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  “Good night, Rhys.” She licked her lips, feeling the velvet echo of the kiss. Lust rolled through her and she closed her eyes, fighting it.

  The door snapped closed behind him.

  * * *

  Olivia’s hands trembled as she walked along the palace corridor, relief warring with the aftermath of terror.

  She’d just escaped rape by the width of a Demi-Sidhe’s wing. When they’d been summoned to the Morven court two months ago, she’d had no idea she’d end up banished—and relieved it wasn’t worse.

  As it easily could have been, because she’d told King Ansgar no. Again.

  Many women would have said she was mad to refuse her sovereign. Tonight, the king had looked as broad shouldered and regal as always in a black jerkin glittering with rubies and gold embroidery, worn over black hose and gleaming black boots. More rubies glittered in the braids in his hip-length hair and in one lobe of a pointed ear.

  But if he’d intended the effect to be seductive, the stony expression on his handsome face and the chill in his black eyes had the opposite effect.

  He’d been charmed at first when she’d resisted his efforts to lure her to bed. But as the weeks had gone on, his ego had been pricked.

  Tonight, his patience had worn out.

  Olivia had found herself babbling. “You . . . You do me great honor, your majesty. But I . . . I’m married. My husband . . .”

  Terrifying rage flashed through his eyes and vanished a heartbeat later, replaced by a charming, kind smile she didn’t trust in the least. He leaned forward to brush a hand over her cheek. “Goddess, what a beautiful creature you are.”

  When she couldn’t quite suppress her flinch, he gave her a tender smile. “Oh, my dear. Do you expect me to do you some violence?”

  “It wasn’t my intention to anger you, Majesty. It’s just . . .”

  “You love your husband, I know. All the court knows. The two of you are fair sickening, you with that laughing little boy of yours.” His lips twisted. “You are so fortunate to have such a son. I’ve never seen anything so very . . . sweet.” He brushed a thumb over her lower lip. “I would not dream of hurting you.”

  It should have made her feel better, but her mouth was dry as sand anyway. “Your Majesty is most generous. Thank you for your understanding.”

  “Oh, my dear, don’t thank me.” He stepped away from her, and she relaxed a fraction. His violence with the maids was well-known. Even the ladies of the court had known the weight of his fist. “I have no desire to mar such beauty.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Not when there are so many other ways to make my displeasure known. So very many, so much more painful.”

  He spoke so softly, almost gently, yet she had never found him so terrifying, even in his most flamboyant fits of rage.

  Oh, Goddess! I’d better give in! “Your Majesty . . .”

  But his tone turned coolly dismissive. “You’d best return to your quarters, I think. You are your father’s chatelain, are you not? His castle has done without your services for too long. I’ve been selfish.”

  “I am . . . devastated to leave your presence. But I will of course do as you will.”

  “That would be refreshing.”

  She sank into her deepest curtsy, inclining her head. Her heart beat so hard, the lace of her bodice trembled against her skin.

  He turned on a heel and strode away.

  When the echoes of his clicking footsteps had faded, she rose. Her trembling knees almost collapsed under her weight.

  Did I just make a dreadful mistake? She’d worried for weeks whether she should simply give him what he wanted. After all, the king’s discarded mistresses were often richly rewarded.

  Yet she simply couldn’t stand the thought of having any man’s hands on her other than her husband’s. Not even the king’s.

  Coln had left the decision up to her, but she could sense he hadn’t wanted her to surrender her honor, either.

  She was lucky to suffer nothing worse than banishment. At one point, she’d been convinced she was about to be raped; Ansgar wasn’t known for his forbearance.

  Now she had to gather Coln and Ivor and get them to safety as quickly as possible.

  Reaching the ornate door of the chamber they shared, she wasn’t surprised to find it locked. It was late—almost midnight. Ansgar had kept her long in his quarters. She knocked softly. “Coln? Let me in. We need to get packed and go. The King has banished me.”

  But there was no answer. No sound at all. “Coln?”

