Storm's Heart (28 page)

Niniane took a bite of the pastry and set it on her plate, her face thoughtful. Tiago shifted his plate to cover the growing bulge in his crotch as he watched her lick powdered sugar off her fingers. Thinking and licking just became his two new favorite things to watch her do. What was going on behind that sweet pixie face of hers? Was she thinking through A and B to reach C or D, or was she jumping out of the logical alphabet again? He couldn’t wait to see her when she was really conniving.

When she spoke next, it was to tell the Chancellor about her line of thinking about the Wyr, seasoned as it was by the intimacy of long familiarity, along with the conversation she’d had with Aryal. “So you see, it is nonsensical to believe the Wyr were behind the attack,” she said.

“I see,” Aubrey said. “Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. When you explain everything that way, it does seem obvious that Dragos and the Wyr government were not involved, except in an accidental way as Tiago defended you.”

Tiago enjoyed his snack while he watched and listened. Aubrey mentioned nothing of Arethusa’s conversation with Tiago and Rune at the morgue. Arethusa must have decided to play her cards very close to her chest. Interesting. Apparently Arethusa didn’t trust anybody at the moment. Given her familiarity with the other Dark Fae, what did that say about her, or them? Tiago let the puzzle pieces in his head connect, break apart and re-form into different scenarios.

“Now to move on to your second point,” said Aubrey. The male looked at Tiago directly. “Please understand, this is not meant to be personal in any way. I have great admiration for everything you’ve accomplished. But no one will accept one of Dragos’s sentinels, let alone his warlord, on permanent deployment in the Dark Fae demesne. It would be considered an act of aggression and cause for war. The Dark Fae are unsettled enough by Urien’s death. While he had grown unpopular, he also ruled with a strong hand that gave many a sense of security they no longer have at the moment.”

“That’s why I quit,” said Tiago. He popped another pastry into his mouth.

The other male sat forward, his gaze sharp. “Excuse me?”

“I said I quit,” Tiago told him. “I am an independent agent. I no longer work for Dragos in any capacity.”

Aubrey’s astonished gaze shot to Niniane, who nodded. She said, “He’s coming with me.”

“I see,” said Aubrey, but Tiago was sure he didn’t yet. The man might be smart and well-placed in the Dark Fae government, but he was not as quick on the uptake on a few things like his wife was. His wife had taken one look at Tiago and Niniane and had gotten it. “Your highness, even if people believed that Tiago really has quit, they’re not—”

“Aubrey,” Niniane interrupted. Her voice, like her face, was calm, her eyes clear. “I’m not asking for permission or what people’s opinion will be on this issue. Either Tiago is coming with me, or I’m not going. The last thing on my agenda for this talk is to see if we can come to an understanding with you on this. I want you to back me up. I want you to be my supporter. I want to talk to you, confide in you, and ask your opinions about things. I have to start developing relationships with someone, and to start trusting somewhere. Frankly, if we can’t get you to accept this, I don’t see any reason in crossing over. We might as well stay here and the Dark Fae can find some other person to try to put on the throne. You’re some second or third cousin by marriage. Maybe that would be you.”

“Please.” Aubrey put up both hands, his face and scent flaring with deeper alarm. “Don’t say another word like that. My family connection is distant, and in any case,
you
are the real heir.”

“Then back me up,” Niniane said. “If you support this, other people may grumble at first, and they may not like it, but eventually they will accept it. Tiago is my—”

“Chief of security,” Tiago said.

She turned to him, surprised. “Is that what you are?”

Now that he had verbalized it, he tested it out in his head. There was no point in freaking out the faeries any further with talk of Wyr mating. What happened between him and Niniane was none of their business, and Niniane needed him to protect her, which was going to be a much more sophisticated and complex job than simply watching her back as her bodyguard. He said, “Yes.”

She regarded him, her expression concerned. “That will be a difficult position to be in as a foreigner.”

“I like a challenge,” he told her. “And it’s where I need to be, and it’s where you need me to be.” He added telepathically,
And I’ll be hellacious good at it
.

Her gaze searched his. He gave her a nod.

She looked at Aubrey, who stared into the middle distance while he wore a deep frown. “If you truly believe that I am the real heir, then you also have to recognize that change is here to stay for the Dark Fae,” she said. “I don’t think any of you have fully accepted that yet. Some of Urien’s old supporters are going to have a problem too, but there’s no use in trying to resist it. This is Urien’s legacy every bit as much as the laws he passed or the way he tried to cloister Adriyel from the outside world. Because of what he did, I had to escape and go somewhere else to survive.”

Aubrey looked at her with pain in his eyes. “If I had known you were alive, I would never have stopped searching for you.”

