Gray Court (Black Hat Bureau Book 7), page 2
Daemons came in all shapes and sizes, but I hadn’t considered age a factor. It never crossed my mind that a child would view Colby as a peer and develop a crush. The impossibility of it hurt me, as if he had already broken her heart by moving on as he outgrew their friendship while time stood still for her.
“I meant that he’s here.” Sensing the turn of my mood, he wrapped his arms around me. “Moran was on patrol this morning and spotted him near the perimeter.”
A chill swept up my spine, regardless of the warmth encasing my back. “How did he find us?”
“Moran wants to give him time, says he’ll tell us when he’s ready.”
“And you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” He was dealing with a worried mom, not his battle-hardened Primipilus. He had to tread carefully with her to avoid issuing a direct order, one that ran counter to her natural inclinations, which was always a last resort. “Press Peleg, and she’ll become defensive. Wait him out, and the farm is in security limbo.”
If Peleg didn’t crack soon, Asa would have no choice, and it would destroy her trust in him.
“Let’s sic Colby on him.” I leaned hard into Peleg’s crush. “See if she can wheedle it out of him.”
Kids were faster to talk to their friends than their parents. Especially if what they had to say would get them in trouble.
“She is an excellent wheedler.” His lips twitched. “Probably from spending too much time with Clay.”
“If that doesn’t work, we go to Moran, and we get answers.” I exhaled. “Who was watching him?”
“He was left with his father.” He rested his chin on top of my head. “In Hael.”
“Maybe it’s a sticky custody agreement, and Peleg wanted to see his mother.”
Except that didn’t explain how he got here, or how he knew where here was unless she told him.
“That’s the general consensus.” Unease wove through his words, but we owed Moran the benefit of the doubt. “He’s a brave boy. Resourceful. He’s also, as you noticed, smitten with Colby.”
“How do we know he wasn’t sent to befriend her, lure her off the property, and surrender her to Stavros?”
“We don’t.” He didn’t sugarcoat the truth for me. “That’s why he’s not going anywhere until we have verified answers.”
“I want eyes on Colby at all times until Peleg goes home.” I turned in his arms. “I don’t want to stick my foot in it with Moran, but Colby is—”
“I know.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “She has a shadow, and so does he.”
“Yet you stayed out here.” I smoothed my hands over his damp shoulders. “Why?”
“I don’t presume to make decisions on Colby’s behalf for you.” His eyes grew heavy-lidded as I skimmed down his arms to hold his elegant hands. “Moran sent for me as soon as she returned with Peleg. The commotion must have woken Colby. She beat me to them, and she spotted him immediately. I couldn’t undo the damage, but I set precautions in place until you could be informed of the situation.”
More than likely, she had been up gaming with her friends from overseas hours past her bedtime.
No doubt she heard the ruckus, climbed into the clear acrylic tubes joining our houses, saw another kid, and zoomed off to introduce herself as fast as her wings would carry her.
The worst part?
It was my own fault.
I was the one who gave her free run of the farm. I was the one who told her no one here would harm her. And now I was the one stuck evaluating her new friend for ulterior motives.
Shaking off my parental fears, I reassured Asa that he had done no wrong. “I trust you.”
“Yes.” He brought my hand to his cheek and nuzzled into my palm. “But this is Colby.”
A thick knot of feeling—ick—clogged my throat, but I choked out the words. “I trust you…with Colby.”
The admission cost me as much as telling him I loved him for the first time. Maybe more. There was no difference between placing my life in his hands and allowing him to cradle hers too. Her life and mine were knotted by the familiar bond. Cut one thread, and you sliced us both. But it was important for him to know, to hear me say, that I had faith he would protect her for herself. Not only for me.
“Thank you.” He pressed soft kisses to my fingertips. “I know that was hard for you.”
“I prefer when other things are hard for me.” I slipped a finger past his lips, and my nail bumped the diamond stud piercing his tongue. “Perhaps you and I—?”
“Be gross later.” Clay pried us apart with an elbow to each of our chests. “Look at this now.”
“How do you always know,” I wondered for the millionth time, “the worst possible moment to interrupt us?”
“We all have our gifts.” He inserted himself between us. “But seriously.” He held up a gold foil envelope. “I’m not cockblocking for funsies.”
One of my eyebrows twitched at the harsh language, but Colby was off with Peleg, so no harm done. “Liar.”
“We just had a supply drop.” He aimed the words at me as he shoved the paper into Asa’s hand. “This came for you, Ace.”
The centuria were handling grocery and supply runs for the farm, using the simple tasks to practice blending in among humans, with varying degrees of success.
“Grandmother’s seal.” Asa smoothed his thumb over the golden wax circle imprinted with a blazing sun then lifted his gaze to mine. “We have our answer.”
For my sake, he had petitioned his grandmother, High Priestess Naeema, for an audience. The hope was, since she made the Tinkkit choker for me, she might have a theory as to why I blacked out before reducing the entire Toussaint coven to ash on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.
Granted, he went light on the details, in case the message was intercepted, to protect our secrets.
