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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

C ael was hallucinating.

He had to be.

An after-effect of the lethaphyll smoke that billowed from the open door of his father’s office.

What in the ever-loving name of fucking Stygios was Xenia doing here? Wearing the uniform of the Stoneridge household staff, no less?

A smile ghosted over her lips, then died when he didn’t return it.

Of course he didn’t. Was she insane? Thank fuck the three other males behind her hadn’t seen it.

Arran raised his head. “Yes? What do you want, Cael? Laskaris and I were just finishing up.”

“I…” Cael started, but couldn’t find his voice.

Xenia was here. In his father’s fucking office. Nowhere near where she was supposed to be: safely ensconced in the Temple in the colonies.

She stared at the floor, wringing her fingers. Her hair had been pinned back into a low, puffy bun—a travesty. He ached to remove the pins, let her gorgeous curls spring forth with wild abandon.

Erik pushed off the wall and slapped a hand on Cael’s shoulder. “Laskaris’s wedding gift. A new human pet for the household staffs.” He dipped his head, huffing a laugh. “I meant staff. Silly of me.” His gaze bounced between Cael and Xenia, far too knowingly.

Cael trusted his baby brother more than anyone else in his family, but the thought of Arran interpreting whatever energy Erik had just sensed between him and Xenia…

Terror prickled down Cael’s spine.

“Cael,” Arran barked, breaking him from his stupor.

“Yes, Father, sorry, I… Hollins came to fetch me after I escorted Elodie back to her room. Said you were ready to meet with me.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw Xenia flinch at his fiancée’s name. She’d need to learn how to control her reactions. Every thought, every emotion was written so plainly across her face. He adored that about her. But here at Stoneridge, it could get her killed.

“Hollins?” Arran asked.

“Your valet?”

Arran waved him off. As if he couldn’t be bothered to remember the man’s name. “Your work begins tomorrow. All new customer inquiries are now your responsibility.”

Cael’s wing twitched. “I’m not?—”

“You’ve missed a great deal since you were off playing nursemaid in the colonies.” Cael fought the urge to flick his eyes toward Xenia. Arran flung a packet of documents at him. “Not to mention I had to find a job you were capable of in your state.” Arran dragged his disgusted gaze across Cael’s lone wing. Cael wished he could say it didn’t sting. “Review those and start arranging meetings. Time to prove your worth to this family.”

Cael nodded, then glanced at Laskaris, whose heavy head dipped against his chest, his eyelids fluttering.

Erik pulled the male from the couch. “Come on, Phidion. I’ll take you to your room. Cael, perhaps you can escort the little human back to her quarters?” A sly smirk, there and gone in an instant.

“Yes,” Arran grumbled. “Get her out of here. Her mortal scent is growing pungent.”

Xenia emanated a mixture of fear and excitement, tangy with a hint of peppery sweetness. Nearly as much of a tell as that small smile she’d given Cael.

She kept her head bowed as Cael approached. “Let’s go,” he snapped as he dragged her, as gently as possible, into the hallway.

The office door shut with an echoing thud, and down the hall, Erik and Phidion rounded the corner out of sight.

Xenia’s head popped up and she opened her mouth.

He clapped his hand over it. “Not here.”

He pulled her through the dark halls, then down the back stairs to the servant’s quarters. “Which one?”

She raised a shaky hand, and he towed her into the last room at the end of the hallway. He cast a wind-shield around the walls to muffle their voices.

He leaned his head back against the door, staring at her from underneath slitted lids and trying to slow his frenzied heart.

She paused by her small bed, cheeks flushed, her breathing just as erratic as his own.

Her emerald eyes—that unforgettable, alluring color, Cael’s favorite in the entire world—shone with teary relief. And apprehension.

His chest cracked open.

“Say something,” she whispered.

He strode forward and grasped her soft face between his hands.

“You reckless little fool ,” he growled.

Then crushed his mouth to hers.

Relief pounded through Xenia, a heady release, as she whimpered into Cael’s mouth.

