Free Tempted By the Night by Elizabeth Boyle Page B

accustomed to listening to jewelry.
    But if whatever magic filled this ring held an iota of the same panic she felt rippling down her spine, it was probably well and good to listen to it just this once.
    She scrambled down and gathered up the cross-bow up in her arms. While proficient in archery, Hermione had never shot anything like this before. Such weapons were usually found only on the wall of some musty old country house, where the family displayed the relics of their former bloody glory in the same manner one might a treasured Holbein or a Rembrandt.
    Meant to be viewed, not used.
    At least not in this century, she mused.
    Glancing down at it, she realized the basic workings weren’t that hard to understand. Already loaded and locked, she raised it to take aim—unsteadily—but aimed nonetheless.
    “Now, now,” Melaphor said. “You could hurt someone with that.”
    Hermione shivered, but held the cross-bow fast.
    “She looks quite capable of putting up a bit of fight—not that I mind that in a woman.” Melaphor tipped hispointed chin up a bit, and as his hair fell back, Hermione could see that his ears had an elfin point to them. “Something else we have in common, eh Paratus?”
    “What the devil —” Rockhurst sputtered as he looked behind him at the empty space where his cross-bow had lain.
    Whatever you hold, whatever you wear, will be as invisible as you are, Quince had said.
    And so it was with the earl’s cross-bow.
    “You truly can’t see her, can you?” Melaphor said, easing toward her, his narrow gaze flitting from Rockhurst back to Hermione. “How interesting. Come, kitten, reveal yourself. The Paratus seems unable to feast upon your beauty.” He sniffed the air. “He should be able to, for you’re human, but what have you discovered that lets you pass through your own kind unseen?”
    And then his gaze fell on her hand. More specifically, on Charlotte’s ring.
    To say the man looked astonished was an understatement. “By all that’s holy,” he gasped. Then in a shimmer of soft light, his entire demeanor changed, rippling from deadly to suavely handsome.
    He held out a single hand. “Come away with me, dear lady. Forget all I said before—I was but teasing our friend here. I would never harm you. No, I think I would make you the queen of my realm. A queen of all the realms, if you but come with me.”
    Rockhurst didn’t turn around, but said, “Don’t believe him. Whatever you have that he wants—he’ll kill you the moment he has you.”
    “Don’t believe him, sweetling. At least I can see youand appreciate your rare beauty. Don’t you want a man who can look into your eyes and see the very depths of your soul?”
    Hermione’s resolve wavered as she mistakenly glanced up at Melaphor, into his eyes. Instantly the cross-bow grew heavy, and she found it wandering from its original target.
    That is until the power of the ring nudged her, and her gaze was wrenched away. She blinked away her hazy vision until she could finally focus on the one thing that gave her strength.
    The earl’s wide, strong back. It rose before her like a beacon to her rattled senses, and her strength returned. She raised the stock back up and aimed anew.
    “So the kitten has claws,” Melaphor purred in sleek tones.
    “Demmit, I grow tired of this mischief,” Rockhurst said, raising his sword and pointing it at Melaphor, and then at the spot where Hermione stood. “Let us end this one way or the other.”
    “Ah, what is it with you, my good lord Paratus? Always killing before pleasure. We could share her,” he offered. “I’m feeling generous tonight.”
    “I don’t want anything to do with you and your ilk,” Rockhurst said, turning slightly and pointing his sword in Hermione’s direction.
    Whatever did he mean to do? Run her through? Why of all the arrogant…
    Melaphor shrugged. “Then kill her first.”
    “I believe I will,” Rockhurst said.
    Hermione eased back, the cross-bow now