4. Finnian

FOUR

FINNIAN

During the ride, I lose count of how many times my eyes stray to her sleeping in the seat next to me or my fingers rub the pendant of her Armas still hanging safely beneath my shirt. I’ve never met her in person, was never even in the same room as her before tonight. And yet, I feel this indescribable connection to her. Sometimes I believe in it. Sometimes I think it’s all in my head. But being near her now without the distraction of trying to escape Superstition Mountain, it’s hard to ignore this strange pull I feel.

“Or maybe you’re just losing it,” I mumble to myself.

Glancing up at the moon, I wonder if Rhiannon, the moon goddess and deity of the Night Court, is watching all this unfold or if she’s turned a blind eye to what’s been going on with her children this past year.

The Dark Fae were dealt a shit hand when they were exiled over four hundred years ago along with the Lights thanks to a feud between the kings that pissed off the One True Queen. Not only were both courts banished from Faerie forever, but the OTQ heaped on several curses for good measure. We were stripped of our wings and court-born magic, and our lifespans—which back in Faerie would have been millennia—last only around five hundred years.

Then there’s the blood curse that affects the royal families which states that if either king takes a mate in marriage, they must never be “more than a stone’s throw” from each other or the king will die. That one was inspired by the reason for the feud between our courts, which was said to be an affair between Moira Verran, my grandmother the Dark Queen, and Cormac Edevane, Talek’s grandfather the Light King.

Because of the blood curse, the kings of our courts could no longer take wives or mates; it was too dangerous. Instead, they chose a consort—a highborn female who could give them heirs while living separately to avoid strong feelings and longing for a situation they couldn’t have.

Although in the last year, the Night Court has had two queens due to incredibly special circumstances. Caiden and Bryn ended up married in a cliché drunken night in Vegas scenario—which activated the blood curse and almost killed my oldest brother several times—making her queen for a very brief period before Caiden abdicated the throne to avoid further attacks on his mate’s life in order to take him out.

Then my other brother, Tiernan, known as the Rebel King, ascended and shook things up when he took Fiona Jewel as his wife. Though she was raised as fae, she’s actually human, so their marriage doesn’t activate the blood curse, and that’s how we ended up with a human queen.

Both of my brothers are sappy fuckers in love, and I couldn’t be happier for them. I’m close with both of their mates, as they’re amazing females in their own rights and fun as hell to hang out with. Except Bryn right now whenever she hasn’t eaten in a while. She’s eight months pregnant and the girl gets hangry . We’ve all started carrying snacks on us to throw at her in case of emergency.

I wonder when the last time Taryn was given food. They couldn’t have been giving her three squares a day with how gaunt she is. Getting her fed will be my first order of business when we got to the place I’ve kept secret for over a decade.

My brothers and I are equal partners in our company, Onyx Inc, which is what owns ninety-five percent of the establishments in the city. But twelve years ago, I got word that one of the few hotels we didn’t already own was going up for sale, and something told me I should buy it without putting it under the Onyx Inc umbrella. I created a business that I could buy it under that wouldn’t have my name directly attached. I had every intention of telling my brothers about it, but every time I tried, I’d get a gut feeling to keep it to myself.

The hotel is the same as it always has been, with one major difference. After Edevane tried to kill Caiden last year, I gutted the top floor and made it into a gigantic safe house that would fit all three of us if shit ever went down and we needed to go somewhere that no one knew about.

Generally, our policy as Dark Fae was to keep to ourselves where other supernatural races were concerned. We’re the foreigners here, after all. My father’s theory was that if we solely focused on our own interests and kept them inside Vegas, we would be left alone, and he was right. We made sure we knew what the other factions were doing, but we stayed out of their business, and they stayed out of ours. And the humans were never a problem because they never knew we existed.

That was the na?ve reality I lived with my entire life, until Edevane broke the peace treaty. Within months of each other he’d attempted to kill Caiden and leaked anti-fae propaganda to local humans in extremist groups who began boldly slaughtering our people in broad daylight.

It felt like I’d lived my entire life in a glass bubble, then Edevane came along with a hammer and shattered my whole fucking world.

That’s when I decided to build us a safe house of sorts. Somewhere my family could go if we ever needed a place to hide out. I stocked it with non-perishables a while ago, but I made a call to Helen, the woman I hired as a part-time housekeeper, and had the fridge stocked with a variety of foods since I don’t know what Taryn likes. I also told her Taryn’s size and asked that she do some light clothes shopping for her, at least enough to get her through the week.

