One such as her is a rare prize.”

  “I don’t want to think on courtly politics just yet, Kathel. For now it’s enough to know she is my mate. I am bound to her in the way of her people.”

  The old cat’s tails thumped against the floorboards. “Wise you are, young one. Your heart has to be willing for the soul binding to work. You’d not like an eternity tied to someone who only brings you misery.”

  Cilia interrupted. “As much as I enjoy being talked over and ignored, I thought the point of this meeting was to find a way to help Stella and Max.”

  Kathel dropped his head back and roared with his laughter. “Such fire! Such spirit! If you don’t claim her, I swear I will.”

  Fiach growled, then thought better of it. “If you know what she is, old one, then you realize none other can claim her.”

  Kathel’s laughter subsided. “My Lord, I will pretend ignorance of her origins, and you would be wise to do so as well. If the Morag have truly united, then who do you think Harailt will come after?”

  “Cilia.” Fear seized him. Harailt lived to acquire the rare and exotic. If his father’s plans were thwarted, the demon lord would be certain to destroy the current object of his obsession so others couldn’t enjoy it either.

  Kathel nodded. “Now as to these humans…”

  “We have to save them.” Cilia said.

  “Och aye, we’ll save them.” Kathel looked to Fiach. “There’ll be a price for this.”

  Fiach sobered. “There’s always a price. The question is, what will yours be?”

  The old cat stretched and rolled over, exposing its stomach. “I expect a good scratch on the belly would balance the scale.”

  “Kathel, I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “What’s life without a little risk?”

  Fiach held up his hands and turned to Cilia. She looked wary. “It’s your decision, Cilia. The terms are yours to accept.” Then he looked at the lounging feline, “But the debt owned is mine.”

  A guttural purr punctuated Kathel’s laughter. “You always were a quick one.” He rested his large head on the floor and looked at Cilia through upside down eyes.

  She walked slowly until her toes were almost pressed into Kathel’s side before dropping to her knees. She reached out a timid hand to the black fur of his stomach. Her eyes widened and she added a second hand. “Your fur feels like silk.”

  Kathel’s pleasured purr filled the room. “Oh lass, that feels so good.”

  Cilia stopped stroking the blackened pelt and Fiach watched as her eyes glazed over just before she collapsed, her head cracking against the planks before he could reach her.

  Kathel rolled to his feet to investigate.

  He nudged her with his large head and licked across her cheek with his sandpaper tongue. Fiach slammed into the side of the large cat and knocked him away from Cilia and into the wall. Kathel jumped to his feet and roared in fury. “I’ll forgive you once, for the lass’s sake, but touch me again and I’ll not be so kind.”

  Cilia groaned. Fiach gave his back to the cat and went to scoop her into his arms. He brushed the hair from her face and waited. When her eyes opened, she focused on Kathel.

  “You’re the death cat. I guess being a cat of nine tails should have tipped me off.”

  “It was a dangerous gamble I took for both our sakes. No one save the Lady, and those of her line, can touch me without paying their life.” He gave a curt nod to Fiach.

  “The price of our bargain has been satisfied.”

  Cilia twisted and punched Fiach hard in the shoulder.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  “You let me touch the death cat! I could have died!”

  Fiach didn’t put up a fight, he just let her slap and hit until she grew tired. Kathel watched the exchange with interest.

  “If it makes you feel better lass, the boy couldn’t tell you. Once the price was set, his tongue was bound from swaying your decision. You had to be willing to accept the price, and you would have hesitated or refused had you known your life swung in the balance.”

  His eyes slid to Fiach. “It had to be an equal exchange, the risk of your life by touching me for the risk of my life by helping you. Without that my oath would be meaningless.

  Besides, the lad took on your debt.”

  “So?” she asked.

  “So if anyone had forfeited their life today it would have been him, not us.”

  Cilia blanched. “How could you let him risk that?”

  Fiach interrupted. “Cilia, Kathel can only speak and act as he does now when he’s been summoned by a member of my mother’s court. Otherwise he’s wild fae. Feral and without need of such refinements.”

