
He nodded. “I will accompany you.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
Mathen remained close to me as I took the stairwell to Larry's first floor apartment.
“What do you intend?” he asked softly.
I shrugged. “Just to talk to him.”
“About?” His brief glance, filled with open curiosity, relaxed me.
“I think Andrei’s going to kill him.”
Mathen stopped. I halted two steps later, and turned to face him.
“What?” I asked.
He studied my face. “Why would you say that?”
I opened my mouth, shut it. Andrei hadn’t said he was going to kill Larry. . .but I was almost certain. I shrugged again.
Mathen pursed his lips. “Why would my Lord wish to kill. . .Larry?”
I rose on my toes, uneasy, lowered back down to my heels. “Larry threatened to invade my apartment in front of Andrei. The context was a little rapey.”
Mathen’s expression snapped closed, smooth and hard. “I see. And you wish to warn this person.”
I didn't owe Larry a warning, of course, but the look in Andrei's eyes before he'd left. . .no one deserved the death that hovered in that gaze. Not even Larry. Maybe if he understood the consequences, he’d leave me alone. My parents would expect me to try, if nothing else. Larry’s low-level behavior shouldn’t dictate mine.
“Everyone deserves one chance,” I said.
“And if this person breached your dwelling, did he intend to offer you the same chance?”
I winced. “I still have to warn him. For myself.”
He said nothing for a moment, then sighed. “As you say, Lady.”
I knocked on Larry's door the moment Mathen stiffened at my side, grabbing my wrist and pulling me backwards.
“Lady, I advise not to enter.”
“Let me go, please.”
He obeyed instantly, rigid posture and tight expression a warning, but not a threat.
I glanced at Larry's door. “What do you sense?”
“I advise not to enter.”
He didn't want me to go in that room, but he wouldn't use force.
I stalled. “Why do you call me lady?”
“You belong to our Lord. I am also his.”
The Fae didn't use the term lady for their own noblewomen. Maybe they used it for human women as a courtesy. The guard was speaking English—my Cassanian was rudimentary at best and I was certain there were nuances I missed in him assigning ownership of us both to Andrei. I'd think about it later.
“What do you sense?” I asked again, trying to decide how badly I wanted to know.
Mathen glanced at the door, saying nothing. Okay, so the decision was up to me. He'd given me a warning, but he couldn't make me obey.
“I have to go in there,” I decided.
Whatever was making a Fae warrior anxious I should know about if only so I understood exactly what I was getting into—so I could better avoid the trouble inherent in this situation.
He tried again, speaking more slowly, and with more resignation. “I would not advise it.”
That cemented things. I turned back to the door and instead of knocking, placed my hand on the knob, turning. Unlocked. I opened the door, aware of the unhappy guard at my back, and inhaled as the scent of a slaughterhouse assaulted my nostrils.
I stepped inside, then halted, staring at the abstract wall art in the living room.
No. . .that wasn't art. That was blood.
I looked down and gagged, whirling and stumbling back towards the door. Mathen caught me by my upper arms, holding me steady.
“Lady Hasannah?”
“Get me out of here,” I said through shallow breaths. Under the coppery tang of blood was a sickly sweet scent that reminded me of vomiting after too much cotton candy as a child during a summer carnival.
His exhale contained regret. He pulled me from the apartment and slammed the door behind us. I leaned against his chest, not questioning my instinctive comfort in his presence, and his arms came around me loosely. He murmured something soothing, as if he was gentling a baby bird.
Ch?t ti?t. Oh, ch?t ti?t. I'd never seen so much blood before and along with the acrid scent of blood was the stench of fear.
Larry's hands curved in a rictus of claws, his chest shredded as if someone had attacked him before they'd taken his head.
Where was the head?
So much blood.
“He's—he's dead,” I said, finally able to speak. A faint presence stirred in my mind, attention turning and focusing in response to my distress. What? What was I thinking?
