“And?”
Duke Tully gave a derisive snort. “Lock her in fae iron.”
“Aye, my lord.”
So much for the duke"s comment that he had allowed her to leave of her own free will.
Instead, he"d figured the drug had kept her from going anywhere.
Duke Tully whipped around and reentered his tent as the guard stalked off to another part of camp. Ritasia concentrated the best she could and transported again. She wasn"t sure if she was so dizzy and disoriented from the rapid transporting, even though she was not going far, or if it was the drug, or a combination of both, but she thought she was sitting in the king"s lap.
He smiled down at her and whispered, “Did you wish to take me somewhere, my fae princess?”
A guard rushed around the fire to reach them, and she meant to grab the king"s arm, but he had his arms wrapped soundly around her in a warm embrace, and she thought about how much she wanted to get far away from here—which was the way to transport, only she needed a destination, and she couldn"t think of one. Not with the shouting from the guard and several others as the camp woke in a rush.
“She"s here!” the guard shouted, trying to reach the king and her.
She was confused, but she knew she had to make the right decision. To take him far away from here. And she considered so many places they could go that she thought would be safe for them—the Renaissance fairgrounds at Waxahachie that were closed for the season, even if it was dragon fae-claimed territory, South Padre Island, the dark fae territory, her own bedchambers, even the minor turtle fae kingdom where some of her cousins resided.
She thought of a beach and the night and no people, no shouting, no rallying of the troops, right before she remembered her mother had forbidden her to go to South Padre Island, and then the world shifted.
***
Tiernan still had his arms securely wrapped around Ritasia, still seated as before, only they were no longer at the campfire in the woods, but sitting upon a beach. He wondered where in the world she"d brought them. The human plane of existence? In their own world somewhere near the Denkar fae castle? He didn"t know the land well enough to recognize the place. But he was glad she was so resourceful, although he could tell she was quite dazed from whatever drug they"d given her.
The night was still dark as they sat on the sandy beach, ocean waves crashing on the shore some distance hence, a soft warm breeze blowing over them, the smell of salt and fish and seaweed. But Ritasia was sound asleep in his arms as he sat on the warm sand.
He could see the minx would need his firm hand in ensuring she remained safe. She seemed to be the kind of woman who enjoyed living life in a more…adventurous way. Very much like himself. Only when it came to him, he could get away with it, being a man and a king, after all.
He couldn"t see her being the perfect courtly queen, dressed in all her finery, surrounded by her maids, participating only in those activities that seemed suitable for a fae queen to take part in. Even now she was still dressed in her dusty male breeches and tunic and boots, and he just couldn"t envision her wearing anything else.
He should have known what she was truly like once he"d seen her scrambling over fallen pillars at the dig site, and when Prince Raglan had told him she had ended up in a dragon fae dungeon. Which he still intended to learn more about.
And the fact her brother and cousins could dare her to take part in some risky adventure, and she"d go along with it also. Not only that, but she had appeared at the court dressed in the tunic, dusty male breeches, and that floppy adventurer"s hat that had half hidden her beauty, then she had told him to sit in her cousin"s seat. Oh, aye, she was not the queen he had ever dreamed would be his own.
He smiled and tightened his hold on her. She seemed perfect for the role as his queen.
Perfect for a tyrant king descended from a long line of tyrant kings.
He looked down at her, her sweet face cloaked in sleep under the light of the full moon.
At this very instant, she appeared charming, angelic, and he had to smile at the notion. She was anything but. Although he had to admit he greatly admired her for staying with him at Duke Tully"s camp, while making every effort to help him escape, despite her condition.
At first, he had assumed she"d woken enough to decide to try and help him, though she had looked dazed. Then when she disappeared and did not reappear next to him, he figured she"d gone home and had planned to get help. He couldn"t believe it when she miscalculated her transport and ended up in his lap, intending to rescue him all on her own. She was a treasure.
