Hunter's Season: Elder Races, Book 4 (2 page)

The last of her energy had slipped away. She would put the things away tomorrow. For now, she pulled the box to her, opened it and pulled out the Tarot deck. Warm, mellow Power filled her hands as she reverently fingered the hand-painted cards.

She shuffled the deck and turned over the top card. It was one of the Major Arcana, Inanna, goddess of love, her chariot drawn by seven lions.

Inanna’s card had been showing up every time she shuffled the cards.

“I thought you meant the cat,” she said to the card.

The face of a golden woman smiled out at her, fierce and mysterious.

She sighed. Love came in many forms—the love of a friend or lover, a parent or child. The devotion of a pet, or the love of one’s country. Xanthe was really suited for only one of those, although for a while she thought the kitten might work.

She put the deck in the box and set it gently on the fireplace mantle. Then she ate some stew and fell into bed.

The summons from the palace came early the next morning.

Everything was blanketed in light dew, and the tip of the sun barely showed through the trees. Xanthe had made a cup of tea and had taken it out to sit on an overturned log, enjoying the silence and the solitude.

It was peaceful at the cottage, with bright trills from birds and the rustle of wind blowing through the long grasses. She had never grown accustomed to the sounds and smells of American traffic, and for so long she had been unable to take much time to herself. She had always been surrounded by others she couldn’t trust. It was exotic and liberating to feel the inner coil of tension that had been wound so tightly relax at last.

She heard the horseman on the path before she saw him, and the coil came back, tightening her stomach muscles. She stood and waited, and a few moments later, a palace guard trotted into view, leading another saddled, riderless horse. The guard didn’t bother to dismount as he came up to her. Instead, he handed her a sealed note and the reins for the second horse, turned and left.

The note was a single word written in strong black slashes: “Come.”

She blew out a breath. So much for relaxing and taking time for herself. After tethering the horse, she washed, dressed in her own palace black uniform, braided her silky hair and checked her appearance in the oval silver mirror in the bedroom.

Somewhere in the distant past, she had an ancestor who had not been Dark Fae and it showed in small ways. She was slim with an upright carriage, but her eyes were a darker gray than most Dark Fae’s were. There was a sprinkle of light freckles across the bridge of her nose and along her cheeks, and her features were not quite as angular, her lips plump and curving. For those of the nobility who were concerned with the purity of breeding lines, those small differences were as good as a shout.

Not that she was likely to try to pass herself off as noble any time in the foreseeable future. She tilted her head to check that her braid was neat, then she slipped on her shoulder harness that settled her sword onto her back, spread soft cheese over a slice of bread to eat on the journey and she shut the door gently as she left the cottage.

Adriyel was not a large city by American standards, but it was beautiful and busy. Her uniform and the horse created an open path for her on the cobblestone streets as people moved to make way for her. The buildings nestled harmoniously among the trees, and there was a long waterfront park by the river near the falls. As she approached the palace, she studied it with a critical eye.

Age and simple elegance defined the palace’s architecture. The building was superbly designed and proportioned, the lines deceptively simple, yet phantoms lingered in Xanthe’s mind whenever she looked at it, phantoms of blood and battle and screams in the night. Brushing them aside had long ago become habit. She took the horse to the stables and entered the palace through the servant’s quarters.

The Wyr lord was in the Queen’s private apartment. The two guards at the doors nodded respectfully to her and stood aside. “You’re to go right in, ma’am,” said the one on the right. If she remembered correctly, Rickart was his name.

“Thank you,” she said. She shrugged out of her shoulder harness and handed her sword to him. One did not go armed into the Queen’s presence unless expressly invited to do so.

Xanthe had only been in the Queen’s apartment once before, and that had been seasons ago when the Queen and her Wyr lord had made the final decision on Xanthe’s mission, so she looked around curiously as she entered. The rest of the interior of the palace was like the exterior, spacious and deceptively simple, sparely decorated with pieces of furniture, tapestries and sculptures that were national treasures.

The Queen’s private apartment was another matter. In the large sitting room color was splashed everywhere. Traditional embroidered tapestries covered the walls, and bowls and vases of flowers brightened dark polished wood surfaces. Red velvet couches were arranged in front of a fireplace and piled with pillows that were also embroidered with rich gold accents. An intricately carved bowl made of some lovely, translucent green stone Xanthe wasn’t familiar with held miniature Reese’s peanut butter cups. A scatter of books had been left carelessly on one table. Xanthe glanced at the haphazard pile. Dark Fae books on history and politics were intermingled with American mass market paperbacks, most of them romances.

Across the room, doors had been propped open to the sunny morning. They led to the terrace that looked out over the Queen’s private walled garden. Hearing male voices outside, she walked over to the doors and looked out.

The Wyr lord sat at table, chatting easily with another tall figure of a man who was, by weight of his office alone, imposing in his own right. Chancellor Aubrey Riordan was one of the triad that formed the Dark Fae government, along with the Queen and the Commander of the Dark Fae army, Fafnir Orin. The Chancellor lounged in his chair facing the morning sun as he cradled a steaming cup of tea.

There was absolutely no question of Riordan’s pure Dark Fae blood. He had strong, intelligent patrician features and light gray eyes that shone like clear water in sunlight. His long raven hair was bound back in a simple queue and gleamed blue-black in the bright light, his pointed ears elegantly shaped.

In contrast to his hair, his skin was ivory pale. While he did not have the Wyr lord’s outsized physique, his long lean frame was muscled with graceful power. His eyes were narrowed in the sunlight, which revealed crow’s feet at their corners, and a few strands of white hair gleamed at his temples. Riordan was not a young Fae, but a male in his full maturity of Power.