Like, oh, I don’t know. How I locked the Maudit Grimoire inside a djinn’s ruby. Or that his mother fastening the gift around my neck merged the Tinkkit choker and the others in as yet undetermined but deadly ways. That kind of information left a trail, and we couldn’t risk anyone following it back to me.
That book could not fall into the wrong hands, and neither could I.
Not while some combination of the three was willing to mass murder to protect me.
“Are you sure about this?” I placed my hand on his before his thumb slid under the flap. “I don’t want to make things worse for you.”
The scandal of his conception had branded him an outcast, and his daemon blood condemned him in fae eyes. Bringing home a witch with my past to meet the family wouldn’t do his reputation any favors.
“The worst is over.” His lips hitched on one side. “I have you now.”
And I would go Blay on them, twisting off heads like bottlecaps, before I let Asa’s pride take a hit on my behalf.
“Give me that.” Clay snatched it away and ripped it open. “We need an answer sometime today.”
We only had so much time before the director would wonder where his heir apparent had disappeared to, and I couldn’t afford to let him know why I was visiting the fae realm. If he discovered I had the grimoire, he wouldn’t rest until he killed me for it. Whatever value I held paled in comparison to the collection of dark and deadly magic. Spells so lethal Dad wrote them down to purge himself of their foulness.
Which would have been nice to know before I turned the grimoire into a fashion accessory.
“There’s good news, and there’s bad news.” A sharp line pinched Clay’s forehead. “Which do you want to hear first?”
“Why not mix it up?” I elected to rip off the Band-Aid slower, certain it wouldn’t hurt any less no matter what order he chose. “Tell us something good.”
“Your presence has been requested at a bunch of squiggly letters I assume means temple.”
“Temple?” I frowned at the change in venue. “I thought the goal was the fae court?”
“It was.” A ripple twitched in Asa’s jaw. “What’s the bad news?”
“Your mother.” Clay hesitated before passing the letter to him. “She’s missing.”
Without setting eyes on the page, Asa slipped the paper in his back pocket and strode off into the trees.
He didn’t look back.
“Give him a minute.” Clay offered me the envelope. “Let him wrap his head around this.”
The letter was addressed to Most Beloved Grandson, but there were characters beneath those words I couldn’t read.
“That’s the family motto,” Clay explained after noticing my confusion. “To be rather than seem to be.”
“How could you read that, if you couldn’t decipher the name of the temple?”
“How can I snoop through Ace’s correspondence with impunity if he knows I’m fluent?”
Old as he was, I doubted a language existed that Clay didn’t speak or at least read. “Any particular reason why you’re snooping?”
“Stavros.”
Cold dread swooped through my belly, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. “He wrote to Asa?”
“He’s a king, Dollface.” He rolled his eyes. “His secretary, Bartholomew, handles his correspondence.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.” I already regretted playing along. “What does Bartholomew have to say?”
“Mew-Mew, as I like to think of him, says that Stavros is willing to advance Ace half his inheritance if Ace cedes all rights to you as his object of fascination.”
“You should have let me sleep in.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How did Asa respond?”
“He balled it up, smoothed it out, tore it into little pieces, then tossed it in a burn barrel.” He tapped the side of his head. “See? Aren’t you glad I snooped? Otherwise, we’d never know your fair market value.”
“Yes. Thank you, Clay. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing I’m worth more than a few cows or a fast horse.”
“You’re welcome,” he said without a hint of guile.
“How many times has his father reached out?”
“Mew-Mew writes once a week,” he confessed. “The letters started after Stavros met you in person.”
No wonder Asa exited the conversation without another word.
We were going to talk about this. Oh, yes. As soon as he got his head on straight.
The childlike fear of Stavros abducting his mother again had lived in Asa all his life. In his mind, it had finally come to terrifying fruition. Worse, she went missing after he had denied and then ignored his father. Repeatedly. As if a single thing he said or did would make a dent in Stavros’s sense of entitlement to possess any woman he wanted through any means necessary. But I knew Asa.
He would consider the abduction as retribution for those slights.
He would take responsibility for the crime against his mother. View it as failure to protect those he loved from harm. And then he would stew in his guilt, marinate in his shame, simmer in his turmoil—add crisis idiom here—alone.
As someone who often blamed themselves for every bad thing that happened, I could sympathize.
That didn’t mean I would let him get away with it.
CHAPTER TWO
Asa hadn’t wandered far, and I didn’t have to search hard to locate him. The bright, coppery tang of hot blood and the brutal pounding of a heartbeat I knew as well as my own led me straight to him.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.
I traced the outline of the dowel in my pant leg and sent up a silent prayer I got him to see reason without having to zap it into him. Common sense dictated you avoided spelling loved ones with an untested wand.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.
“Asa.”
The glamour he wore every single day of his life, to make himself less, to make himself more palatable, hung off him in tatters.
Wicked fangs dented his bottom lip as he sucked in sharp breaths between his teeth. Thick horns gleamed high on his head, and his long black hair hung free to his waist.
He was beautiful.