He sighed. They needed to return to her people and assure them she was all right. If only he could transport them, he would, but he had no way of removing the manacle at his ankle.
Then he noted the two chains she wore around her neck. The lion fae medallion, most likely. But what was the other? He hadn"t noticed it before this.
With his free hand, he reached down to pull at the chains and slip them out of her tunic so that he could examine them. The lion-embossed golden medallion was on top. A silver medallion was eclipsed by the other. He slid the lion fae medallion aside and saw the engraving of a snake coiled around a scepter, the snake"s fangs exposed ready to strike its prey.
He stared at the familiar sign that he"d seen in ancient journals depicting the ancient fae kingdoms, both of seelie and unseelie courts. This one was the symbol of the unseelie fae. He glanced up at Ritasia. Why would she have a medallion of an unseelie fae court and why was she wearing it?
He had no sooner wondered about the medallion when he heard movement in the sand behind him. Six men rushed across the sand dressed in red uniforms trimmed in silver braid, guards of some fae kingdom. But not Ritasia"s kingdom.
That"s when he saw the silver rings around their eyes glowing brightly, the fierce scowls they wore, the determination in their stride, and the swords withdrawn. King Tiernan swore under his breath. How in the hell had they ended up in the unseelie fae plane?
“Seelie,” one of the men snarled in anger. “What are you doing here?”
“Ritasia,” he whispered to her, not wishing to alarm her, but he had to wake her and have her quickly transport them out of here.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she glanced up with a sleepy kind of look, her long black lashes nearly hiding her half-shuttered eyes. “Tiernan?” she said softly.
“Aye, you have brought us to the unseelie plane. Take us out of here at once,” he ordered, trying to break through the impenetrable fog she seemed to be in.
“He has no power,” the one guard said. “Kill him. But the girl, we will bring her before the king and he will decide what he will do with her.”
Ritasia"s gaze shifted to the unseelie who was speaking. She whispered to Tiernan. “Oh my goddess, how did we get here?”
“You brought us. Take us away.”
She closed her eyes and he feared she would fall asleep again, but they were suddenly enveloped in thick mist. The footfalls of the guards on the beach abruptly stopped.
“What…what has she done? Where are they?” one of the men said.
Tiernan wasn"t sure what Ritasia had done, but they were still close to where the guards were and no mist would deter them.
And then he and Ritasia were no longer sitting on the beach, but sitting on a bare stone floor in a castle"s great hall, not any that Tiernan had been in before, the walls covered with tapestries depicting fae fighting with fae of other kingdoms.
The scent of the fae who lived here was the same as the scent from those on the beach.
“Unseelie kingdom,” Tiernan warned Ritasia, before they were discovered once again. “How are you taking us through the unseelie plane?”
No one was in the place, thank the goddess. Everyone but the guards on duty must still be in bed at this early hour. But it didn"t mean someone might not come along and run across them.
Only in the ancient past had the unseelie and seelie courts found a way to rip apart the fabric that k
ept those from one plane from visiting those of another. After much killing, it was said a truce between the planes healed the fabric, and never again could the two courts meet.
Except when in the human world. But even then, they avoided each other as if any interaction would seal their doom.
“I don"t know how I did this,” she whispered, sounding worried and perplexed.
He glanced down at the medallion she now wore. “Where did you get that?” He studied the snake coiled around the scepter on the medallion. “It"s an ancient unseelie fae symbol.”
She raised the ring to examine it, and he noted the Celtic knot on it, just as ancient as the snake symbol. Although the Celtic knot wasn"t an unseelie symbol.
His eyes met hers. “Did you get these from the ruins?”
“Aye.”
“If you have never been able to enter the unseelie plane before, I suspect one or both of the objects have brought us here. Take us back to our world, now.”
“I tried. But when I thought of my castle, it brought us to this one.”
He glanced around at the hall. “This is an unseelie great hall.”