  Reaching into the purse on her belt, she groped until her shaking hands found the key. It took two tries to fit it into the lock.

  Somehow she got the door open, stepped inside—and froze, staring. A wave of cold rushed over her, as if all her blood had been replaced with ice water.

  Coln lay on his side with his back to her. The worn rug he lay on was dyed red with blood. A small arm lay flopped over one of his shoulders as if the child had fallen asleep in his arms.

  And a sword thrust straight up on the other side of him, point buried in the floor.

  “Ivor! Coln!” She ran across the room, leaping over broken furniture, her slippers crunching through broken crockery. Coln had fought savagely to defend their son. It hadn’t been enough. Blood covered his white linen shirt in huge stains, crimson darkening to brown.

  Olivia fell to her knees beside him, grabbing his shoulder. Her hand jerked back as the cold of his body registered. He was long dead.

  Ivor lay curled in the shelter of his body, as though Coln had tried to shield him.

  It had done no good.

  The blade of a great sword lay driven through Ivor’s side, skewering him like a capon on a spit, pinning him to the floor.

  Olivia’s stunned gaze traveled up the length of the weapon to the hilt, intricately carved with coiling roses, garnets forming the petals.

  She knew that weapon. It belonged to Gorin, the Royal Assassin, who’d murdered two of King Llyr’s wives and three of his children.

  He’d left it here as a message. Gorin wanted her to know he’d killed them—on the king’s orders.

  A sob tore at her throat with rusty claws. Olivia looked down at her husband’s face, eyes staring sightlessly over Ivor’s small blond head. Then she realized the man wasn’t Coln.

  He was Rhys.

  * * *

  Olivia jolted upright in bed, her teeth clamped against the need to scream. She’d long since learned not to draw attention with a scream.

  She woke the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs. She felt logy and depressed in the aftermath of last night’s dream, but she shook the feeling off and cast a cleansing spell over herself. Feeling marginally better, she dressed in the clothes she’d conjured the night before and followed the enticing scent of food to the kitchen.

  “Grab yourself a cup,” Rhys told her, waving a spatula at the coffee maker, where a pair of mugs waited.

  After doctoring her coffee with cream and sugar, she moved to look over his shoulder. “Something smells good.”

  He gave her a smile, his amber eyes alight. “Hopefully your nose doesn’t deceive you. How do you like your eggs?”

  “Scrambled’s good.” She watched him start cracking the eggs into a bowl, his big hands sure and competent. He poured the bowl’s contents into a skillet, which instantly began to sizzle.

  The toaster made a chunking sound, and two pieces of wheat toast popped into view. He plated the eggs, added a couple of strips of bacon, and plucked out both pieces of toast, then handed it all over.

  Plate in one hand, mug in the other, Olivia headed over to the breakfast nook. A moment later, he sat down across from her with his own meal.

  Her gaze fell on his coffee cup, where a painted boy rode a broom. “Harry Potter?”

  As he sipped, his eyes smiled at her over the ri
m. “Mom’s idea of a joke.”

  “I like your mom’s sense of humor.”

  They spent the next twenty minutes demolishing breakfast. The eggs were delicious—he’d gone the extra mile with chives and seasonings. Was he trying to impress her or was he just a foodie? Of course, from what she could tell, Rhys habitually went the extra mile when it came to virtually everything.

  He certainly had the night before . . .

  Then she remembered the role the geas had played, and her smug smile faded.

  She stole a glance at him, watching the tendons slide in those broad, strong hands. Even now, she could feel the spell urging her to touch him, to run her fingertips along the powerful muscles of his forearms, taste that sensual mouth again.

  The real question was, why did the geas’s creator bother? Olivia didn’t really need a spell urging her to have sex with Rhys. That big, powerful body and handsome face didn’t need help to inspire lust.

  Olivia dragged her gaze away from him and directed her attention to her plate.

  “You said it wasn’t hard to create one of these dimensional gates,” Rhys said as he spread blackberry preserves over a piece of toast, his gaze thoughtful. “Could you open one?”