Her face softened. It was clear she believed him. There was so much sincerity in his voice, even Tiago almost believed him. She said in a gentle voice, “I appreciate you saying that more than you can know, but that’s all water under the bridge now. The point I’m trying to make is, because of what happened, I became someone I wouldn’t have otherwise become. I’m young for a faerie and I’m trendy, and the Dark Fae aren’t used to that in a ruler. I like American pop culture, cheese pizza, reading romance novels, and shopping in Milan. Also, thanks to Dragos, I have independent relationships with every Elder demesne in the continental United States. Now I can compromise on a lot of things. I can take advice and bring change in carefully and gently, but I will not compromise on this. I trust Tiago with my life in a way I can’t trust anyone else right now, not even you.”

Aubrey rubbed his forehead and looked under his hand from her to Tiago. After a moment he said to Tiago, “I will withdraw my support at the first hint that you are really working for the Wyr.”

“I would expect nothing else,” Tiago said.

Aubrey pressed. “She is the last direct descendant of the Lorelle line, and the only thing left of her father. You must always act with Niniane’s best interests at heart, and do everything in your power to keep her safe.”

“That,” Tiago told him with perfect honesty, “is not going to be a problem.”

Aubrey said to Niniane, “Very well then. I will support you.”

Niniane’s face lit up. She slipped out of the armchair and went to Aubrey to put her arms around his neck and hug him. Tiago tensed, hating her close contact to the other male but suffering through the moment, recognizing it as important to the other two, perhaps even necessary. Still, he watched Aubrey with jealous attention, noting the exact placement of the other male’s hands and arms as Aubrey hugged Niniane back. He could only relax when the Dark Fae male and Niniane separated.

She turned to Tiago and searched his gaze.
I don’t want to spring too much on him at once. Do you think I should tell him I intend to bring to trial the people who supported Urien on the night of the coup?

Tiago studied the Chancellor’s face thoughtfully. Change, tempered with patience. It was a good strategy.
Not yet. Remember your own advice and bring in change carefully. Prosecuting people for treason and murder can come after your coronation and we’ve had a chance to establish a secure power base. For now
—he smiled at her and said with deep satisfaction—
well done
.

FIFTEEN

L
ater that evening, Niniane climbed the staircase behind Naida, her movements slow with exhaustion. She had toured the gardens and the rest of the main areas of the house. She had made a cursory inspection of the accounts that maintained the property. Everything appeared to be in order. She and Aubrey had had a preliminary discussion of Dark Fae finances, which were not as robust as she would have liked, but after her talk with Carling she wasn’t surprised.

He also gave her an overview on the status of her inheritance of Urien’s personal fortune. The sum Urien had managed to amass was staggering. She reminded herself that her family’s fortune would have been subsumed into his. She also met separately with Kellen and Arethusa to inform them that Tiago would be coming to Adriyel as her chief of security. Kellen had been outraged, Arethusa noncommittal.

Dinner had been rife with undercurrents and tensions. Carling had come to join the party at the table. The Vampyre had sipped red wine, listened to the conversation and said little. The meal itself had been exquisite, or at least the three bites Niniane managed to choke down had been. She made sure to step into the kitchens to praise the chef and her staff personally. The kitchen staff had been transported with surprise and delight.

Now Tiago climbed the staircase beside her, his powerful body moving with relaxed fluidity, his hands clasped behind his back and his expression impassive as it had been for most of the day. He looked like the aloof Wyr sentinel she had met in Cuelebre Tower. After consuming the huge plate of pastries, he had proceeded to eat a mountainous dinner. He appeared to be impervious to glares, dislike, snubs and innuendoes. She had felt quite an irrational desire to smack him several times over the head with her napkin.

Naida said over her shoulder, “Earlier your bags had been taken to the master suite, but Aubrey and I wondered if you might enjoy a more feminine touch in your rooms. There’s a suite that has a lovely view of the back gardens. I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of requesting that your things be moved back there?”

She sighed. She was too tired to tell if there were undercurrents in Naida’s voice. No doubt Aubrey had thought to make the change after her reaction to Urien’s study. She was just relieved she didn’t have to step into Urien’s bedroom. She’d had it up to her eyeballs with confronting all things Urien, his handwriting, his decor decisions, his approach to foreign policy and his outrageous expense accounts. Apparently he’d had a fondness for Elven wine and Vieux Cognac aged from the French Revolution, which everyone at dinner had been all too pleased to sample. It was probably the only thing they had agreed upon. If she had to look at his bed right now she might gak up all three bites of her dinner on what was no doubt a tasteful and very expensive carpet.

So she chose to be grateful and stuck to a simple reply. “That’s great, thanks.”

Naida looked back to smile at her. “Everyone has been clamoring for your attention today. I cannot imagine how tired you are.”

“I’m pretty tired,” Niniane admitted.