Footfalls sounded outside the great room. A number of footfalls. If he were to guess, Tiernan would think the number would amount to six men. Like those they had seen on the beach. Had they finally tracked the princess and him here?
A figure seemed to melt out of the walls through a secret passageway, he assumed. A woman about Ritasia"s age, wearing a pale blue gossamer gown, her bright red hair loose about her shoulders, her green eyes wide, stared at them.
“You!” she shrieked, pointing to Ritasia in his lap.
He wondered how the unseelie seemed to know Ritasia. And it wasn"t in a good way.
Which also made him think of how she"d gotten herself incarcerated in the dragon fae dungeon.
She was supposed to be the one keeping her brother and cousins out of trouble, but it seemed to him, she got herself into enough all on her own. And he was ready to take on the role of her protector, permanently, to see that she stayed out of trouble.
“Guards!” the wild-eyed unseelie screamed.
Tiernan quickly said, “Take us somewhere else, princess. Try the human plane.”
The unseelie"s eyes narrowed. “Princess? Guards!”
The footfalls encroaching on their claimed territory quickened into a run.
Ritasia hugged Tiernan tight as if she was afraid she"d lose him in the transport, then closed her eyes. Mist again surrounded him in the black void of space as she clung to him, and he kept his hold on her just as tight. He felt the transport, the air around them shifting, changing, the warmth of her body heating his, but all he could think about was where they would land next.
When they settled in the new place, he glanced around, half expecting to be either on the unseelie beach again or in the castle somewhere else. But instead, he saw scant lights illuminating shops selling books and clothes and toys. They were in a human mall somewhere.
The place was cast in shadows, closed for the night. He thought to find a hardware store and see if he could remove the iron band around his ankle, and then he would take them wherever they would be safe.
“All right, we are in the human plane,” he said. “Remove the ring and medallion.”
Her skin was too pale, and she looked unwell.
“Ritasia?” he asked, cradling her head in his hands.
“Fae travel,” she managed to get out. “I"m so dizzy, I can barely see straight.
Complicated, I"m sure, by whatever drug Duke Tully"s healer gave me.”
“All right. Let me remove them.” He pulled the chain over her head, untangling it from her long silky hair and pocketed the medallion. But before he could remove the ring, they heard someone coming. Several people actually. If it had been a mall security guard, he imagined only one would here on patrol at night.
Either the seelie fae were having sport in the mall tonight, or the unseelie fae had followed them here. With the way things were going, he suspected the latter.
He removed the ring from her finger and whispered, “Transport us now. To your castle.”
She groaned and he had to hold her tight to keep her from collapsing. “Ritasia, just this one more time.”
Suddenly, the footfalls were racing toward them, and he could see the guards that they had run across at the beach headed straight for them, their swords still out. They meant business.
“Now,” he whispered.
And she transported them. One more time.
To a beach again. He groaned. But the sand looked whiter, not as course as it had been on the unseelie beach. Had they finally reached the seelie plane?
“Ritasia,” he whispered, the soft warm breeze whipping about them. “Take us to your home. To your castle. To the lion fae kingdom.”
She opened her eyes, barely looked at him with sorrow reflecting in them, glanced at the beach, grimaced, and then closed her eyes again. “South Padre Island,” she whispered.
“Human world?” he asked. “Or your kingdom?” At least he hoped.
“Human.”
His gut clenched with the notion that the unseelie would soon find them. “They"ll follow us here. Take us to your home. To the seelie plane. Now, Ritasia.”
He could see in the misty distance the shape of people taking form. “Now.”
“I…”
“You can do it, my fairy princess.” How he hated not being able to transport them himself. Fae travel never bothered him, thank the goddess. But he hated that she felt so bad and would have to do this again.
The next thing he knew, they were sitting in a cell of a dungeon. He would have laughed in frustration if their situation had not been so dire.
The door was most likely locked and a sleepy prisoner stared at them through the bars of his own cell across the narrow passageway. Then grinned.