  She took a sip of her coffee and shrugged. “Of course. It’s been . . . oh, sixty years since I’ve been to the Mageverse, but gating is one of those skills you don’t forget.”

  “Sixty years?” He blinked at that. “Why haven’t you been back?”

  She shrugged. “I was afraid Ansgar would send Gorin after me, until another Sidhe told me King Llyr Galatyn had finally killed him.” She smiled over her cup, remembering that happy moment. “The whole damn ex-pat Sidhe community let out a cheer. A lot of us went home then.”

  He shot her a perceptive glance. “But not you?”

  Her father’s body sprawled in the courtyard, a sword lying beside his bloody hand, a dozen stab wounds in his body. Her mother had fallen nearby, not far from Olivia’s sister. Their bodies were so badly burned from magical blasts, she had to cast identification spells to confirm who they were.

  “I had nothing to go home to. Ansgar sent Gorin after my mother and father to keep them from giving me shelter. There’s nobody left alive in the Morven kingdom I care anything about seeing—and the rest did nothing when the king turned on us. Mortal Earth is my home now.”

  Compassion warmed his amber gaze. “I don’t blame you for being pissed.”

  When her eyes began to sting, Olivia stood up from the table, picked up her dishes, and moved to the trash can to scrape off her plate. After rinsing it in the sink, she opened the dishwasher and found a place for it. Once she was sure she could continue without embarrassing herself, she straightened her shoulders and turned. “But getting back to your question, I can definitely open a gate for us. In fact, I think a trip to the Sidhe kingdom would be a good place to start. If Gorin’s the one who’s been messing with us, he’s probably been doing it from the Mageverse. And I’m willing to bet he doesn’t have King Llyr’s approval. Llyr, unlike his brother, isn’t a vicious son of a bitch.”

  Rhys’s eyes lit like a boy contemplating Christmas. “You mean to go today?”

  She shrugged. “The sooner we get a handle on what’s going on, the more likely we are to survive it.”

  His smile faded, his face going grim. “Got to agree with you there.”

  “The trouble is, getting into the capital may take a little work. You can’t just gate there. There are wards to keep out hostiles around every Mageverse city. Normally we’d gate to the guard post and ask permission to enter—which probably wouldn’t be all that tough to get. But then we’d have to seek an audience with the king, which could take months.”

  “So even fairies have red tape?”

  “You bet your muscled ass.” She leaned a hip back against the gleaming white countertop and frowned. “It might be faster to go to Avalon and talk to one of my friends there. See if they can get me an audience with the king.”

  “Avalon?”

  “The Magekind capital in the Mageverse.” Reading his confused frown, she explained, “Remember I mentioned Merlin? Well, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are real, too.”

  His golden brows flew up. “Are real? You don’t mean they’re still alive? But that would make them . . .”

  “Fifteen hundred years old. Yeah. They’re vampires.”

  The brows snapped down in outrage. “Oh, hell no.”

  “Oh, hell yeah. Not Count Dracula–type vampires—they’re the good guys.”

  “Aw, crap. I grew up on those stories when I was a kid. Loved them. The Once and Future King, The Crystal Cave, Le Morte d’Arthur—I read them all.”

  “And unfortunately, they’re all ninety percent wrong. Arthur was a Celtic king, yes, and he had a Round Table of knights, but Merlin wasn’t a magician, he was a Mageverse alien, a member of a race called the Fae. He came to Mortal Earth to create a team of immortal, magic-using guardians who took an oath to protect humanity from its own worst impulses.”

  Rhys stared. “Why?”

  “Because the Fae had discovered most sentient races render themselves extinct through war or environmental catastrophe . . .”

  “Given the past century, I can believe that.”

  “So they decided to fight that trend by teaching members of each race how to protect their people. Merlin tested Arthur, his knights, and his ladies, among others. Those who passed drank a magic potion from Merlin’s Grail, which gave them the ability to draw on the Mageverse. It made the men vampires and the women witches.”

