5
Alarie
I hated going back to House Kearing. The walk there, the walk back, everything about it just reminded me of Stefan. Lady Kearing invited me over to give me what turned out to be a useless update on what they had not found out about Stefan. They still knew nothing about where he had run off to. Stefan had fled when he was unable to contain me in his quarters. I’m told he left pretty much everything he owned but his guitar. Luke told me that Jay almost immediately traveled to House Mouchard, Lila Tragon’s maiden House, to personally search for Lila and Stefan. Neither was anywhere to be found.
On my walk back from House Kearing to House Rein, I tried not to think about Stefan or about where I would be right now if he had succeeded in subduing me. An involuntary chill overtook my body, and I shrugged it off, then slipped clumsily on a cobblestone.
Seconds before I would have gracelessly hit the ground, a man caught me, his hands tightly grasping my arms. I stared up into the man’s brown eyes laced with lesser fae gold. I blinked. His eyes were no longer brown. They were the lightest blue and gray now. I shook my head like that would help throw off my confusion.
“What are you?” the man asked, looking down at me.
“Don’t you mean who are you?” I laughed, awkwardly righting myself.
“Sure. Let’s start with that,” the man replied, making sure I was steady on my feet before removing his hands that were supporting me.
Taking a step back and getting a view of more than the man’s face, I was surprised to find that he looked primarily lesser fae. Except for his notably light high fae eyes, he showed no other sign of his mixed blood. He was taller than me, but not by much, with spiky blue hair and broad shoulders. His ears were slightly pointed at the top, a characteristic that almost entirely belonged to the lesser fae, not the mixed fae. And I couldn’t place his accent.
“Alarie Armand,” I replied, holding my hand out to him. “Senior counselor to House Dumont. And you are?”
“Just passing through,” he said, taking my hand in his own. “Armand? Is that a northern name?” he asked, eyeing me analytically.
“North of here, but no, not northern. Just Harborview,” I replied.
I eyed the ground, searching for the source of my clumsiness. Water covered the cobblestones surrounding the grand fountain between House Kearing and House Heroux. If I hadn’t been so distracted by my thoughts about Stefan, I would have remembered that this was a regular hazard on my walk home.
I looked back up to find his startling light eyes intently focused on me. “Thanks for catching me, uh…” I paused, realizing I had not gotten my savior’s name.
The strange man kept looking at me in a way that was not unfriendly. If anything, it was too friendly. He continued to eye me like he, alone, had discovered something beautiful and wild.
“Look, I have to run. Maybe I’ll see you around some time,” I said, beginning to turn back in the direction I was heading, making note to skirt around the slippery cobblestones this time.
He gently grabbed my hand before I was out of reach and bowed formally. Looking up at me through his eyebrows, he laid a polite, quick kiss on the top of my hand.
“You can plan on it, little star,” he said.
I hustled back to meet Rhett, not looking over my shoulder at the man I could feel watching me as I walked away.
Did he just call me little star?
* * * *
“What’s that look for?” Rhett asked as I walked into his study.
“I just had the weirdest interaction,” I said, my mind still on the man with the washed-out hazel eyes.
I explained what happened with me almost falling and being caught by the strange man.
“And then I think he called me ‘little star,’” I said like I didn’t believe it myself.
I didn’t mention how I thought the man’s eyes had changed colors from brown and gold to an icy hazel. I didn’t want Rhett to think I had bumped my head.
“That doesn’t sound all that surprising. You’re always wearing those damn high heels, Al. Honestly, I’m surprised you don’t twist your ankle more often,” Rhett said.
I sighed.
“Easy for you to say. You tower over everyone,” I said.
I came by my shorter stature naturally. I inherited it from the lesser fae half of my blood.
“I don’t know. There was just something different about him. I couldn’t pin where his accent was from either,” I said.
“What did he look like? Maybe I know him,” Rhett asked.
“Light hazel eyes, spiky blue hair, shorter than you but taller than me,” I answered.
“Almost everyone falls into that last category, Al,” he teased. “Look, he was probably someone new from up north. We have a lot of new faces around now,” Rhett said. “But if you think something was off with this fellow, then I’ll send for someone to search him out now.” He rose from the seat he’d taken.
Rhett could have a quick chat with one of the guards stationed at the manor, and the odd man would be found. But that was just it… He was odd, perhaps unsettling, but I didn’t feel that he had done anything to deserve guards hunting him down. That seemed too harsh for the man who had been nice enough to stop and save me from taking a fall.
“No. I don’t think that’s necessary, Rhett,” I said, calling him off.