They walked down a second-floor hall. The hardwood floor was carpeted with a woolen wine-colored hallway runner and furnished with heavy dark antique tables and cabinets. Urien apparently had liked the English manor look to go with the Georgian-style architecture. Toward the end of the hall Naida opened a door then stood back to let Tiago enter first. He did so, turned and indicated that Niniane could step inside. She walked into a large bedroom that was a blur of green and cream. A delicate floral pattern flecked with pink decorated the bedspread and pillow shams.

She turned to Naida, who was studying Tiago with an inscrutable expression. Naida said to Tiago, “Your bag has been put in the room next door.”

Tiago nodded, and remained silent. He stood relaxed, his hands on his hips, clearly not intending to go anywhere. His massive black-clad physique and visible weaponry were a barbaric contrast to the room’s light feminine decor.

Naida’s sleek eyebrows rose a delicate fraction of an inch. She said to Niniane, “If no one has yet shown you, all the rooms are connected with an intercom system. You can request anything you want or need by contacting household staff through the unit on the bedside table. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Niniane said, “No, thank you.”

“I’ll say goodnight then. Rest well.” The Dark Fae woman stepped out, closing the door behind her.

Tiago said, “I think she likes me.”

She burst out laughing and clapped her hands over her mouth.

He gave her that sexy, subtle not-quite smile of his. “Don’t you? I’m pretty sure she’s crushing on me right now.”

Shh, remember how sensitive Dark Fae hearing is. She can still hear you!
she said telepathically as she tried to stifle her giggles.

“I’m not at all concerned about that,” Tiago said.

Her body couldn’t stay upright any longer. She kicked off her shoes, staggered forward and pitched onto the bed facefirst. She was so exhausted her muscles ached all over and she trembled on the edge of something, she didn’t know what, as all the reactions that she had suppressed from the day threatened to come crashing down on her head at once.

She fisted her hands into the bedspread. She’d had that flash of conviction in Urien’s study that Rune had been right, she and Tiago were making a monumental mistake, and it had been so strong and felt so real, it had frightened her so that she had stuffed it down and refused to look at it for the rest of the day. Now that the outside stresses had eased up, the memory of that conviction came roaring back.

She heard Tiago moving about the bedroom. He opened and closed the closet and bathroom doors. Then the bed dipped as he knelt beside her. His large hands ghosted over her. He found the back zipper in her dress and unzipped it. Cool air kissed her skin.

“I know I’m a high-maintenance girlfriend,” she said into the bedspread.

“Fuck, yeah,” he agreed. “The highest. You need a whole staff of full-time employees.” He paused. “I just realized I’m not kidding.”

“I panicked earlier in the study.” He nudged her. She rolled to one side and he eased her arm out of the dress. Then she rolled to the other side, and he eased out that arm too.

“I got that.” He tapped her at the base of her spine. “Lift up your hips.”

She lifted and he pulled the dress down so that it slid off her legs. At least he didn’t rip this one to shreds. Maybe he only ripped up dresses that had sequins on them. They knew so little about each other, but that still hadn’t stopped them from plunging together. In retrospect the impetuousness of their actions made her shake. “I panicked about us,” she said.

Silence. He laid a hand on her back. It felt huge, warm and heavy. “Why?”

She lifted her shoulder.

“That is not an adequate response, faerie,” he growled. His Power lay in the room, a heavy brooding presence. “I require a series of words strung together that make coherent sentences.”

“I looked at you and something happened in my head,” she said. “All I could see was everything that you had left behind just to follow me throughout my day. I couldn’t see how you could thrive doing that, and then what Rune said came back to me. Tiago, are you sure about this?”

He was silent a moment. Then he said, “Stay put.”

“Okay.” She snuffled into the bedspread as he walked away.

Tiago strode into the bathroom and inspected it. It was a large, luxurious bathroom, color-coordinated to complement the bedroom and dotted with the silver gleam of polished fixtures. He noted with approval that there were a lot of expensivelooking bottles of froufrou set out on the counter surfaces. She would like that. He uncapped one bottle on the tub and sniffed the contents. It smelled pink. He started a hot bath running and squirted some of the pink-smelling stuff under the gush of water. It foamed into bubbles. He swished his hand through the bubbles and water. The temperature felt fine to him, but his hand was so calloused he would have to be careful with her delicate skin.

He walked back into the bedroom and regarded his doubtful faerie’s nearly nude backside as he stripped. That sweet little curvy body of hers embodied the definition of sexy with those two cute toothpick-sized knives strapped in sheaths to her slender thighs. The realization that those knives were poisoned and she knew how to use them made him hotter than hell. How could he ever think that big strapping women were his type? He promised himself a treat one day. He would watch her ride him while she wore those thigh sheaths and nothing else. He cocked his head. No wait. Maybe that pearl necklace too.

