Free Lord's Fall by Thea Harrison Page A

silk pantsuit stepped out of the house. Pia recognized her from countless magazine articles and TV news segments, and from the teleconference last summer. She was Beluviel, consort to the High Lord.
    Other people exited the house, all Elves, but Pia’s attention remained fixed on Beluviel, who was breathtaking. Dark, sleek, shining hair fell down to her long, slim waist, and her face was beautiful, with high cheekbones and wide, gracious dark eyes. Her hair was tucked behind the tip of one long, elegantly pointed ear.
    But Beluviel’s physical beauty wasn’t what made her so striking. America’s media was saturated with the physically beautiful to the point of boredom. What made Beluviel unique was her rich, full radiance of presence.
    All the immortal Wyr had a certain forcefulness in their aura, especially those who had been born at the beginning of the world for they carried a spark of creation’s first fire. Energy and Power radiated from Dragos. It seethed in the air around him. Pia’s own Power lent a natural pearl luminescence to her skin that was unique to her Wyr form.
    What Beluviel carried was entirely different, the sunlit green of an eternal springtime. All Elves carried something of that brightness along with the sense that they walked lightly on the earth, but, Pia realized, it was stronger in Beluviel because the Elven woman was older than any other Elf she had met before. Instead of age weighing more heavily on her, it seemed to have the opposite effect. The High Lord Calondir was also one of the ancient Elves. He would carry that same shining, ageless light, tempered with a stern, elegant Power.
    The other Elves had stopped just outside the house. Beluviel walked forward alone, her step as light and eager as a girl’s, a smile of joy on her bright face.
    Suddenly it didn’t matter what Pia wore, or the nature of her troubles and insecurities. The political tensions that had brought her to South Carolina, along with the two SUVs filled with bodyguards, all seemed somehow inconsequential.
    Stay back , she said telepathically to Eva as she climbed out of the car.
    Oh fuck, said Eva with disgust. You gonna kill me, princess.
    Just do it. As Pia walked toward Beluviel, she saw the Elven woman’s eyes fill with tears.
    Beluviel said, “I see your mother in you even more strongly in person.”
    The love and sadness in Beluviel’s voice were unmistakable. Everything blurred as Pia’s eyes flooded with moisture too. She put out her hands blindly. They were taken in a slender, strong, infinitely gentle grasp.
    “I met your mother a very long time ago,” Beluviel said. “So long ago, it was a different age entirely, and humans had not yet begun to walk the Earth. She was always wary but predators had not yet forced her into reclusiveness.” A smile of reminiscence softened her lovely features. “The world was once a much larger place.”
    “I never knew,” Pia said.
    They sat outside at a wrought-iron table on a flagstone terrace overlooking the extensive gardens that held heirloom azaleas and camellias, gardenias, lilies and roses of all kinds. The gardens were dotted with magnolia and crepe myrtle trees, and the entire garden was profusely, brilliantly in bloom. Even though Pia had been raised a city girl and had never tended anything other than potted plants, she was fairly certain that the other gardens in the area would not be quite so colorful in January.
    The day had warmed and the sunlight had grown more intense, or at least it was where they sat. The sun burned away the morning’s rain, and the evaporating moisture shrouded the nearby Wood in a ghostly, shining mist.
    She told the consort, “My mom rarely talked of anything that was not in the present. I loved it when she did, but I think remembering made things harder for her. Also she didn’t want to emphasize how different we were from each other. I only just came into my full Wyr form last year, and she had died several years earlier,