She’d found him. Sure, it was in the most roundabout and dangerous way possible, the consequences of which hadn’t even begun to be felt.

But she didn’t care about any of that right now. Not with his hands and mouth on her.

Cael hoisted her up, wrapped her thighs around his waist, and slammed her into the wall. She broke their kiss, worried someone might have heard.

“Wind-shield,” he croaked, his face so achingly close to hers. Everything she’d wanted since Rhamnos. Since far earlier than that, if she were being honest. “No one will hear.”

The firm evidence of how much he’d missed her dragged along her center.

She had half a mind to scream at him. If he wanted her as badly as she could feel he did, why had he tried to send her away?

Her anger dissolved into rapturous shudders as he pressed soft kisses to her jaw, whispering her name like a prayer against her skin.

He moved back to her mouth, then stroked his tongue along the seam. She opened for him, tangling her fingers in his hair and tugging at the soft tendrils at his nape.

High Gods, this was why she hadn’t stayed on that ship. She would’ve risked a thousand dangerous treks across the continent for just this single taste of him.

His fingertips trailed beneath her skirt, meeting her bare flesh far too briefly before he tensed and dropped her.

Her feet fell to the floor as she panted, undone by his kiss, and he pressed a fist against the wall above her head. “We can’t,” he eked out, eyes squeezed shut as if he didn’t dare look at her. “They’ll scent it.”

She reached up to grab his chin. “Cael.”

His eyes popped open, and she was skewered by the fear and longing in their thundercloud depths.

“What. The fuck. Are you doing here?” His breath pelted her lips and despite his barely restrained violence, he began gently tugging out her hair pins. “Why didn’t you go back to the colonies?”

“I—” she started, then steeled her expression. “You know why.”

“I really don’t.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, his biceps straining his evergreen dinner jacket. “I told you there was nothing between us.”

“I think you might be lying.” Her lips curled as she darted her eyes toward the obvious bulge tenting his pants.

“This isn’t a fucking joke!” he roared.

His fury coaxed hers to life. How fucking dare he?

“Isn’t it?” She struggled to keep her voice level. “Over the past week, I’ve been abducted, thrown in the back of a truck, stripped bare, fed from, sold off, and had a tracking device implanted into my neck!”

Cael’s face paled as he stepped into her, tilting her jaw to the side and brushing his thumb over the wound on her neck. “He put it in already?”

She nodded, tears welling.

He released her, then slumped onto the bed and dropped his head into his hands. “This is a disaster.”

She wanted to step between his knees, rest his head against her stomach, assure him that everything was going to be okay now that they were together again. But given his turbulent reaction, she didn’t know if she even believed that herself.

“You were supposed to go back to the colonies,” he muttered. “You were going to be safe there. I would’ve learned to live with it.”

“Lived with what?”

Cael cupped his hands together, circling a thumb into his palm, eyes downcast. “The bittersweet agony of knowing you still existed in this world, but would never be mine.” When he finally looked up, his anguish stole her breath. “I can’t protect you from my father here. And now you’re his fucking property .”

“We’ll figure something out,” Xenia volunteered.

“I’m getting married in a month. And my new wife and I will be expected to get our own household and start pumping out heirs to shore up the bloodline. Even if he’d agree to have you transferred to my household, is that what you would want?”

He rose from the bed, a ferocious beast stalking its prey, and backed her against the wall again. He shoved a hand under her skirt to caress the skin above her stockings. “ Is that what you want? To be my dirty little secret? The human mistress I fuck behind closed doors while my wife stands beside me in public?”

She shuddered as he inched his hand higher, tantalizingly close to her very bare, and very wet, sex. The weight of his body, his intoxicating scent—rainswept meadows and cool earth—the exploratory trail of his fingers… It was too much. In this moment, she would’ve given him everything, agreed to anything he asked. Even to being his whore.

He trembled as he grazed a fingertip up her slit. “ Fuck , why aren’t you ever wearing any underwear?”