When he was nude, he unbuckled her thigh sheaths, unsnapped the back fastening of her bra and slipped her panties off. Then he scooped her up, took her into the bathroom and tipped her over the water. “Check that,” he said.

She wiggled her fingers in the frothy mounds of froufrousmelling stuff, dipped them into the water underneath and sighed. “It’s perfect.”

He deposited her in the tub and climbed in behind her so that she sat sandwiched between his legs. He leaned back in the tub with a grunt and pulled her to him. She moaned and collapsed against his chest. His engorged cock had been on urgent duty call from the moment he had slipped off her dress, and he had to shift a bit to find a comfortable spot. Then he wrapped his arms around her warm, wet naked body and contemplated the concept of perfection.

“We have agreed that you panicked in the study,” he said.

Her head moved in a small nod.

“Do we also agree that you panicked over several things and not just about me?”

Another nod.

“Shall we consider the possibility that this was stress induced?”

“Yes,” she muttered. “But Tiago—”

“No ‘buts,’” he ordered. “And don’t wriggle.” She huffed but subsided, and he bit back a smile. It was a rare moment when she didn’t have a comeback of some sort. She truly must be exhausted. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Perhaps we should then conclude that what you panicked over may not necessarily be of any real concern.”

“Tiago—”

“I’m hearing a ‘but’ attached to that,” he said in warning. “It is implied, but it is still there.” She growled in frustration even as she wrapped her arms around his to hug him back. “You must trust me to look out for myself. I had fun today.”

“You had
fun
?” She tilted back her head to look at him in surprise.

He swooped in fast to kiss her pillowy mouth. “I did. Furthermore, I learned a lot. I learned things about you, and I learned things about the people around you. You might recall, I also figured out exactly what I need to be doing and how.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that.”

He pulled her up higher so that she was lying on him, their legs entwined.

“You keep picking me up and carting me around,” she muttered. “You know, when I’m not injured or drunk on my ass, I do have two perfectly functional feet.”

“You are just so magnificently portable,” he told her. She snorted out a laugh, her body relaxing against his, her head tucked under his chin. “I like carting you around.” He loved how she felt in his arms. He asked, “So what is the moral of this story?”

She yawned. “Stop panicking?”

“Well, that too.” He rubbed her back. “The moral of the story is you must learn to trust me. Don’t try to do your job and worry about me too. It’s too much and, more important, it’s not necessary. You have an immense undertaking ahead of you. I need to be able to trust you too, that you’re taking your best to your job. We both need you to succeed.”

She kissed his neck. “We both need you to succeed too.”

“I think that works out well,” Tiago said. “Don’t you?”

“Yes. Okay.” The bubble bath was warm and lustrous, and Tiago’s body made the most comforting bed imaginable. She slit her eyes open. His dark muscled chest looked intensely masculine against the mounds of bubbles that surrounded them. She looked at the massive bulge of his bicep as she traced the barbed wire tattoo with a finger. “What did you learn?”

“About you?” His deep, lazy voice reverberated in her ear.

“No, silly, about other people.”

He shifted and kissed her forehead. He said telepathically,
From his scent and mannerisms, the bug is most likely an addict of some sort
.
Unless he can convince me he’s ill and on some kind of medication that produces a chemical tinge to his scent, he has got to go. The guard captain has got to go too. My guess is he has a problem with females in authority, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t like how he responds to you. I like most of the house staff. I don’t have an opinion one way or another about the grounds staff as long as they follow security protocol, and I don’t trust Naida as far as I could throw her.

You could actually manage to toss her quite a distance
, she murmured.

He conceded the point.
Okay, I trust her much less than as far as I could throw her. You get my point. I haven’t made up my mind about Aubrey. Sorry, but I haven’t. I think Arethusa is genuinely investigating the attacks, and she doesn’t seem to trust anybody else. That makes me cautious. And I think Kellen is likely to be trouble, politically if in no other way. And there’s one last thing.

What is it?
Her mental voice was flat, tired.

He could imagine how difficult hearing all this was for her. These were her people, and some of them were people she remembered from a happy childhood. Her instincts must be warring inside as she wondered who she should trust. His arms tightened. He said in as gentle a voice as he could manage,
Perhaps the attacks on you were engineered by someone other than the Dark Fae
.
But taking everything into consideration, including the timeline of events, I think it is most likely that the person behind the attacks is under this roof.

She was silent as she considered his words.
What is your reasoning?

She didn’t just accept what he said, or react. Good girl.

I don’t have evidence
, he said.
And I could be wrong. But consider: who would have had the time to develop an alliance with Geril and entice him to commit a really bad fucking crime? Geril didn’t just attempt murder. He attempted a political assassination. There had to be a damn-strong motive there, and I’m not sure that money alone would have done it.