Page 7 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Chapter six

Unlikely and Reluctant

T o Diego’s consternation, Lugh’s head ended up in his lap. Not that he minded helping someone in such obvious pain, but it was a little disconcerting having that powerful body so close with only a thin blanket between them.

Arms wrapped hard around his ribs, Lugh lay with his eyes squeezed shut. Tremors ran through him while furnace heat radiated from his skin. He seemed to derive some comfort from Diego’s touch—at least, he had stopped writhing and thrashing.

A rustle of leaves drew his attention. Diego squinted in the soft, green-filtered light, trying to make out a figure hurtling toward them through the trees. Quick glimpses gave him the impression of something huge and…shaggy? When he blinked, it was gone.

“My poor Lugh.”

Diego jumped at Danu’s voice so suddenly by his ear. She knelt beside them, running her hands over Lugh with a worried frown. “How long?”

“It just started, majestad ,” Diego murmured, afraid that even a loud sound might hurt Lugh. “One moment he was fine, the next he was on the ground.”

Two more sidhe appeared as if they had dropped from the sky. Maybe they did. Both tall and slender, they looked too graceful and willowy to possess much strength, but they scooped Lugh up between them without any apparent effort.

With a sharp cry, Lugh twisted in their arms, reaching for Diego. His eyes rolled, more white than black.

Like a wounded bull. Diego fought against the unbidden image of the end of a bullfight, the beautiful animal on his knees with rivulets of blood running down his shoulders.

Danu’s voice nudged him back to reality. “Take his hand, Diego.”

He closed his fingers gently around Lugh’s, and immediately the massive body relaxed. “Is it serious, majestad ?” He looked up to find her watching him with an unreadable expression.

“Come. He needs rest. You will stay with him.”

The non-answer worried Diego more than anything else had that odd morning.

With his hand enveloped in Lugh’s grip, Diego walked beside the sidhe as they wended through the trees and up a rise.

They climbed until they reached a shallow cave carved out of the hillside just large enough for someone Lugh’s size to sit up comfortably.

Honeysuckle framed the entrance, suffusing the air with its bright fragrance.

The sidhe placed Lugh on the moss bed just inside the cave and stepped back to give Diego room to settle beside him.

“My clothes are still by the pool.”

“You have little need for them,” Danu told him softly.

I have plenty of need for them. Damn it, I feel so exposed. “What should I do?”

“You do what is necessary without thinking. Something in your flows soothes him, and you send streams of comfort to him without thought. You are your own sun when you feel someone in need.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant, but if his simply being there helped, he would stay.

“You can grant him sleep.” Danu took his hands and placed them on Lugh’s chest. “Open to him. Not too great a breach or his pain will overwhelm you. Just enough. Do you feel it?”

Diego gasped as pain crawled through him, heated needles that stabbed a thousand tattoos along his nerves. A sledgehammer pounded behind his eyes, and his stomach lurched.

“Careful, careful. Shore up your walls,” Danu murmured. “You have it…yes, just enough to reach him.”

The pain still threatened, but Diego found he could distance himself from it. Lugh’s heart raced under his hands and a moan vibrated in his barrel chest as another wave of agony swept through him.

“So. Now feel the pulse of his blood, the scatter of his thoughts, and will them both to slow. Slow. Slower still…yes.” Danu granted him a smile and patted his shoulder. “You have it. You learn so readily. Lie down with him, and he will sleep awhile. Perhaps he will be better when he wakes.”

Perhaps? “But, majestad , what’s wrong with him?”

“It will pass,” she said. Then she stood and vanished.

Diego stretched out beside Lugh. “That’s an annoying habit your grandmother has. Popping in and out.”

Fast asleep, Lugh grunted and nestled closer to rest his head on Diego’s shoulder and throw an arm over him.

Wonderful. Now I’m stuck. He rearranged his blanket to cover himself decently and tried not to think about the lonely knot under his heart.

Was Finn somewhere safe? What would he have thought of this?

Would he have discovered jealousy, or was the emotion too alien for him?

It certainly would have been easy to misunderstand the situation, if Finn came up on him snuggled with Lugh in his bower.

An unhappy thought crept up on him. What if Finn had been in a similar predicament when he had surprised him with that girl? His memory brought up odds and ends he hadn’t noticed in his jealous rage—a life jacket, the pile of soaked clothes.

“ Dios . He wouldn’t have…” Most likely not, since Finn wasn’t given to playing hero.