  Cilia’s shoulders bowed under the weight of their confessions.

  “Its true, lass. I’m not called the death cat for altruistic reasons.” He chuckled, but the laugh was forced. Fiach understood better than most how the untamed beast of Kathel’s nature despised being forced to heel. He also knew the higher awareness of the old cat was grateful for any respite from the bloodlust that filled his days.

  “I’m so sorry, Kathel. I didn’t know.”

  The black fur of his shoulders shifted in a feline shrug. “It’s all right. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Are you ready, lass?” Kathel’s resonant purr rumbled next to Cilia’s ear.

  “I’m ready.” She held out a hand to Fiach. “Ready?”

  “As we’ll ever be,” he replied cryptically.

  Against her better judgment, Cilia burrowed her hands in Kathel’s soft fur as Fiach’s fingers tightened on hers for an instant. Her ears popped as a kaleidoscope of colors flashed into her line of sight. She blinked to clear away the tiny sparkles. She was disoriented and swayed on her feet a little before she realized her palm still rested on Kathel’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “You need never apologize for bringing this old cat the pleasure of such a kind touch.”

  Fiach pulled on her hand as much, she thought, to separate her from Kathel as to point her attention toward their goal. She took a moment to look around. In the fading light, Faerie was breathtaking. Rolling green hills were filled with meadows and dappled with trees. Wildflowers stretched as far as the eye could see. On her right a majestic mountain range rose up from the lush fields and cast forbidding shadows across the landscape. To the left were a series of smaller, more rounded hills complete with a lazy waterfall that rushed into the basin of a small lake. The natural beauty was awe-inspiring and Cilia was tempted to reach out and see if the scene before her was real or imagined.

  Surely no place was so perfect. Of its own volition, her hand stretched down to caress the bright red blossom of a nearby flower. The petals were flawless, not a single bruise or blight. And the fragrance was intoxicating.

  Fiach’s fingers curved around her wrist and folded her arm to her side. “Touch nothing,” he warned. “Nothing in Faerie is as it seems.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” Then he slipped into the lengthening shadows and disappeared.

  Kathel stalked past her, his long fluid strides bringing him past the flower Cilia had just admired. When the cat neared, the flower hissed and ejected darts from its center that embedded in Kathel’s foreleg. His lips curled over his teeth as he pulled each spine from his paw. Cilia leaned down to help, but Kathel growled until she stepped away. He spit a mouth full of small plant needles onto the ground and spoke with an evident slur.

  “They’re poison, lass.”

  “Will you be all right?” she asked.

  Kathel finished his chore and licked the wound clean. “I’ll live, which is more than I could say if it had continued to stalk you.”

  Cilia paled. “It was hunting me?” she squeaked.

  “Och aye. The little buggers play with your mind. Make you see enchanted meadows and such. Make you long to pick a piece of it to take home with you. When you’re near enough, and your only thought is to touch some small piece of nature, it expels poisonous darts. Most things die immediately.”

  “But not you?” she asked as she looked him over, anxious for any signs of decline.

  “You can’t kill what’s already dead.”

  She swallowed. “What happens to the bodies of its victims?” She stared fixedly at the docile-looking flower.

  Kathel looked away. “The poison is a neurotoxin that immobilizes by shutting down the communication between your muscles and your brain. The myotoxin in the venom melts away your flesh until a nutrient-rich liquid is released into the ground.”

  “The plants in Faerie make their own fertilizer?”

  Kathel grunted. “It’s why you don’t see any wildlife around these parts. Only the inner cities of Faerie are warded against this type of attack. If you wander to the outlands, you’re on your own.”

  Fiach returned, moving silent as a wraith through the foliage and back to her side. He saw the blood on Kathel’s leg and grimaced as his eyes found hers. She could guess what he was thinking. If it had been her, and without Kathel’s intervention it would have been, she would be dead. Fiach wrapped her in a bone-crushing embrace.