Rhett eyed me wearily. “Okay but point him out to me next time you see him,” Rhett followed up cautiously. With suspicions of traitors around, we all had to be careful. “I’m sure we’ll see him around again.”
“That’s what he said,” I whispered, dismissing the odd interaction from my mind. “Speaking of run-ins, she was too far away for me to say ‘hi’, but I saw James on my way here.”
James and Rhett had a bit of an on-again-off-again relationship in the past. But they had been “on” for a while. So much so that I had not seen Rhett with another woman for months. In Rhett-time, that was like years of monogamy.
“How’s that going?” I asked nebulously.
“Good,” Rhett replied.
But I could tell that there was something my friend was holding back.
“Just good? What’s the matter? Your game going soft, old man?” I teased.
James was older than me by many decades but still closer to me in age than she was to Rhett.
“My game is great. As good as it has ever been, and I’ll prove it to you if you call it soft again,” he said with a threatening, feline grin.
I held my hands up in concession, giving him a disarming grin.
“It’s just… Well, Al, it’s James. She won’t let me prove it to her,” he said.
“You mean you two haven’t…” I spluttered in disbelief.
What were they up to the hours they stayed locked inside his room together? No. I didn’t want to ask. If I asked, Rhett would be more than happy to tell me every little detail.
“Nope. I mean, we do other fun stuff,” he said, wagging his eyebrows exaggeratedly up and down. “But she doesn’t believe in sex before marriage, and, well, I don’t believe in marriage before sex.”
“Woah, Rhett! Marriage? Does that mean that you think she is, you know, your mate?” I asked.
“I…” He tilted his head back and forth. “Yeah, I kind of do, Al.”
I gasped in a small, surprised hiccup of air.
“But with my power in its diminished state, I can’t trust my judgment. I have to know for certain, Al. I can’t risk it. Not again,” he whispered.
I couldn’t blame him for wanting to be sure after how things went with the last woman he thought might be the one. It would have been too personal of a question if it were anyone but Rhett. But Rhett had always been very open about his magic…and sex.
“Rhett, how does sex fit into finding your mate? Other than the obvious reasons, I mean. Can you really tell just by having sex with someone whether they are your mate?” I asked.
“There is just one out there for me, Al. One incredibly lucky ass woman waiting for me to find them and claim them as my own,” he said with a disarming smile. “Sex and magic, for some, have always been closely aligned. Lovers let their guard down during sex making it easier to be exposed to another’s power. For me, it is even more so. When a woman opens herself to my magic during sex, this enables me to tell if they are my mate,” he explained earnestly.
“Does James know all of this?” I asked.
“Yeah, she knows.” He sighed. “But even when we do, ya know,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows, “she doesn’t let her guard down enough for me to be able to truly judge. My reputation around the Court on this front, as you know, isn’t great. She knows she wouldn’t be the first woman I’ve told something less than true to get into bed.”
He gave me a self-deprecating grin that would drop the pants right off most women. There was the charming bastard I loved. I gave him a small chuckle. I still had a morbid curiosity regarding how I would hold up against Rhett’s abilities. I had witnessed first-hand how he turned almost every woman around him into a googly-eyed, giggling mess. I was thankful to be spared from that indecency due to a combination of both Rhett and Luke using their powers to protect me. But I still wanted to know…
“Rhett, just let me see you. All of you. Just this once. Before all your powers really do come back and it’s truly overwhelming,” I solicited.
“Well, first of all, I have no idea if my powers are ever going to return to their full capacity. And second, Al… I don’t know,” he replied reluctantly.
No doubt, he was thinking if Luke were here, he would thoroughly be on team no way in hell. But Luke wasn’t here, and he wasn’t my keeper.
I knew it might be a bad idea, but it couldn’t hurt for just a moment, just to see. I stared at him obstinately, waiting for his final answer.
“Okay, okay,” Rhett conceded.
It was like he removed a damper from over his entire body. His features came into a sharp focus, making him more beautiful. Too beautiful. I stared at him like I could peer through whatever it was that made him seem so different from my friend, who I was used to. I had always thought Rhett was perfect, but whatever he had done had made his face seem even more perfect. He was gorgeous. He was compelling. But that was it. That was all I felt. I made an exaggerated effort out of patting my body down, checking myself over to make sure I was okay.
“Well, good try, anyway,” I joked.
Rhett arched a single eyebrow at me and slid the damper on his power back in place.
“Interesting,” he murmured, giving me a suspicious overly cheerful smile.