Still, there might have been something else going on, and he hadn’t given Finn a chance.

Angry, yes, he’d had every right, but he’d overreacted and caused all this.

If he’d just acted like a sensible person, they might have made up by now and been together, at home. Damn it, Finn, I’m sorry.

Lugh whimpered in his sleep, and Diego fought to clamp down on his misery or risk telegraphing it. With the black ball of pain firmly lodged under his heart, he eventually drifted off as well.

He woke what could have been hours or minutes later, from a dream of Finn kissing him senseless. A large hand cupped his butt, squeezing and caressing his cheeks, and in his momentary disorientation, he moaned and pressed back.

“Are you awake?” The deep bass, so decidedly not Finn, jerked Diego out of his doze.

“Lugh, stop.” He pulled back when he realized he lay snuggled all too intimately in powerful arms. It didn’t help at all that he was rock-hard, his body obviously enjoying the attention.

Lugh shrugged and ceased his caresses. “It was you who kissed me, little man.”

“I’m sorry. I was dreaming about Finn.”

“Ah. Disappointing.”

“You feel better?”

“Yes, a good deal. I think because of you.” Lugh stroked a finger down Diego’s nose. “Thank you.”

Diego caught his hand before it wandered lower. “Look, I think we need to get something straight. You’re gorgeous and I like you. I’m happy to be your friend, but that’s it, all right? Not your lover. My heart’s taken, even if his attention wanders sometimes.”

“And if you never find him again?”

“God.” Diego flopped onto his back. “I don’t know. Never’s a long time.”

“I am patient.”

The gentle humor in Lugh’s smile made Diego chuckle despite himself. “You’ll have to be. I’m glad you feel better. You scared the hell out of me.”

“I am sorry for that.”

They lay quietly side by side for a few minutes, until the backlog of curiosity caught up with Diego. “Lugh? You’re not like the other sidhe . Is it too personal to ask why?”

“Personal? I’m not certain I understand the turn of phrase. Does the question offend me? No.” Lugh propped his head on his hand. “My father was sidhe , my mother, Eithne, is Fomorian. It was the cause of the first war between the two courts, their love.”

Diego chewed on that, dredging up all he could recall about ancient Irish myth. “So Fomorians really are beastly and misshapen? With goats’ heads and things?”

“Beast-gifted, not beastly,” Lugh said with an indulgent laugh. “The sidhe carry their animal spirits within—the one they are able to shift to. Fomorians carry the animal part of their nature in plain sight and have only one form.”

“Oh. So you have hooves…but you can also shift?”

Lugh nodded.

“And what animal is part of you?”

“I think you know, little man.”

The bull. He would be a beautiful, gleaming black bull… “Yes.” He sifted things around for a moment. “And Morrigan?”

“She is the battle bird, the raven.”

“I mean, she’s half-Fomorian, too?”

“We have never gleaned who her mother was. And her father will not say. She is our Morri, fierce and proud.” Lugh’s head came up as if he listened to something. “Grandmother calls. We should go to the grove.”

“You sure you’re up to walking?”

“If we do not go…” Lugh flashed him a devilish grin. “Tongues will wag.”

“Um, I’m not exactly dressed for company.”

Lugh reached behind him for a carved wooden box out of which he pulled a length of red cloth. “It is strange to me that you feel your body will horrify others. You are beautiful, and would only be admired.”

“I’d rather not be stared at naked, thanks.”

With Lugh’s help, he managed to wrap the kilt around his waist and fasten it securely. Since he was considerably shorter, it reached his knees, rather than ending mid-thigh, for which he was grateful.

Though he made a brave show of waving off Diego’s help, Lugh needed a shoulder to lean on before they reached the bottom of the hill. By the time they reached the grove with the huge, ancient oak, he was pale and shaking.

“You should sit down,” Diego whispered.

Out of breath, Lugh only nodded, and pulled Diego down onto a rock outcropping with a good view of the rest of the gathering.

The sidhe had assembled—scores of them, tall and graceful.

Scattered among them were other fae—smaller, gnarled-limbed beings, and the féileacán, always in pairs, and ethereal, translucent women who seemed to fade in and out of sight as they moved.

Diego searched the crowd for anyone resembling Finn, but there was no one who looked like he could have been a pooka.

He wondered if Finn was unique among the fae.

“Let him come among us,” Danu proclaimed, and the crowd parted to admit a being who made Diego stare in wonder.