Her knees nearly buckled as she choked out, “You are being extremely confusing right now.”

He removed his hand from her skirt and dropped his forehead against the crown of her head. “That’s because you confuse the fuck out of me.” He cupped her cheeks again, gentle Cael making a rare appearance. “Why did you come back for me?”

“Because we’re not finished with each other. And I missed arguing with you.” He snorted an amused laugh and released her face. “Do you… Are you… Do you want to get married?”

“Not to her.” Cael grimaced. “But even if I were to break off this engagement—which my father would never let me do—and find a way to leave Stoneridge, what will happen to you ? He has the rest of my life planned out. If he thinks I’m straying from that path, he’ll come looking for the reason. If he finds a single shred of evidence that it’s you, he will kill you. And I will die before I let that happen.”

Xenia rubbed at the small scar beneath her ear. “I?—”

“ If I were to even consider leaving here with you—” Xenia let out a small gasp of excitement and Cael narrowed his eyes, “—we would need to get that thing out first.”

“How?” Xenia asked. “He said he’d be able to tell if it was tampered with or if I tried to remove it.”

“He’s right. Those things are bespelled against such interferences. We’ll need to see what we can learn about them. Have they given you your assignment yet?”

“No, I’ve only just arrived this afternoon.“

“You need to be extremely wary. Around my father, obviously. Around Laskaris. He looks at you like he regrets not purchasing you for his own household. And especially around my brother Tomas. Viktor won’t look twice at you; he’s inherited my father’s distaste for humans. But Tomas…”

“I’ve been warned. What happened? Your father said something about Tomas getting a human pregnant and said he took care of it. Did he force her to get rid of the baby?”

Cael laughed bitterly. “No. He took a rather more permanent means of quashing the issue. He stabbed her in the stomach and slit her throat. Then strung her up in front of the estate. Left her there to rot as a warning. As much for my brothers as for the human staff. Arran Zephyrus never misses an opportunity to flaunt his cruelty. Toward humans or Fae.”

Bile crawled across the back of Xenia’s tongue, and tears pricked her eyes.

“Cassandra is probably going out of her mind with worry.” Cael scrubbed a hand down his face. “The last I spoke with Tristan, I told him we would be back in the colonies in a few days. That was several weeks ago at this point.”

“Have you talked to him since? Perhaps you can send him a windwhisper. Let him and Cass know that I’m safe.”

“You’re not safe,” Cael grumbled.

“ Relatively safe. Not dead at least.”

Cael’s face grew serious as he ran a knuckle along her jaw. She leaned into his touch. “I will do everything in my power to protect you while we figure out how to get that tracking device out. But we need to be careful. And we need to do this right .”

Xenia wanted to say she knew that. Wanted to beg him to leave with her right now, tracking device be damned. To run away to some deserted area of the continent—if such a place existed—and let her heal him, body and spirit. But she knew it wasn’t possible yet.

She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, her fear and adrenaline giving way to exhaustion.

“You should get some sleep,” Cael said. “Lock the door behind me. I don’t think anyone will bother you tonight. Thank the High Gods Tomas hasn’t seen you yet.” He flexed his hand, then balled it into a fist at his side. “Especially in that outfit.”

Her heart trilled as he stepped over to cup her face again. He tilted his head down, and she closed her eyes, desire a hot pulse between her legs.

But his lips landed on her temple, not her mouth. Her shoulders dipped in disappointment.

He stepped around her, then waved away his windshield and strode for the door. Before he opened it and without turning to face her, he whispered, “I missed you, Blondie.”

He exited the room and she shuddered out a relieved breath.

Despite the danger of her current circumstances, despite her terror and fatigue and anger, a small spark of her persistent optimism flared behind her ribs.

She’d found him again. Against all odds, and across a fucking continent.

If she could do that , Mighty Anaemos, she could do anything.

Even convince a stubborn, one-winged, century-and-a-half-old Fae male to run away with her.