  Rhys blinked. “Uh . . . why? I mean, why vampires and witches?”

  “Hell if I know. I gather the Fae have the same biological setup—vampire males feed on non-vampire females—so that’s the template they use when creating their magical guardians. Anyway, I worked with one of the Knights of the Round Table during World War II . . .”

  His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “Damn. Which one?”

  “Gawain.”

  “The guy who fought the Green Knight?”

  “Didn’t happen. But yeah, that Gawain. He also had a magical sword inhabited by a dragon . . .”

  “Why didn’t that make it into a legend?”

  “No idea. Anyway, point is Gawain might be willing to help me get an audience with the king. And they’d make handy backup if we have to deal with any more hired werewolves. We’ll have to gate to the city wards and try to get a message to him from there, but he should be willing to see me.”

  “Do we need to take anything with us? Clothes or whatever?” A smile tugged at Rhys’s lips, though he was obviously trying to rein in his excitement.

  Olivia found herself grinning at his enthusiasm. “Anything we need, we can conjure.”

  “That does simplify packing.” Picking up on her amusement, Rhys shrugged sheepishly. “Well, it’s not every day you get to go to another planet.” His eyes gleamed. “Or meet a Knight of the Round Table.”

  “True enough. Let’s head outside. Might be better to try it there.” Olivia grimaced. “There’s some Mageverse wildlife you wouldn’t want to get loose in your house.”

  She followed Rhys out the kitchen door and onto the deck beyond, an impressive stretch of red-stained wood complete with a hot tub and huge barbecue grill. Wicker deck furniture and an immense umbrella, folded for the winter, suggested it would be a great spot for picnics in good weather.

  “Nice.” Moving to the deck rail, she stared at the rolling sweep of what had to be an acre of lawn. Oaks and maples stood surrounded by azalea bushes that would be beautiful in the spring. Now, though, the February wind was cold enough to numb her cheeks.

  Before she could even think about conjuring a coat, magic swirled around her. When it vanished, it left behind a heavy black pea coat.

  Rhys wore the same long bl
ack trench he’d worn the night before. It was one of those bitingly clear winter days, and the sunlight shown on his thick honey-blond hair.

  Goddess, he’s beautiful. And that thought didn’t feel like the geas talking. There was good reason to want Rhys beyond the dictates of that bloody spell. Even aside from those spectacular looks, the man had saved her from freezing and fought werewolves for her. He’d focused on her pleasure in bed, then shown compassion for her losses at Gorin’s hands.

  Of course she wanted him. Not just for sex, but for the way he made her feel less alone.

  Unfortunately, we don’t have time to indulge, she told the warm female purr in the back of her brain. Later.

  With him at her heels, Olivia moved to the center of the yard, clear of any of the surrounding trees. Closing her eyes, she stilled her mind and reached.

  Her will summoned the boiling pinpoint of the dimensional gate into existence. She felt the heat and pressure of magic on her skin like sunlight on a hot day as she started feeding it more power . . .

  Light detonated in her face, accompanied by a stunning psychic hammer blow. Olivia staggered, sucking in a gasp that became a scream as pain burst into agony.

  Darkness fell.

  Chapter Six

  With his magical senses extended, Rhys watched Olivia’s gate expand from a point in the air to a wavering . . .

  Suddenly a blazing fountain of green sparks shot from the top of her head. With a choked gasp, she collapsed, magic showering around her as the gate popped like a soap bubble.

  “Olivia!” Surging forward, he managed to catch her before she could hit the ground. “Olivia!” Her head lolled, hair brushing the lawn, eyes rolled back below fluttering eyelashes.

  Fear stabbed his chest, and he lowered her to the grass. I just found her! I can’t lose her already! “Olivia, baby, wake up!” Fumbling for the pulse in her neck, he was relieved to find it beating strong and sure.

  He laid a hand on the rise of her cheek and sent a pulse of magic rolling through her, hoping to prod her to consciousness. “Come on, Liv . . .”