When I pull into my reserved parking spot, I cut the engine and take a second to appreciate the way she looks sleeping peacefully. I hate to wake her up so soon, knowing she could probably use a week straight of sleep, but she’ll rest better in a big bed after a hot shower.

“Taryn, we’re here,” I say softly.

It only takes a second for her to wake up fully. She blinks her lavender eyes up at me like she’s trying to place me and where she is.

“Hi,” I say, offering a smile. “Remember me?”

“Who are you supposed to be again?” she says wryly.

Her voice is smoky and smooth, like my favorite whiskey. I now have an affinity for both. “Just your friendly neighborhood hero.”

She snorts at that and straightens her legs to leverage herself up but pulls them back, hissing in pain.

“What’s wrong?”

Taryn rests her right ankle on the opposite knee to examine the bottom of her foot. A nasty cut slices across the arch. “Damn it,” she winces. “Must have cut it on something and didn’t notice with all the adrenaline and shock. I’m still too weak for it to heal.”

“You’ll get your strength back soon, but let’s patch you up in the meantime.” I grab the large black duffel bag that’s always in the back seat and open it up on my lap. I bypass the dozen or so coiled sections of different colored rope for the first aid kit, then gather the supplies I need before tossing the duffel in the back again. “Sit sideways and prop your foot on the arm console here.”

She visibly bristles. “I can do it. I’m weak, not helpless.”

I hold her gaze. “I know. But it’ll be easier for me do it, so why not let me take care of it?”

The tension in her shoulders melts as she turns and sags back against the door, propping her foot on the console. I don’t take her reluctance personally. She’s made it more than clear that she doesn’t entirely trust me, despite watching her brother make his oath, so even a capitulation as small as this is a win.

I can feel her gaze on me as I set to work cleaning the cut with squares of gauze and my bottle of water. Most people would feel the need to fill the silence—Tiernan practically breaks out in hives if there’s even a pause in conversation—but I find comfort in the silence. I learned a lot when I was younger by being quiet and observing. And sometimes it gets the other person to talk, even if they don’t necessarily want to. It’s a strategy often used in interrogations.

Not that I’m intentionally doing that now, but if the silence encourages Taryn to open up, I won’t be mad about it.

“Were you born on this side of the veil?” she finally asks.

“I was. I’ve never seen anyone from the Elemental Courts before. Not in real life, anyway. I’ve seen tons of paintings and sketches, but you never know how accurate they are. Your eyes, for example.”

“What about them?” she asks warily.

I pause in my task to meet her gaze and lose myself in the very things she’s wondering about.

“The color,” I say in a low voice, as though I don’t want to disturb my own thoughts. “The art always depicted deeper shades of purple, harsher. But yours are soft lavender with flecks of violet you can only see up close. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

Her full lips part slightly in a moment of vulnerability before she clears her throat and affects a bored expression. “My eye color is common. Everyone in Tír Tairngire has them.”

“I don’t think anything about you could be considered common, upryamaya zhenshchina .” Lowering my head so she can’t see my smile, I finish gently cleaning the blood and dirt from the bottom of her foot.

“ Ty ser'yezno tol'ko chto nazval menya upryamoy zhenshchinoy ?” Did you seriously just call me a stubborn female?

I look up at her and grin. “ Da .”

Taryn sucks in her cheeks to prevent the smile I can see trying to make an appearance. I pretend not to notice as I rip open an alcohol packet. To her credit, she barely flinches at the first touch and holds still, albeit tensely, until I’m sure it’s disinfected. Then I slather a bit of antibiotic ointment on it to finish it off. “There. Now I’ll just wrap it up and it’ll be protected until it heals on its own.”

The word “wrap” triggers images of her wrapped in my intricate designs and knots, the way the different colors would look against her light umber skin, posing her body into its own work of art…

“You know Russian.”

The simple statement wrangles my wayward thoughts and yanks them back to the safer task at hand. “I speak several languages; I’m what you’d call a perpetual student. I like learning things. I didn’t take up Russian, though, until I started working with your brother. But I’m close to fluent already, so don’t think you can get one over on the thickheaded Fae-American jock,” I say with a wink.

“Fair enough,” she says, her expression one of reluctant curiosity. “What’s with the duffel bag full of rope? A lot of females trying to escape your self-proclaimed heroics that need tying up?”

