Betrayal (5 page)

When the broad shoulders and massive body of Kin emerged from the trees, my heart sped up.   Not because he was gorgeous, he was, but because I didn’t decide till right then that maybe I’d chosen wrong.  Just maybe he was the villain and I was inviting danger to stay in my back pocket and live there too much.  He used his looks, his strength, his charm, his status in every way possible to get what he wanted.  And at the moment it wasn't hard to see what or who his current target was.

“Grace!” he said slowly and as smooth as the wicked, jaded devil blue silk shirt he wore like the Kin of the past at prom and every dance held where I always refused him.  My body jumped at hearing the sound of his voice pulling me from my panic of hysteria.  Submitting to the present evil was warm and welcoming when I considered the greater evil who lurked back at the winter court.

“Kin.”  My guard was up and at the ready like someone poked a needle in my back.

“Grace,” he repeated. 

“Let’s just cut to the chase.  My ingenuous nature hounds my very existence, but you don’t have to patronize me with thinking I’m ignorant.”

“I wasn’t involved.  They went out on their own.  And I’ve never thought you daft in any way.”

I let out a pinned up breath through my nose ignoring any brown-nosing intended comments and told him, “How do you prove it?”  Because I know the boys around me will ask.

“I can’t.”

Okay!
  “Then what assurance do we have that they will not return?”

“Enough of the byplay,” snapped Pike.

Kin’s face hardened for him, softened for me.  “Grace, you know I cannot assure that unless I myself wage war against them.  I can assure
you
that I will not allow them to hurt you in any way.”  His neck moved with the large swallow he tried to keep hidden from our little study group of warriors.  He accented the word “you” significantly and I couldn’t help but glance both directions to see Ian and Pike nod in agreement.  Solidarity among these three made my brain hurt. 

Then, as if it was an illusion, Kin stepped back into the winter prince mode and threw insults instead, “I want to assume that the other two tree boys here are doing their end to keep you safe though it seems to me that one of them has rather lost his touch.”

Pike took two violent steps forward intending for sure some form of bodily harm to Kin, but Ian grabbed his arm and held on.  I slid in front of Pike and faced Kin, “You will not be a nuisance.  Either gain some manners or I’ll not give you the time a day again on this earth.”

His teeth gritted sliding side to side and finally, slowly he released his sealed tight lips to say, “As you wish.”

“Will you help me find out why the Nyms attacked my court?” 
And on top of that, take out your daddio back at the house!?!

“If I know already does that automatically make me guilty in your eyes?”

Yes!
  “No!”

“They had intel that Pike here was in the wrong territory at the wrong time.”

All eyes turned to Pike, including mine to see his defense.  Without hesitation he answered, “And they attacked simply because I crossed beside their border and not in it?”             

“Yes.” Kin screwed his mouth up in a tight line. 

“They treatied with me,” I reminded not just Kin.

“They treatied to leave you alone, Grace.  To leave
you
alone.  When Pike violated the treaty and they went for him, he and his men fought back.  They couldn’t help that the girl stood in the way of Pike.  They were only seeking what they considered their rightful revenge on Pike’s incompetence.”

Pike growled low and long.  I reached out and held one hand to his other arm as Ian held the other still.   Pike never told me any of this, but I was sure it had to do with his mother.  I was sure Ian couldn’t know of Pike’s unhidden trails.  It would have surfaced in the meeting room when we were discussing it, but then again, he’d known about his mother before me too.

“Will you help me?”  I was pretty confident that he would.  Mostly.

“Yes.  I will contact them only if Pike agrees to meet acknowledging his wrongdoing on their land,” he said tightly.

“I will not—“

“He will.”  I answered for Pike knowing he’d let me do this even if I had to help out my cause with persuasion, but he wasn’t the least bit happy about it.

Kin’s hefty response with the knowing smirk of Pike’s defeat didn’t help either.  This would turn into a dogfight if I didn’t hurry it up.  Kin chortled and shook his head slowly side to side.

Geez.
  Kin loved this too much.  “You’re one to talk,” I said too bitterly.

I turned upward to Pike’s face.  He changed from anger to pleading eyes in a matter of seconds and back to anger.  I couldn’t talk to him the way I wanted at the moment.

Kin shrugged with one of his hundred watt smiles he threw around so easily, “You’re my prize, not tree boy.  Just keep your pretty smile plastered across your face for me to see and it’s all good with me.”

“Get a message to me letting me know what the Nyms say.  In the meantime, I have a friend to bury.”   The sad taste in my mouth returned as I said what I needed to say.

Kin twitched his mouth reducing it to remorse. “I’m sorry about your friend. She didn’t deserve to die.”