I pushed away, stumbled, my knees collapsing, and Mathen swept me up into his arms, ascending the steps back to my apartment. He shut the apartment door and set me carefully on the couch, his gaze scanning my place before he crouched, taking my hands and rubbing them between his own as he refocused on my face.
“He's dead,” I said. “Someone killed him. We have to tell the authorities?—”
Mathen's expression shifted, and I understood.
“We don’t?”
He stopped rubbing my hands, and just held them.
“But why?”
It was a stupid question. As shallowly versed as I was in Cassanian customs, I understood why. Larry had threatened me. Larry had threatened me in front of Andrei, and Andrei was no simple warrior, he was a High Lord. As kind and almost sweet as he'd been to me, that wouldn't extend to a human man who insulted him by threatening the woman he claimed—in front of his face.
No one, not even the District Lord, would try anything as banal as prosecution for what they’d consider a justified killing.
“It was for the best, Lady. The mortal earned the manner of his death.”
For a moment I didn't understand the heartless words because they were delivered so gently, his eyes creased with concern.
My stomach churned. I pushed to my feet and stumbled down the short hallway into the tiny bathroom, falling to my knees and flinging open the toilet seat just in time.
Mathen followed, hesitating in the threshold, then approached and knelt, lifting my hair and holding it as I threw up everything in my stomach.
“Do you—do you require a healer?” he asked in the same forcibly calm but secretly horrified tone of voice my brothers used when they found me curled up on my bed during a particularly bad bout of period cramps.
“No, I don't need a healer!” I reined in my hysteria because it wasn't his fault, and flushed the toilet, stumbling to the sink to rinse out my mouth.
Mathen released my hair and stepped back. When I glanced at him, he was all but wringing his hands. I almost snorted. Poor man. No one had given him a primer on how to deal with hysterical human women.
“Lady. . .Lord Andrei would never harm you in that manner. You are safe with him.”
“It’s interesting you believe that.”
If he could violently decapitate a man just for being the average version of a human sleaze bucket, he was capable of wrapping me in cotton wool and sticking me in a corner.
Panic rose with the tang of sour lemons in my throat. I wanted to dance. I wanted to be the architect of my own life with no one controlling me.
A man who could kill that easily would have no problem exerting his will over a simple human woman.
“Lady Hasannah.” The anxiousness was gone from Mathen's voice now, leaving it calm, smooth, certain. “You are in no danger here. Please, calm yourself.”
I braced my hands on the sink, then straightened, gathering my composure.
“I'm calm.”
But images of Larry’s body lurked in my mind and bile rose again. I grit my teeth. That lovely dinner all gone to waste. I wished I could curse, but my childhood conditioning was too strong.
“I'm going to go to bed,” I said quietly. His stiff shoulders relaxed. “I have to get up early in the morning. Thank you.”
He nodded, stepping aside to let me leave the bathroom, and hovered in the short hallway until I entered my bedroom and shut the door behind me quietly.
What was I going to do?
Growing up with seven siblings you learned to ignore people when they were present and you wished they weren't, but also to be aware of when you were no longer alone. I woke, alerted by the change in the air. Someone was in my closet sized bedroom with me, and I didn’t think it was Mathen.
I breathed shallowly, hoping the monster who wasn't under the bed would grant me the wish to go away. The only empty corner of the bedroom was slightly darker than it should be, especially considering the faint wash of moonlight coming through the window.
“My Anah. I know you're awake.”
His quiet, carefully mild voice seemed deeper, darker in the quiet of this enclosed space.
“Andrei. . .” I sat up slowly, clearing my throat. “Lord Andrei.”
I wore leggings and an oversized T-shirt to bed, clothes I'd brought with me from home, so I didn't worry about clasping the sheet to my naked bosom like some heroine in an ebook.
Was I the heroine in my own ebook? The real question was, was this a romance or a horror? I was happy to hedge my bets and settle for at worst, a thriller. The plot where the girl survived at the end.
“You should have stayed in your apartment.” Strong disapproval in his voice. “I hadn't intended for you to see that.”
“It wasn't Mathen's fault.”
“I know.”
