Free Fever 4 - DreamFever by Karen Marie Moning Page A

human
male as he could get, in jeans, boots, and a loose linen shirt half unbuttoned. He was
apparently unaffected by the frigid weather--or perhaps the cause of it. Fae can affect
the weather with their moods. His beautifully muscled golden body was no more perfect
than that of any airbrushed model; his long golden hair no longer shimmered with a
dozen seductive, otherworldly shades; his flawlessly symmetrical features might have
graced any magazine cover. The only aspect of his Fae nature he'd retained were those
bottomless, ancient, iridescent eyes. He was still something to see: tawny, sexy man
with alien, glowing eyes, but I was not assaulted by a frantic desire to tear off my
clothes, I didn't feel a tingle of lust, not the faintest sensation of being weak at the
knees.
      And he'd done it without my even having to ask.
       I wasn't about to thank him. It was the least he could do after what his race had done
to me.
       He studied me while I studied him. His eyes contracted slightly, then widened
infinitesimally, which on a human face meant very little but on a Fae's was an
expression of astonishment. I wondered why. Because I'd survived? Had my odds really
been so low?
      "I have been monitoring these wards and sensed the disturbance. I am pleased to see
you, MacKayla."
       "Thanks for the rescue," I said coldly. "Nice of you to show up when I needed you.
Oh, wait," I barked a sharp little laugh, "I remember now. You didn't. In fact, your
name crashed and burned when I tried to use it." If he'd never given me his name on my
tongue, I wouldn't have been so fearless that night. I'd been lulled into complacency,
believing I had a Seelie Prince available at the snap of my fingers to sift in and sift me
out to instant safety. It had made me feel invincible when I shouldn't have. And when
I'd needed him the most, it had failed. Better never to have depended on it at all. I
should have kept Dani by my side that night. She could have whisked me to safety.
      He spread his hands, palms up, and bowed his head in a gesture of subservience.
      I snorted. The holier-than-thou Seelie Prince was bowing his head to me?
       "A thousand apologies could not atone for the harm my brethren were permitted to
inflict upon you. It sickens me that you were--" He broke off, bowing his head even
more deeply, as if he couldn't bring himself to go on.
      It was a completely human gesture.
      I didn't trust it one bit.
       "So." I picked myself up off the ground and dusted off my new leather coat. "What's
your excuse for failing me on Halloween? Barrons said he was stuck in Scotland.
Actually, he said it was `complicated.' Was it complicated, V'lane?" I asked sweetly, as
I slung my gun around the back side of my shoulder. It banged into my backpack. I
liked the solid, reassuring weight of my weapons and ammo.
      He winced at the tone of my voice, not missing the arsenic in the sugar. While I'd
been busy being Pri-ya, V'lane had obviously been busy expanding his repertoire of
human expressions. Still, these expressions were different than that first one. They were
too large for a Fae, overblown. Iridescent eyes met mine. "Exceedingly."
       I hooked my thumbs in my jeans pockets. "Go on." I smiled. There was nothing he
could say that would ever make me trust again in something so mystical and
fundamentally flawed as a Fae name embedded in my tongue, but I wanted to see how
far he might go to get back into my good graces.
       "Aoibheal was my first priority, MacKayla. You know that. Without her, all else is
insignificant. Without her, the walls can never be rebuilt. She alone is our hope of
reclaiming the Song of Making."
       The Fae were matriarchal, and only the Seelie Queen could wield the Song of
Making. I knew very little about the Song, just that it was the stuff from which the walls
of the Unseelie prison had been forged, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Roughly
six thousand years ago, when the Compact had been