  “Firebird,” he whispered against her hair. “Please be more careful. We’ve just found one another, don’t take this time away from me.”

  Her throat constricted. “I’ll be careful, Fiach. Kathel is the best guard cat I could ask for.”

  Kathel winced at the almost canine comparison, but a quick scratch behind his ears restored his spirits. Death magic rolled off his silky midnight coat. Small touches were safe enough, but prolonged contact made her body lock and drag down the black spiral of infinity. It was worth the risk to see such a silly grin on the face of something so fierce.

  Apparently no one with immunity to his curse took into consideration that Kathel, like his housecat cousins, liked a good scratch behind the ears and a long stroke down his satiny back.

  Fiach covered his mouth and shook with silent laughter at Kathel’s expense.

  “Were you taking a stroll or did you find anything of use?” Kathel asked acerbically.

  Fiach pointed to the grass a dozen yards away. “If you look closely, you’ll see the grass isn’t moving.”

  “Aye, I see it now.”

  Cilia squinted, her vision the weakest of the three. “What does it mean?”

  “It means that someone has gone through a lot of trouble to make a complex glamour but forgotten or skipped the steps to give the illusion movement.”

  Kathel pondered that. “It would make sense. None born of the fae would forget something so rudimentary. A demon though, with no proper training and no small gift, could do this.” He lifted his nose to scent the air. “I smell nothing but us three.”

  Cilia had wondered about that as well. The only smell she’d encountered thus far had been the illusionary effects of the poisonous flower. “That means the glamour is blocking out the scent. Whoever constructed it isn’t skilled enough to differentiate, so they chose to block out all the scents instead of risking the wrong one being revealed.”

  Fiach squeezed her shoulder and dropped a kiss to her cheek. Kathel chortled.

  “You’ve a sharp mind, lass. Glad I am that you’re on my side this day.”

  “So how do we do this?” she asked.

  Fiach flicked a wrist in the direction of the illusion and whispered beautiful melodic words in time with the motion. The lush, primitive landscape fell away to reveal a large gray fortress constructed of coarsely hewn stones. Though several hundred yards away, Cilia could make out small black-skinned creatures guarding a deep indention nestled in the side of the high walls.

  “Darkies.” Kathel grunted. “I’ll take them. Fiach, you get your woman inside safely and I’ll join with you there.”

  Before Cilia could offer words of luck or safekeeping, the massive cat was gone. She watched his graceful leonine lope as he neared the ominous stronghold. The Darkies offered no resistance when they saw the cat approach. Kathel batted one to the ground with his large paw then turned to rip the throat out of the second. As Kathel’s lungs labored under the strain of rising bloodlust, the first rose up and lunged forward. A loud crunch carried to where Cilia and Fiach lay hidden and she knew that the death cat had broken the other creature’s neck.

  She couldn’t stop a tear from rolling down her cheek. Fiach wiped the moisture away with the pad of his thumb.

  “There’s no cause to cry for them. They were under Arvel’s influence. They chose the monster they served and have paid the debt owed for it.”

  Cilia caught his hand. “The tears are for Kathel. He deserves better than this.”

  “He does,” Fiach agreed. “But for now, he’s risking himself to keep our route open.

  We have to move.”

  He gathered Cilia to his side and they sprinted towards the stone encampment.

  Before they reached the safety of the walls, arrows began to rain down around them.

  Arvel must have posted reinforcements hidden under the canopy of trees just beyond the field. Fiach cursed and pressed Cilia tighter until she was almost running underneath him.

  Another step closer and he grunted, his steps faltering. He swung an arm behind his back and when he brought it around, he held an angry looking arrow coated in his blood.

  Without a word, his large black wings unfurled. He cinched an arm snugly around Cilia’s waist as he flexed downward and soared into the sky. The arrows still volleyed around them, but in the air, Fiach’s speed gave them an advantage even with her added weight slowing him down.

  Within seconds they were at the entrance. Fiach dipped down and stretched his great black wings across the darkening sky to catch the wind and slow their descent. The landing was still rough, much worse than their first one had been. He fell from the sky the last couple of feet and ran with her tucked tightly against his chest.

