Kinked (Elder Races #6)(13)

She blew out a gusty sigh. He echoed her thoughts from earlier almost perfectly. “No,” she said. “I know.”

Finally his cool demeanor warmed. He sat forward and crossed his arms on the table. I’m glad you told me, he said telepathically. Did Dragos just get finished with you?

She dragged her hands through her hair. Yeah.

Graydon smiled at her. And you came straightaway to find me.

She lifted a shoulder and nodded.

He put a massive hand on her forearm and squeezed gently. He told her, You’ve got to come to peace somehow with the fact that no matter how much you hate each other, you’re both sentinels and you have to work together. You have to, Aryal. Nobody wants to lose you.

She muttered, That’s good to know.

They just need the vendetta to stop. Make peace with your dead-end investigation. Graydon leaned forward farther to deepen eye contact with her. His eyes were a darker gray than hers, the color of aged pewter, and the expression in his gaze was hard, the set of his mouth ruthless. Either that or confirm his guilt. I know what Dragos told you. He said to work it out somehow, and he genuinely doesn’t care how. He’s got enough on his plate trying to figure out how to be a new father. I’m the one who’s telling you—you have one more month. Bring home hard evidence and we’ll use it together as nails in Quentin’s coffin. But one way or another, you need to finish this.

I know, she said. I will.

After that, the rest of her day was almost anticlimactic. The next stop on her agenda was to see a healer who eased the pain in her chest and reduced the stiffness and swelling in her face. Then she went to her office to delegate cases, blast through the most urgent of her emails, and make a half-assed attempt at organizing her desk in case someone needed to find something while she was gone.

As soon as she had accomplished all of that, she went back to her apartment, showered and washed her hair and packed (a fifteen-minute task, as she shoved weapons, credit cards, a few changes of clothes and travel toiletries, several candy bars and her e-reader into a backpack).

Then she ate a sandwich and fell into bed to sleep away the afternoon. She was not about to head out on some kind of assignment to unknown places with Caeravorn when she was exhausted. While she was not averse to taking risks, that just seemed like the height of stupidity.

At 4:55 P.M., dressed in lace-up boots, jeans, a black turtleneck and a leather jacket, and carrying her backpack on one shoulder, she walked into Dragos’s offices, which were thrumming with activity. Cuelebre Enterprises never closed at five. She waved at Kristoff, Dragos’s senior assistant, who waved back from his cubicle.

Dragos’s door was shut. There was no sign of Caeravorn. She waited, not very well, tapping one foot. It was probably too much to hope that Caeravorn had seen the error of his ways and quit.

Unbidden, her mind flashed back to their fight from that morning. His body had been heavy and hard as he pinned her to the floor, his muscles like iron. He was strikingly good-looking even when his lips were pulled back in a snarl.

And when their hips had come into alignment, she had felt his c**k stiffen. That beautiful penis of his, unmistakably hard and lying flush against her. She knew just what it looked like.

Her breath shortened, and hunger flashed through her body.

“You just say good-bye to your boyfriend?” Caeravorn said from behind her. His tone was as insolent as ever. “You should have probably taken a little more time with that. I don’t sense that you got any real … fulfillment.”

He could smell her arousal. Her mind whited out. Gods, she wanted to claw at him. She whirled to face him just as Dragos’s door opened.

Her gaze clashed with Caeravorn’s. His blue eyes were narrowed, catlike on her. He had dressed all in black. Black jeans, black T-shirt, and a worn, black leather bomber jacket; and like her, he carried a backpack.

“Come in,” said Dragos.

Somehow, Aryal made herself obey, maneuvering her own body around as though it were a marionette. Every nerve ending on her skin was aware of Caeravorn gliding bonelessly into the room behind her.

Once they were inside, Dragos shut the door.

He turned to face them and said, without preamble, “I’m going to send you to Numenlaur.”

FOUR

Numenlaur.

The name resonated in Quentin’s marrow. His emotions roared as he heard Dragos say it, a single outcry of the soul.

Numenlaur was the first and oldest Elven land, the fabled birthing place from which all others had come. The Other land had been closed off from the rest of the world for millennia.

Once upon a time, he would have been filled with curiosity and wonder at the chance to see Numenlaur, and he would have given anything to go. Now he still felt the echoes of that same compulsion, only it was underscored with dread and grief, for Numenlaur had become a wasteland, emptied of the Elves who had once lived there.

As if from a distance, he heard Aryal ask, “Why do you want us to go?”

Dragos’s expression shuttered as he looked from the harpy to Quentin. He assessed them both, his golden gaze moody and calculating. He said, “Ever since the battle at Lirithriel Wood, Pia has been keeping in close contact with her friends in the Elven demesne. They remain completely overwhelmed with what happened.”

Quentin had no idea what his own expression might reveal. He turned abruptly, putting his back to the other two as he struggled to get in control of his feelings.