Chapter 8

Trickles of blood lined Iggy's neck from where Beatrice's fingernails scored his flesh, and he let them drip. A part of me wanted to lap up that blood, and that part warred with the bond I shared with my partner, my love, who was watching the Master Hexen with a quiet fury that made me wish I could say or do something to defuse the crisis.

"You dare?" Beatrice snarled. She was a vision of terror in her torn medieval gown. She'd been somewhere formal from the looks of that dress and the fire opal and diamond choker that she wore. The dress was filthy and torn, but she looked no less regal for it.

"Dare?" Iggy echoed. "I was summoned from death by this hexen. She called me from my grave, Bea."

To say that Beatrice was furious was underselling the level of rage she all but radiated. Beatrice paced like a caged predator, and her eyes turned red as if blood had actually filled them. "She is my family. Are you fool enough to start a war with me, human?"

"Human?" Iggy scoffed, straightening his shirt as if he wasn't at all intimidated by the rage rolling off Beatrice. Whether or not it was an act, I had no idea. He was powerful enough to hide me from the queen of the draugr in this part of the world and my bonded fae spouse. That took a level of juice that deserved a bit of arrogance.

"I'm not a bone to fight over," I started.

Iggy waved my words away. "That's what you choose to insult me with, Bea? Human? We both began that way. She didn't. You know she's more than us. If Chester gets ahold of her . . . " He took a breath, as if the thought he had was too dark to ponder. "I owe her for my life."

"So you bound her? Daughter of my daughter! Mine! What sort of payment is that?" Beatrice snarled, lip curled like an actual animal.

"Please don't bite him," I whispered.

"I'm not daft enough to drink a Master Hexen's blood carelessly! Did you lean nothing with the way you enthralled Chadwick? Or Odem?" Beatrice swung her rage-filled gaze toward me, and I was reminded that my draugr genetics originated from something far more primal than I liked to consider of late. We had developed a cultural love for vampires, and the draugr queen often played into that with her old-world dress and manner.

She was still the monster that humans had hid from for centuries.

She was still the creature that tore bodies limb from limb.

And I felt a prickle of fear.

"If you attack him," I said, sounding far calmer than I felt, "I'll have to defend him. Please don't make me do that."

It was as close to pleading as I'd ever come with any draugr,and the fact that she was my ancestor didn't take the sting of begging away.

"You've enthralled two draugr already?" Iggy prompted.

I looked at Iggy, but I didn't feel a whole lot like answering his question. If this was what Tres felt like because of his bond with me, I owed him an apology. I wanted to defend Iggy, protect him, and yes, a part of my mind that I wasn't admitting in public, wanted to lick the blood on his throat.

It's not real.

It's not my desire.

Instead, I said, "I'm not sure what you did, but I hold grudges like it's my fucking job, Iggy. You would be wise to remember that, to ponder it, and undo this."

Beatrice straightened her dust-covered dress and seemingly straightened her temper in the motion. "He cannot. You drank spell-infused blood."

"Not by choice!" I looked at Eli. "I didn't bite him. I swear it."

If I was the easily embarrassed type, this would be a thoroughly mortifying moment, but I was in a room with a man I resurrected, my dead grandmother, and my beloved. And I was as blunt as a drunk co-ed sometimes. "He starved me and then there was a glass, well, a mug really with bourbon and—"

"I trust you," Eli said simply, cutting off my rambling explanation. Then he leveled a look at Iggy that would make a seasoned warrior piss his pants.

And I remembered that Eli could read me.

He can feel my desire for another man.

"Eli . . ." I reached out, and he squeezed my hand briefly.

Then he turned icy fury back to Iggy. "I recommend you start explaining your reasoning, Blackwood, because while I may not look as threatening as the young Lady Beatrice"—he glanced at her and bobbed his head briefly in respect before stepping toward Iggy—"I am not as tolerant. You are a mayfly in comparison to the fae, and you have attacked a sovereign nation by kidnapping and enslaving our future queen."