I chuckle. She’s only partly right. It isn’t only females I tie up. I’m an equal opportunity player when it comes to rigging, topping, and fucking. I enjoy all genders and races, whether human or other . And escaping my ropes is the last thing any of them want. But discussing my kink specialty with her is only going to start my mind going in the directions it has no business going, so I do what fae do best, and avoid the questions we can’t—or won’t—answer.

“I don’t know why you assume people don’t want to be around me. I’ll have you know I’m a very likable guy.”

Taryn pulls her newly tended foot down from the console and rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Come on. Everything we need is already in the safe house.”

We exit my truck and I give her a second to test her weight on her injured foot. When she nods that it’s okay, we walk over to the private elevator which takes us to the top floor with my access code. When the doors open, we enter a small vestibule reinforced with walls made of steel a foot thick so it’s not just as easy as blasting your way through with guns. You’d need a ton of C4 to get through here. I place my palm on an access panel and lower my head for the retinal scan. The locks disengage with loud metallic clicks, then I open the door and usher her inside making sure to reset the security system once we’re inside.

The foyer opens into the great room that was designed with our growing family in mind. Plush couches with built-in recliners face each other in the center of the room with a pair of large armchairs completing the U-shape. The far wall is comprised of a bank of windows made from bullet proof glass. They’re mirrored on the outside, so while we’re able to see out, no one can see in. That goes for all the windows in the bedrooms, too.

“You just casually have a safe house designed like Fort Knox that no one knows about in the middle of Vegas?”

“After Edevane made attacking us his new hobby, I wanted a place my family could go if we needed it, and it needed to be big enough that we weren’t on top of each other. Especially now that they both have mates and Bryn is pregnant.”

“Who’s Bryn?”

“Caiden’s mate. She’s due in the next month and my brother’s going out of his mind with worry. It’d be funny if it was a normal pregnancy, but the baby seems to have powers in utero which are making Bryn’s powers as a Darklight unpredictable.”

“Back up. How is it possible she’s both Dark and Light? One of my mother’s curses caused unstable magic combined with the power of suggestion, which is basically the power to compel, if anyone from the two courts ever procreated.”

“Believe me, her magic was highly unstable. But Fiona’s mom—Fiona is Tiernan's wife—was a conjurer and was able to mute Bryn’s powers while she learned how to control them. Unfortunately, pregnancy has kind of undone a lot of that control. But usually, if you keep her fed, she’s super chill. It’s when she gets hangry that it’s not a pretty sight.”

Taryn’s eyes are as big as silver dollars, the info probably a bit much at this stage. “A lot’s happened in our court while you were gone. I could spend all day trying to catch you up, but that can wait. I’ll show you to your room so that you can shower and get some more sleep.”

She sounds almost dazed as she says, “Yeah, that sounds good.”

I walk her through the main living area and point out the different things she can make use of while she’s here. Then I show her to my room, where I asked Helen to put her things, and try not to think of why I wouldn’t set her up in one of the others. Because you like the idea of her being in your bed, surrounded by your things.

So much for not thinking about it.

“You can stay in here. The bathroom is through that door and should have fresh towels, toothbrush, and other toiletries set out. I had some clothes brought in for you there on the bed. I guessed at your size, so I hope they work. If they don’t or there’s anything else you need, let me know, and I can send out for it.”

“Thank you, Finn. I appreciate the hospitality.”

“I’m just glad we finally found you.”

“Yeah, me too,” she says. “Dmitri will be back soon, then we’ll be out of your hair.”

My stomach clenches at the thought of her leaving so soon, but I ignore it. Noticing something sticking out of her curls, I smile. “Speaking of your hair.”

Since I’m a whole foot taller than her, I don’t need her to turn around. I step in close and carefully extract the short length of elastic so it doesn’t get tangled. She holds perfectly still except for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, her warm breaths permeating the thin cotton of my shirt.

Goosebumps raise on the back of my neck being this near to her, and I wonder if she feels the charge of electricity in the air between us like I do. Forcing myself to take a step back, I hold the hair tie out to her. “Must’ve just broke.”

She clears her throat and reaches up to shake her hair out then tries to smooth it down, but it’s not obeying. “Gods, I must look like a troll.”

A corner of my mouth quirks up. “Yeah, but it’s the cute kind with the floofy hair like in that kids movie.”

Taryn points to the door. “You can leave now,” she deadpans.

I chuckle, holding my hands up. “Yep, going.”

As soon as I’m out of the room, she closes the door behind me and mutters “Unbelievable,” on her way to the bathroom. I’m grinning so hard I have to physically wipe it from my face.