As she saw him, a sweet pain like a stiletto coated in honey slipped between Xanthe’s ribs and pierced her heart. It was the same pain she always felt whenever she saw him. Like a silly child with her toys, for years she had gathered the snippets she heard about his life and hoarded them close.

Servants always knew the truth about their masters’ true nature. What all the servants said about Riordan was that he was kind and even tempered. He never expressed frustration with a blow or a harsh word. One of the most powerful men in Adriyel, he held onto that power lightly and used it with care. For someone like Xanthe, who had rarely known kindness, he sounded as foreign and exotic as the Wyr lord who now kept him company.

The events of the last year had been cataclysmic for the Dark Fae, and also for Riordan himself. The despot Dark Fae King Urien had been killed by Dragos Cuelebre, the Lord of the Wyr, and with his death, at first it seemed there was no clear heir to the throne. For a short time, it had been whispered that Riordan, who was a distant relative in the Lorelle line, might be crowned king.

Then Niniane Lorelle, the true heir and Urien’s niece, came out of hiding. She had been living in America ever since Urien and a handful of nobles had killed her father, King Rhian, and the rest of her family in a bloody palace coup.

Riordan had been married then, to a noble woman named Naida who had not accepted Niniane’s claim to the throne, and who had tried a couple of times to have her assassinated. Instead Naida herself had been killed and her coconspirators incarcerated when the plot had been uncovered.

When that had happened something light inside of Riordan had darkened. Xanthe had seen it whenever she caught a glimpse of him on the palace grounds. He looked set, withdrawn, the expression in his gaze bleak and bitter. Whenever she thought of what his wife had done, she felt a useless fury at the woman who had been a traitor and a killer, and who with her actions had wounded such a decent man.

The moment Xanthe appeared in the doorway, Tiago turned his head and so did Riordan. She dropped her gaze. “My lords.”

“There you are,” said Tiago. “You must have gotten my message just after dawn.” He put a booted foot on one chair and pushed it outward in her direction. “Sit and eat. Niniane will join us shortly.”

Disconcerted, she lowered her head. “Thank you, my l—sir. That’s very good of you, but I couldn’t do that.”

“Oh, you Fae and your social rules,” said Tiago. He sounded exasperated. “Get over yourself, soldier. Plant your ass down here and eat some breakfast. That’s an order.”

Startled, her head came up. Before she could help herself, she looked at Riordan.

He smiled at her, his expression warm, and gestured to the chair Tiago had pushed out from the table. “You heard your employer,” said the Chancellor. “Sit and help yourself to some food.”

She couldn’t help but stare. He looked different somehow than he had before she had left, less bitter in repose. Perhaps time was healing the wound that his wife had dealt him.

She took a deep breath and walked over to sit gingerly. She kept her gaze on her task as she did as she was ordered and helped herself to some of the breakfast on the table. There were boiled eggs, honey and berry pastries, fresh fruit and grilled venison. The bread and cheese she had eaten earlier seemed to have vanished completely, and her stomach rumbled. She tightened the muscles in her abdomen, hoping nobody had noticed.

She started to eat, and the two men resumed talking as if she wasn’t there.

“You should have mentioned something about the lawsuit sooner,” Tiago said.

After a slight hesitation, Riordan said, “I disagree. It’s my issue to resolve. At any rate, nothing will happen in a hurry. The suit will likely drag on for years.”

Everything in Xanthe went quiet. Riordan was involved in some kind of legal dispute? It was news to her, so it must have happened while she had been away. Unwilling to show any reaction to what was obviously none of her business, she had to make a conscious decision to keep eating as she listened.

“There’s no merit in the accusations,” said Tiago. “You had no knowledge of what Naida was doing, and you weren’t involved.”

Riordan said cynically, “It doesn’t matter whether or not we know that the case has any merit. The pursuant always has plenty of time to present their case and whatever they claim as true findings. That’s simply how the Dark Fae justice system works. What you and Niniane achieved when you tried and executed the conspirators involved in the coup that killed her family was highly unusual, and that was because it involved the Queen herself, imprisonment of powerful nobility and high treason.”

“Naida’s family is claiming you were treasonous,” Tiago said.

“Not quite treason, in the legal sense,” said Riordan. “Niniane had not yet been crowned. The best they can hope for is a charge of conspiracy. Since I was so much older than Naida and she was so young when we married, and all of Naida’s crimes were supposedly on my behalf, they’re claiming that I exerted ‘undue influence’ over her. Anyway, as you know only the government can instigate criminal cases. Since this is a personal suit and not an affair of the crown, the only thing they can hope to gain is monetary compensation.”

“So they’re being greedy,” said Tiago after a moment.

“Yes,” said Riordan flatly. “And to be brutally fair, they’re also angry and they’ve suffered a loss, not only in terms of family but also their reputation.”

“Well, the person they should be angry with is dead, and there isn’t any evidence you had anything to do with it. I had you investigated myself.”

“Of course you did,” said Riordan. “I would have had me investigated as well.”

Xanthe swallowed carefully, the food threatening to lodge in her throat. As she hadn’t been involved in any investigating, that was more news to her. But as she considered it, she couldn’t say she was surprised.

The Queen meant the world to the Wyr lord, and he was one of the most dangerous men she had ever met. He would have left no stone unturned in his investigation of Riordan. Even if he had not found any evidence, if he had the slightest suspicion that Riordan might have been involved in something that could potentially harm the Queen, Riordan was a dead man.

Having just killed a man herself on the Wyr lord’s orders, she should know.

Chapter Two

Law

At first the silent woman in the soldier’s uniform hadn’t interested Aubrey, other than he took note of how openly Tiago talked in front of her.

Although Tiago and Niniane never flaunted anything in public, they were a love match. The Wyr was obsessed with anything to do with his mate, and her safety and wellbeing. If Tiago relaxed and talked in front of this woman, then Aubrey could too.