I relaxed a little. Good. The guard wouldn't be punished for me seeing something I wasn't supposed to.
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
“Why do you think I did it?”
“Don't play that game with me. Please.”
“That's not the game I want to play with you, my Anah.” He exhaled a soft sigh. “If the human had only offered you disrespect—and I suspect you've been enduring his disrespect for some time—then I would have handled the matter differently. He would have survived, though he kind of would have wished to die when I was done with him. But he would have survived.”
I picked up my pillow, hugging it to my chest as if fluffy cotton could shield me. My eyes were adjusted to the dark but I still had trouble picking out the shape of his features.
“So why did you kill him?”
A part of me whispered, You only care because you want to make sure Andrei isn't going to be a problem. You don't care about Larry.
“He attempted to sell information regarding your identity and our possible relationship to a Lord of the High Court.”
Every muscle in my body tensed. “And that would be a complication.”
He snorted. “They'll learn about you eventually. But for the brief time your presence is a secret, that knowledge is valuable and can be used against me in ways I'm now forced to defend against. It pisses me off. I still don't understand why people trouble me when I don't trouble them.”
It sounded an awful lot like “he made me do it/why can't we all just get along without me having to kill people” in a sort of serial killer fashion. My formally calm, gentle, slightly amused Andrei was growing moodier by the moment. His seething emotions settled in my chest, a litany of Cassanian words in the back of my mind.
I considered his words, reaching for context. “You're a High Lord. Which means you're part of the High Court. And you're old. I suppose you deal with a lot of politics.” Fae style politics, which we'd been told involved magic and death. Not just pettier things like bribery and corruption.
“I have duties to the Court which I can't set aside easily, or at all,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'll try to shield you as much as I can.”
I folded my legs underneath me. “That's the thing, Andrei. I know you want me to believe my life isn't going to change. That I can continue dancing in some kind of bubble you create for me where nothing in your life bleeds over?—”
“That is exactly what I want you to believe because that is the truth.”
I shook off his flinty, precise tone, the clarity of his certainty mingling with my more fractured emotions.
“Now who's being naive? The first thing Larry did—and I guess he must have recognized you somehow—was try to sell me out because even he, a dumb human, understood the ramifications. I don't even fully understand them. Who are you, Andrei?”
And how was I feeling what he felt? I’d thought I was imagining things at first, but certainty solidified. His emotions merged with mine—infrequently, but separate enough I felt them as his rather than my own. I’d accepted Mathen’s presence and comfort as if we were old friends, and I wouldn’t consider myself a person who opened up or trusted easily.
Soulbound, he’d said. Now I was starting to understand the practical implications of the connection.
The shadows around him dissipated as he stepped forward. “You said you wouldn't run from me, Hasannah.”
I frowned, breath slightly uneven. “I'm not running.”
“You are. I hear it in your voice. You cannot run from me.” He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “It wouldn't be safe. Until things between us are settled and I have better control over my emotions. . .it wouldn't be safe for you to run from me.”
“I don't know if it's safe to be with you either.”
I almost didn't want to say the words, afraid of his reaction. I hadn't been this afraid of him when we first met. . .but after seeing Larry, I'd be an idiot not to fear a man who housed a ruthless killer in his soul.
Not a man, of course, which was the problem. A Fae High Lord. They were all killers. Killing was what they did. For revenge, for power, for sport. . .
. . .for love?
There was something to be said for a culture where eliminating romantic rivals by murdering them was expected. Larry had threatened me in a sexual manner, would his death have been so brutal if he'd been a woman, or if the threat had been of a different nature?
“You don't think I can protect you?” he asked.
A slight shift in Andrei's tone warned me, not that I needed another warning, though reminders were always helpful.
“From others? I'm sure you can. From yourself? That's mostly what I'm afraid of.”
“I already promised you that?—”
“I know what you promised me.”
Wincing, I doubled down on the temerity that allowed me to interrupt him. But this was my life we were talking about. My dance. They were one and the same.
