Storm's Heart (Elder Races #2)(76)

She stopped struggling and said in a ragged voice, “I’m awake. Sorry.”

Tiago leaned on one elbow beside her and braced a hand on her ribs. He sounded as ragged as she did. “Fuck sorry. Just tell me what happened.”

How strange that he was here, warm and naked, one hip pressed insistently against hers. Greedy for the feel of his skin, she burrowed into his side and rubbed her toes along his calf. The crisp hairs on his leg tickled her bare foot. “I was having a nightmare about the night when Urien and his men killed my family. I used to have it all the time. Then it mostly went away. Now it’s come back again.”

He growled deep in his chest, the menacing sound vibrating against her cheek. He sounded frustrated. “I want to kill that son of a bitch all over again. And again and again.”

“It was just a dream,” she whispered.

“No, it isn’t, faerie. It’s a terrible memory of a crime committed against you and people you loved.”

“Yes.” The word came out on the barest thread of sound.

He propped a pillow against the headboard, settled back against it and pulled her into his arms. She settled against him with her head on his shoulder, one slender leg hitched over his hips, an arm draped over his chest. He radiated heat and strength, the forcefulness of his presence filling the room and scattering the last threads of the nightmare that clung to her like cobwebs.

He stroked the hair off her damp forehead. “Can you tell me about it?”

She lifted her slender shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I’d much rather it just went away.”

He cupped her shoulder, fingering the delicate bones underneath his shirt. “Maybe it will if you talk about it.”

So she did, her voice halting at first, as the words came hard. When she got to the part where she found the bodies of her twin brothers, tears streaked down her face. She described watching one of Urien’s soldiers as he murdered her mother with one efficient sword thrust, and Tiago rolled her onto her back and covered her with his body. His cheek rested against hers, and he covered her forehead with one huge palm. It was as if he was trying to hide her from the trauma of what had already happened. She rubbed his back.

“I never found out the details of what happened to my father, other than he and Urien fought, and Urien killed him,” she said. “My father had had a great deal of Power. I used to think nothing could touch him. Urien went after him personally and sent his soldiers to take care of the rest of us.”

Tiago kissed her cheek, her temple. “How did you get away?”

She laughed a little, hardly more than an exhalation of air. “I was misbehaving. I’d snuck out to meet a boy. He wasn’t acceptable, and I wasn’t supposed to be seeing him, and it was really just a typical stupid teenage prank. I spent most of the night with him trying to decide if I wanted to have sex or not. I decided not, and I slipped back into the palace, and that was when I heard something. It sounded like people running in the hall, only they sounded quiet and furtive. My brothers’ rooms were next to mine, so I went to check on them, discovered their bodies and ran to find help. Then I saw soldiers kill my mother, and I felt Power flare from Urien and my father’s battle, so I knew I had to run. I slipped out the way I had come in.”

Her apartment had a private walled courtyard with fruit trees and a marble fountain. Several of the apple trees grew within a few feet of the wall. Some weeks previously, she had stolen a rope from the stables and fashioned a rope ladder so that she could indulge in her illicit romance. Leaving had been a simple matter of climbing a tree and throwing the ladder over the wall.

Tiago pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth as he thought. Adriyel was the seat of the Dark Fae demesne, deep in the heart of one of the largest tracts of Other land in the continental United States. He had never been to Adriyel himself, but he had heard that the journey to the palace from any one of the passageways took several days by horseback. He had to clear his throat before he could speak again. “Chicago was founded some years after you crossed over. In the early 1830s, if I remember correctly.”

She nodded, watching her fingers as she traced his strong, sturdy collarbone. “Most European settlers called the area Fort Dearborn, which was built in 1803, and the American Indians called it Chickagou.”

“Getting from Fort Dearborn to New York would have been hard enough.” My God, the more he thought of the journey she must have made, the more it made him shudder. “How did you get from Adriyel to Fort Dearborn?”

“I went to the stables and stole a graewing,” she said. “I wasn’t used to riding one though, so it was a pretty wonky flight. I managed to get it close to the crossover passage before we crashed. It was injured so I was able to get away from it.”

He swore under his breath. Graewings were a winged species that bred in Other lands. They looked like giant dragonflies. Like their miniature cousins that fed on mosquitoes, they were efficient predators, but they fed on creatures much larger than mosquitoes. They were dangerous mounts, for not only were they difficult to control, but their flight capabilities were much like helicopters. They could dart forward and backward, or rise and fall straight in the air. Accidents from riding a graewing tended to be fatal. If the fall didn’t kill the rider, most likely the graewing would. The Dark Fae had an elite force of fifty troops who were graewing riders that were traditionally led by their monarch. Urien himself had been famous as a proficient rider.