“I have no fucking clue what the rest of it means.”
THIRTEENFINNIAN
“Let’s go see a Conservatory about a clue.”
I close the door of the cab we took and find Taryn’s hand with mine as we step into the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. We’re using shield glamours, so we’ll be able to do what we need without causing suspicion. People will subconsciously register that we’re here and move around us, but they won’t be able to discern any of our features, our conversation will sound muffled, and within seconds they’ll forget they ever saw us.
“Wait!” She tugs on my hand with both of hers and looks over at the crowds gathering along the barrier and viewing areas in front of the eight-acre lake for the famous dancing water show. “I’ve always wanted to see these. When does the next song start?”
The fountains do a show every half hour. Checking the time on my watch, I grin. “Three more minutes.”
“Perfect! I want a spot right up front, and I’m not above using this spell to my advantage.” Still holding my hand, she starts pulling me along so fast it’s like she’s in a race with a mall-walker. “Get the lead out, Verran, stop being a damn slow poke!”
“See, now you’ve done it.” I yank her back to me and throw her over my shoulder like a sack of grain.
“Finnian Verran, put me down this instant!”
I laugh as she squirms on my shoulder, keeping an arm banded firmly around her upper thighs. She’s not going anywhere unless I want her to. And that’s starting to feel like a problem. Because the more time I spend with her, the more I don’t want her to go. But that’s a problem for later because for at least a few days, I have her all to myself.
“I swear to Brigid, I’ll turn you into a toad.”
Her threat is severely undermined by the fact that she’s laughing, too. And Mystic or not, I don’t think she can turn anyone into a toad. If any of us had that power I would guess it’s the Fauna Fae, since animals are their domain.
I don’t answer or comply to her demand. I simply continue walking at a nice, leisurely pace. She smacks my ass with both of her hands. “Hey, did you hear what I said? A toad.”
“I heard you,” I say, grinning like a damned fool. “But you can’t insult the Dark Prince in his territory and not expect repercussions. We Verrans are a vicious lot, you know.”
She laughs so hard she snorts, and it’s more adorable sounding than it has any right to be. I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything about this female I’m not enamored with.
“Vicious? You? Caiden, definitely. Tiernan, no idea. But you, darling Finn, are a total cinnamon roll.”
I stop dead in my tracks and lift her off my shoulder to set her down. She huffs out a “finally” and flips her wild mass of curls back from her face. When she tilts her head back to look at me, I arch a brow. “You think I’m a cinnamon roll?”
“Oh, I know you are,” she says smugly.
She’s not entirely wrong. About 99.9% of the time I’m a bleeding fucking heart. But the vicious side of me does exist. It’s just lying dormant, like a sleeping dragon, until someone threatens the ones I love or an innocent. Then he rises with a thunderous ferocity and a single-minded focus, eviscerating the threat and anyone who gets in his path.
Not that anyone knows this about me. I didn’t even know it existed until I was eighty-two. I happened upon a group of six men attacking a woman in a dark alley behind a dance club one night. They pushed her from one to the next while tearing at her clothes and beating her, jeering and spewing the vile things they planned on doing to her.
A fiery rage consumed me, burning away my temperate exterior to reveal the beast deep inside. I stepped in and threw one of them across the alley, drawing their attention, then I told the girl to run. Six humans are no match for a Dark Fae, so I was guaranteed to come out on top without much effort. But what I became in that moment could have taken down a small army.
Within seconds, I dispatched the entire lot of them. It all happened so quickly, I didn’t even fully register what I did until I saw their lifeless bodies crumpled on the ground, their heads twisted at unnatural angles. Shame that I’d lost control and taken lives filled my mouth with bile. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Seamus who helped me “clean the situation.”
To this day, he’s the only one who knows what I’m capable of, and since then I managed to put the beast into a coma by practicing meditation and heightened self-awareness. But I know that under the right circumstances, I’d wake him myself and let him loose.
“Come on, Cinnabon, tell me I’m wrong,” she says.
I just smile down at her. She’s been so focused on getting free and calling me a pastry, she doesn’t realize where we’re standing. Her spell parted the crowd, allowing me to stroll up front and center. “I plead the fifth. Now, turn around and watch the show.”
Her lavender eyes light up and she spins around just as “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga starts playing in the background and the first few sprays of water shoot high into the air. I know the show is magnificent—we own the hotel; we hired the company who designs the shows and maintains the fountains—but I’m not watching it. My gaze is trained on her.
Taryn Emory is a beautiful enigma. The childlike wonderment on her face makes me smile. She’s been around for over half a millennium, lived in two different realms, and is one of the most powerful magical beings ever created. Yet she’s still able to view something as simple as backlit sprays of water moving to music like it’s the most awe-inspiring thing she’s ever seen.
I imagine the whole of what makes her her is as deep as the ocean floor. One could spend a fae lifetime exploring her depths and never get to the bottom, so I certainly have no hope of diving much past her surface in the limited time we’ll have together. But for whatever parts of her I do get to see, I’m going to enjoy discovering every new thing I can find.
The final notes of the song play to a spectacular finale of water shooting over 400 feet in the air. Then the lights dim and the lake becomes still again. The crowd cheers and claps and begins to disperse as the tourists move on to the next attraction on their lists.
Taryn turns around and beams up at me. “That was so much better than watching it on TV. I mean, seriously magnificent. After we solve G-ma’s riddle, let’s watch the next—”
Her body suddenly goes rigid and her gaze locks onto something behind me. Black spills into her irises, erasing all traces of the soft purple, and her lips twist into a snarl that bares her fangs as she hisses a single word. “Edevane.”
Like a shot, she takes off.
“Fuck. Taryn, wait!” I run after her but her extra years and smaller frame make her faster than me, and I can’t catch up. She’s giving chase to something I don’t see, but if it is Edevane, there’s a good chance it’s a fucking trap. Even if it’s not, I don’t want her facing him alone.
Either the avoidance spell is no longer working or we’re moving too fast for it to have any effect because the people we’re darting around at preternatural speeds are shouting in surprise and cussing out the blurs they can’t make out.
“Taryn, godsdamn it, hold on!”
Finally, she stops. I catch up to her as she’s spinning in a slow circle, searching for whatever she’s lost. “I swear I saw him,” she says through short, choppy breaths. “He was standing right here, Finn. Edevane was right here.”
I look back at how far we came. We’re a good half-mile away from the fountains. That’s a stretch to make out much detail even for us. It’s possible it was someone who looks like him and it triggered her, but I’m not taking any chances.
Taryn frowns and rubs her temple like she has a headache. “Come on, let’s get back home and relax. I know you feel a ton better than when you were in the facility, but you’re still not a hundred percent. We can riddle hunt tomorrow.”
She nods and lets me lead her to the nearest cab. We ride the ten minutes back to the building in silence. We’re not going to discuss anything in front of the human driver, and the energy vibrating off Taryn tells me she probably wouldn’t be talking even if we could. Still, I offered her support by holding my hand out, palm up, which she’d accepted, our fingers entwined on the seat between us.
The second we walk in the door to the penthouse, I set the alarm and place the gun I had tucked into my waistband back into the kitchen safe. By the time I join her in the living room, she’s already sitting on the couch with a whiskey for me and a glass of red wine for her. Her shoulders are so tense, they’re practically up around the delicate points of her ears.