"I have afforded her my protection." Iggy frowned at everyone. "She is my—"

Before the word was even fully formed, Eli had Iggy pinned to the wall, using the draugr ability to flow that he'd gained after we bonded. The earthen wall had an indent in the shape of Iggy's body now. "No. She is very much not your anything."

I'd thought I'd seen Eli angry, but in that moment, I realized how much I owed him an apology. My gentle fae lover might speak like a poet and treat me as if I was made of the finest artisan-blown glass, but he was still a man with a possessive streak that made my knees weak and my pulse race.

And he'd felt my desire for someone else.

"My wife. My woman. My beloved." Each word was accompanied by a punch. "My warrior. My heart."

Iggy had two already-blackening eyes, and blood trickled from his mouth and nose.

"Do not mistake my words, Ignatius Blackwood: Geneviève of Crowe and Stonecroft is wholly mine until our mutual death, and any affront to her—which this was—will not be ignored."

Eli released the bloodied man, who leaned on the wall watching me with a wobbly grin.

"Geneviève, I demand—" Iggy's words once again died, this time because Eli punched him so forcefully that he collapsed and slid down the wall to a heap on the ground.

Then Eli grabbed a flask of bourbon and poured it over his blood-stained hands, so the blood was washed into the dirt.

"If you wouldn't mind?" he asked Beatrice.

"With pleasure." She pulled magic from the air and lit the blood-and-booze-stained earth to fire. It wouldn't spread throughout the cave, and for a flicker of moment I was glad. I didn't want Iggy to die.

I glanced at the unconscious man who had held me captive.

"He's still alive, Geneviève," Eli grumbled.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I swear I didn't . . . that . . . I love you. Only you."

"I know." Eli swallowed and looked away.

Guilt filled me. I didn't want to care about Iggy, but I did. Maybe it was the bond—or maybe it was the laundry list of questions I had.

"No one else can tell me what I need to know about my magic," I said quietly. "That doesn't mean I like his approach or wanted to be enthralled or—"

"It'll fade once his blood-magic is out of your system." Beatrice's tone was so cold that I was worried, and in that observant way of hers, she answered questions I didn't know how to ask: "He did the same to me. We shared a . . . few weeks . . . of . . . fondness."

"That's assault!"

She gave me a quelling look. "He gave me the blood at my request, Geneviève. We were experimenting. It was another time, and I was not unwilling in any way. Why he would do so with you without your consent is another matter entirely. Did he take liberties?"

It was Eli I looked at when I said, "No. I had his blood, and the silencing hold on me broke and"—I motioned toward the wall they'd imploded—"then you were here."

Eli gave a single nod. No one addressed the possibility of what would have happened if I hadn't broken that hold. I glanced at Iggy, verifying that he was breathing.

I shouldn't care.

In a calmer tone, Eli said, "Blackwood withheld your presence from my life for two weeks, Geneviève. He took you away from me. He held you prisoner when you would leave. That is not forgivable. None of it."

He looked back at Iggy, but unlike me, Eli watched the unconscious man as if debating whether or not to strike him again.

"Take me home?" I asked, pulling his gaze to me.

Another terse nod was Eli's entire response, but then he gestured for me to walk forward.

Beatrice stepped in front of me, walking over the rubble and roots as if she were gliding across a ballroom. I stumbled after her. I felt a level of confusion and exhaustion that was atypical.

Behind me Eli was a steady presence. One hand stayed flat on the small of my back as if assuring me that he was there—or perhaps assuring himself that I was. Either way, I felt like that hand was all that tethered me to the world.

Why had Iggy risked his newly-restored life?

What was his agenda?

There was one. I knew that with a certainty that defied everything else. He believed he was helping me, and I had no idea how. He'd not seemed particularly interested in me, aside from as a friend or a means to an end.

What was I missing here?