“I understand that promises aren't unbreakable Vows,” I said. “What happens when you decide I'm in enough danger that breaking your promise to me is the lesser of two evils?”
The heat of his anger scorched the atmosphere, pulsing in my chest. A sound close to a snarl rippled through the room and suddenly I was sprawled on my back, caged by the predator who crouched above me. I didn't move, calling on all my training not to provoke the monster by throwing myself off the bed.
His eyes glowed with inner power, blue-green gems piercing the darkness. He lowered his head, rubbing his cheek against mine, the silk of his shoulder-length hair caressing my skin. I shivered.
“You don't trust me,” he said, surprising me a little with how normal his voice now sounded. “I understand. I'll prove myself to you. But in the meantime, you won't run.”
And if she ran he would catch her and chain her to his bed and teach her why a little mortal girl shouldn’t disobey a High Lord. She might shriek and protest at first, but he would lick her until she liked it. Until she begged.
The emotional impression of that thought came through clearly, the sensual masculine petulance needing no translation. I rolled my eyes.
“I can see that, Hasannah.”
I sighed, and made a face. “What part of I have auditions for the Lord Issahelle's company did you not get? I'm not going anywhere. Well, I suppose I could pack a bag and sleep in the rehearsal studio until you went away, but. . .”
“But that's now a poor plan since you revealed it to me.” He didn't sound upset though, only amused. “Which tells me you weren't seriously considering it in any case. Thank you.” His thumb caressed my bottom lip. “Thank you.”
Thoroughly confused now, I frowned. “For what?”
His mouth replaced the thumb, hovering over my lips, his breath mingling with mine, but he didn't kiss me yet.
“For understanding how to take me to task in a way that wouldn't push me off the edge. I'm still. . .angry over the events of the evening.”
As I tried to unravel those words, his lips settled over mine, and with exquisite control he lowered his body, pressing me into the bed just enough to exert dominance, but not enough to smash all the air from my lungs.
He tasted of wine and fruit, his tongue slipping into my mouth in a slow, sensual invasion. His hand slid behind my head and tugged, angling me to his liking so he could deepen the kiss.
Desire. Barely leashed strength.
The edge of desperation.
All of this was in the kiss, and more. A taste, a scent, a feeling I couldn't decipher because I wasn't a man, and I wasn't High Fae, and I wasn't powerful. I didn't fully understand his concerns.
But I understood my body's reaction to him.
For a time, I could indulge this much. We weren’t at the point where I’d have to hit us with a cement bucket of reality yet.
My hips arched without my direction, my legs parting wide to accommodate him as a breathy moan left my throat. He uttered a guttural curse, grabbing my leg and wrapping it around his waist.
“I want to do things to you I didn't understand until now,” he said, his voice a lethal, sensual threat. “I'm almost afraid of myself. Of what I'm capable of if you don't want me, or if you wanted another.”
His weight, his heat, the care he took in not frightening me with his advance was a balm, the comfort of a thick blanket in winter, and the promise that when ripped away, that blanket would reveal hot, silky, aroused male primed for my pleasure.
“I'm not denying you,” I whispered. “But I just don't think this is going to end well.”
“ Nothing you fear will come to pass, Hasannah.” His hand tightened in my hair. “Nothing.”
I wanted him. More than anything, almost more than I wanted to dance and that flash of ferocious, lust filled instinct shocked me enough that I pulled my head away.
I shouldn't want anything more than dance. Not a man, especially not penetrative sex with a man.
“I feel your unhappiness,” he murmured against my mouth, but eased a bit of his weight off me. “What's wrong? It isn't my kiss. I also feel your desire.”
This time I wasn't stupid enough to be honest about my condition, to start the Phases that always led to me crying as the boyfriend I’d started to care about yelled at me in whatever his version of yelling was, then me picking myself up and walking away. Again.
Not stupid enough to reveal that despite knowing better, I was afraid he might become more important to me than anything else. He couldn't ever know how I felt.
I had no doubt he'd use it against me.
And had no doubt he knew how I felt anyway.