So, so beautiful.
And he hurt loud enough I heard his pain as if he were roaring with it rather than swallowing it down.
“I screwed up.” I froze when my assessment reached the bloody pulp left of his knuckles. “I should have thought to protect your family as well as mine.”
The tree he’d chosen as a punching bag had lost its outer layer of bark, and its raw flesh was painted crimson from Asa’s brutal strikes.
A long, long time later, he found his voice. “No one can plan for every contingency.”
“You warned me.” I took a careful step closer. “Repeatedly.” I saw exposed bone and swallowed hard. “You cautioned Stavros would take no for an answer right up until he didn’t, and I didn’t listen.”
Had Stavros done this? Most likely. But I kept any doubts to myself.
Asa wasn’t listening to anything except the voice in his head taunting him, blaming him.
“No.” Crimson dripped onto the leaves beneath him. “You’re not responsible for my father’s actions.”
“If I had thought about your weak spots instead of focusing on my own, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” A stab of genuine guilt told me that much of my speech rang true. “It was foolish of me to believe I could keep blowing off Stavros without repercussions.”
“Rue.” His haunted gaze rose to mine. “This isn’t your fault.”
Slowly, worried he might turn his back on me again, I approached him. “Then it isn’t yours either.”
He flung the punch so fast, with so much hatred, I didn’t see him move.
Thwack.
The tree shuddered, bark sprinkled onto the dirt, and leaves rained down on us.
“Please stop beating up the tree.” I gave up on the gentle approach and prepared to get physical. “It doesn’t deserve this any more than you do.”
“Father took her.” As his chin dipped, dark hair curtained his face. “Again.”
“First of all—” I gathered his ruined hands in mine, “—we don’t know that for certain.”
More than likely, yes, he was responsible. But we had plenty of enemies to choose from these days.
“Yes,” he growled, “I do.”
“Secondly, if he is behind this, he’s still responsible for his own actions.”
“He wants you, I won’t let him have you, so he took her. To punish me.”
That was Stavros logic in a nutshell, yes. No argument here.
“I hate to break it to you, handsome.” I cradled his flushed cheek in one palm and fed a different magic into him. The equivalent of a cup of lavender and chamomile tea, with hints of catnip and peppermint. “I’m not yours to give. Just as she was never his to take.”
“You don’t understand.” He crushed his eyes closed. “The other fae never let me forget what I cost her.”
“The other fae should have been punched in the face every time they vented their disgust for your father at a boy who had nothing whatsoever to do with his conception.” A thread of anger wove through me. “Your mother made a hard choice when she kept you, but she chose you. She wanted some good to come from what happened to her. The others should have lifted her up, not torn you down.”
“Weeds thrive where they’re least wanted.”
“I don’t follow.” Unable to let him suffer when I could help, I focused on his wounds, forcing magic through him to mend the damage. “Are you calling yourself a weed?”
“Grandmother used to tell me that,” he said softly, the fight draining out of him as the spell took root. “An old proverb about surviving in the face of adversity.”
“Then I’m a weed too.”
The idea I was a survivor was foreign, and I wasn’t sure it was the word I would have chosen.
Had I survived? Yes.
Had fewer people survived me? Also yes.
When he noticed I was reversing his catharsis, he flattened his lips, but I cut off his protest.
“I like your hands.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “I have better uses for them than that tree can dream of.”
A furrow dug across his brow, leaving three perfect rows of self-loathing. “I could have prevented this.”
“As soon as you stick a shiny red bow on my head,” I pretended to agree, “he’ll release her.”
“That’s not what I meant.” His fingers closed over mine. “I would never—”
“I know.” The burden of his origin cast shadows behind his eyes, and it broke my heart to see him so tormented by his past. “Believe me, I know.”
He would slit his father’s throat and seize his throne while it was still warm to protect me.
“Talk to me about the temple.” I jostled him when he let the quiet stretch too long. “How is it different from the court?”
“The temple is Grandmother’s domain.” He flexed his hands, his knuckles pink from new growth. “Our reception will be less hostile there.”
“Less hostile is good.”
“I would welcome a challenge right about now.”
“I could zap you until you see sense.” I would never convince him he wasn’t to blame otherwise. “I don’t want to, but I will.”
“I can always gauge your declarations of love by their promise of violence.”
“Yeah, well, I’m still working on the feeling-my-feelings thing. It’s gross, to be honest. And confusing. Why so many emotions? Hunger and lust are plenty. Really, they’re about the same thing. Just two different shades of need.”
“Hunger and lust aren’t emotions.” He tilted his head to one side. “They’re…feelings.”
“Hmm.” I tilted my head right back. “You feel feelings. Doesn’t that make them an emotion?”
“No?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I’m so relaxed,” he confessed, “I’m considering using that stump as a pillow and taking a long nap.”
“Good.” I slid my hand in his then led him back to our tiny house. “Shower and then sleep.”
The steps were tricky, but I got him inside without him face-planting. I called that a win.
“We need to have a talk…” he yawned, “…about you using magic on me without my permission.”