  Kathel was still hunched over the bloodied bodies of the butchered Darkie guards.

  Cilia called out to him, but when his eyes lifted they were red rimmed and unseeing. It was like she had waved a steak at a starved lion. The fact Fiach was running triggered Kathel’s urge to hunt prey and bear it to the ground. He tensed, his muscles rippling, as he prepared to attack them.

  “Fiach!” she screamed.

  “Almost there,” he panted.

  He leveraged his shoulder against the heavy door on impact and forced it open as he towed her inside and slammed a heavy metal bar into place. Cilia leaned against Fiach as his back rested on the heavy iron barrier. They heard Kathel’s crazed snarls and scratches as he flung himself against the door, lost to his rabid pursuit of prey.

  Uncertain of what lay ahead, Fiach shoved away from the door and tucked Cilia behind him. When she stepped around to his back, she couldn’t stop the muffled cry that left her throat. His back was burned, badly, the feathers singed away, revealing exposed bone and ripped flesh.

  “Fiach, your back!”

  He dismissed it with an impatient wave of his hand. Cilia kept obediently behind him to placate his desire to protect her. Something sizzled and popped by her ear. She squinted against the darkness and saw that wherever Fiach’s blood had touched the surface of the metal, it boiled over and evaporated. She wondered what horrible curse had been laid upon the old metal. “Iron.”

  Fiach nodded. She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud. So it was true then. Legend said that creatures of Faerie hated iron and that it could be used to harm them. For once, it looked like the legends were right.

  Intent on checking Fiach’s wounds, she diverted her attention to the mangled flesh and feathers plastered to his back with blood. Something whispered through her mind.

  Another memory fought to surface. Cilia’s head throbbed as new knowledge trickled in and taught her exactly what to do. Her hands poised over the worst of Fiach’s wounds.

  Instinct took over and cool white flames sprung from her fingertips. She pressed them to Fiach’s back and he roared in pain.

  She smoothed her fingers over ever feather, every patch of exposed skin until she saw the white flames begin to recede. Fiach’s own fire caught in a protective shield. His fire called hers and Cilia’s skin erupted in flames. Gone was the pure white light of healing, and in its place her blue Phoenix fire blazed.

  Fiach swung around and lifted her off the ground as his mouth settled over hers. His eyes were black, his beautiful wings full and well, and he was alit with red flames that rivaled the sun. It almost hurt her eyes to look at him.

  He crushed her into the nearest wall and hiked her legs around his waist. In a moment of perfect clarity, she understood. The Phoenix within him had fully risen and it wanted its mate. She forced her legs to the floor and removed her shoes and pants. Fiach watched her, his black eyes glittering, and when she finished, his clothing disappeared.

  Gone as if by his will.

  He pinned her back against the cool stones as he lifted her hips. His cock drove into her pussy just as her legs circled his waist. He grunted and was lost to the new carnal creature he had become. Inside, her Phoenix exalted in his possession, seeking to share instead of consume.

  His thrusts found their rhythm and Cilia crawled up the wall as he ravaged her with the most forceful mating she could imagine. Nothing could be so hard and so perfect.

  The sounds of their damp flesh slapping together filled her head. She no longer cared what danger lay ahead, as long as he kept driving into her desperate core. She couldn’t stop the pleasure long enough to sort through the words of adoration he pressed against her neck. He nibbled along the skin, pleading softly in a melodic language she couldn’t understand. His question was as obvious as his desire had been. He needed to feed. The earlier blood loss had made him weak, and he needed to taste her strength to be fully restored.

  She pulled the long black and crimson hairs away from her throat and tossed them over her opposite shoulder in anticipation. Fiach murmured his appreciation even as he struck. The sharp points of his fangs buried in the tender flesh as he held her closer. She gasped as the smaller pain gave way to greater pleasure. The cadence of his thrusts took on a new edge of desperation. He was pushing deeper and deeper until she wondered that there was anywhere left to go.

 

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