Tiernan frowned at the fae. But despite the dank, moldy smell of the place, he was relieved to sense only the scent of seelie fae. Smelly seelie fae. Unless, somehow this was a dungeon where the unseelie kept those who managed to enter their world locked away.
Although since ancient times, he"d never heard of that happening. And he didn"t smell any unseelie in the place.
“What is the princess doing with ye in a cell?” the fae suddenly asked, when he realized who was sitting on the king"s lap while Tiernan sat on the only wooden platform used as a bed in the cell.
He knew her! The prisoner knew the princess! They had to be back at her castle.
She was again sleeping, and he sighed with relief. Hating to disturb her, he still had to alert the queen her daughter was safely back at the castle of Denkar.
Tiernan shouted, “Guard! Guard!”
Ritasia stirred and frowned up at him, then closed her eyes and seemed to drift off again.
He would have the guard release them now and somehow he had to destroy the ring and medallion. No one could know of their existence. It was too dangerous for anyone to have the ability to enter the unseelie plane and threaten the tentative peace that existed between them.
He frowned when he heard no guard approach.
The fae prisoner laughed. “The guard will not come down here in the dead of the night.
But ye will remain here with me when he learns ye have taken the princess hostage in one of our cells.”
So the man was of the lion fae himself.
Her people would know he had no thought to kidnap the princess when they saw Tiernan was wearing a fae iron manacle and couldn"t transport anyone anywhere.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked the prisoner.
“Tried to steal a bauble from the dig site. Nothing the queen would have ever missed, but that would have given me a ton of gold when I pawned it off. Ye know how it is with these royals. They have everything and cannot give away a farthing to us poor folk.”
“Have you ever tried working at an honest job?” the king asked, knowing the type in his own realm. Steal, murder, wh
atever they had to do before they"d ever work at a real job.
The thief snorted. “Ye steal the princess, hoping for a ransom, eh? Only somehow yer fae abilities got clipped and here ye are, sitting pretty in a cell.” He frowned at him. “Where did ye get those fancy clothes? Steal them, too?”
They were so dusty from the fine red clay in the dig site, Tiernan was surprised the man could tell they had been cut from the finest of cloth.
He supposed he wasn"t getting out of here until the guard came to feed the prisoner in the morning. Only one narrow bed was available to sleep on, and he would have to share it with Ritasia. He wasn"t sleeping on the filthy cold stone floor for anything. At least in the tunnels of the ancient fae castle, the rocky floor had only been dusty. He lay down on the hard plank and covered them with the sole moth-eaten, mildew-smelling blanket. “If you wake before the guard comes, please remove us from the cell and take us to a guest chamber,” he whispered to her.
She nudged her head against his chest, her hair falling about him in a cascade of silk, as if she had agreed in her sleepy way.
A couple of hours later, a small slit of light shone through the slim arrow hole in the upper wall, and Tiernan knew the sun was coming up finally. With Ritasia nestled against his chest, sleeping soundly as he kept her wrapped in his arms, he"d managed to stay fairly warm and hoped he"d kept her so also in the drafty dingy dungeon. The prisoner in the cell across from them had finally quit badgering him as to who he was and why he held the princess hostage, and why he was in the cell. He warned him it would not go well for Tiernan for having the princess in bed with him.
The prisoner looked like he wished their roles were reversed on the other hand.
Then the prisoner, after a valiant effort of trying to watch them all night long as if he would be the witness to tell all to the queen and maybe get a shortened sentence, finally fell asleep.
Blessedly.
The creaking of hinges sounded and Tiernan assumed the guard would be walking down the dark corridor before long. The guard would be startled to see a couple of new prisoners and try to figure that out, before he realized just who the one was. Tiernan was certain the man would be clueless as to who the king was. In any case, he assumed the guard would be irate to see him locked in an intimate embrace with the princess when he was not her husband.