However kind the words were meant, I only nodded and signaled for him to go wanting the repressed memory to disappear.  When he stood there a bit longer as if waiting for something, I simply stared at him.  What did he think he could do, Shane hands, arms,kiss me?

Ian growled.

Pike growled.

Kin smirked.

Ah, heck boys! 

I’d thought back to the meeting room discussion about Kin and the questionable quests.  He has been secretly going to the border of his own court to obtain some kind of information from the Unseelie guards.  Since this was his own court, I had my doubts and concerns as to what he would be asking them.

So!

“Come on!” I told Sarah who was fervently mumbling curses about me under my breath if we were caught.  “Don’t worry, we have Rion.” 

I patted Rion’s shoulder.  He just looked at me with the same blank look he always does.  He’s such a militant one.  I never wanted to lose him.

“If Bane finds out I did this, he will flip a lid.”

“You’ve been hanging around me too long.  You sound like me.”

Sarah giggled.  I was glad she found the incredibly large caveman like guy attractive.  He deserved happiness, as well as her, and it was more than obvious they both had it bad for each other.  He was a lush around her and that completely went against his macho man look.

“Yeah, well at least you don’t look like me.  You’re gorgeous.  Bane falls at your feet every time you bat an eyelash.”

Sarah’s face straightened.  “Don’t act so human.  You know you’re beautiful.  Besides, you don’t see yourself the way Ian sees you, Grace.  He can’t see straight when he is around you.  And after all this time, he doesn’t just lust after you anymore, he loves you deeper than I’ve seen any Fey man.”

“You’re lying.”  She was just plain lying now.  I knew full well he loved me, but accepting it was the hard part.  It meant being vulnerable in all the ways you seek to not let a man see.  It meant giving all of yourself.

“Oh girl.  Asking for reassurance right now is just some fear related knee jerk reaction.  Ian all but trips over his own feet when he catches you on the radar, but you know this.  In fact, I don’t think his radar turns off.  He singularly eyes you in a room like the rest of us don’t exist.  Only when you bust out the sarcasm or irk him off bad enough does he remember he has an audience.  That boy wants you so bad it hurts him.”

Her eyebrows wiggled sending hidden messages even a girl my age shouldn’t be thinking.  Yeah, you think teen girls fight restraint and rage with hormones.  Try being old enough and remembering the virtues you live by with a hot guy asking you to marry him all the time.  I couldn’t wait to be married. 

“Come already, we need to get going and back before Bane finds you gone from his constant barbaric romanticisms.” Sarah giggled again and I grunted at her.

We sneakily made it to the edge of the wood line where the entrance to the winter court sat after more than an hour of dodging who and what, mainly the Nym camps.  I saw at least twenty guards milling about, and yet some were actually keeping a watchful eye.  Were that many guards around our own court and I’d never noticed?  I vowed to check.

I motioned to Sarah with our unpracticed sign language we’d created as we walked through the woods to our destination, over a mile away and exactly as I remembered.  The primitive two fingered walk across my hand and making a loop all the way around the palm did the trick though.  Sarah stood stark still while I circled the perimeter only but about twenty feet or so that I remained in Rion’s sight as ordered.  I wouldn’t want to defy orders of course. 
Me?

Talk went through the guards about whose weapon was better and much talk about girls.  Human girls.  Fey.  They didn’t seem to mind much.  I heard one crudely comment about one of the Fey winter court’s group of young girls “budding” into women.  If I wasn’t hidden and from the enemy court, I’d have given them a piece of my mind.  At least I didn’t recognize any to think even worse of them.

Several of them had found love.  I could tell the frisky, horndog voices from the caring, possessive loving ones.  I’d heard them both before.

I managed to catch the conversation on the wind concerning some Nyms who came too close the border.   They scared them off, nothing more.

Moving back towards Sarah and Rion, I merged with the trees to listen at the front gate.  Seeing Rion’s eyes follow me made me feel safe and without care of what was around me.  He was a huge man in his prior life.  Large like Kin, linebacker style.  He wasn’t bad looking once you got past the hollow in his eyes.  It made me feel sad for him.

Knowing he’d never smile or show emotion, I gave him what I could.  “Thank you Rion.  You truly are a treasure to me.”

He nodded and continued to survey the five foot perimeter around my body that he always did.  It was meticulous and reminded me just how much he took his job seriously.

My head turned quickly at hearing my name.  One’s name defines one’s status and well being in life.  The mere sound of it held different connotations from who used it aloud.  Hearing it at the enemy court didn't fare well.  I couldn’t help but feel a ping of fear at knowing I could have avoided all of this torture if I’d chosen to say no to Ian.  Then perhaps I would be home now going to a junior college or already in a university.  And Ian would be here.

My heart felt a sharp pain rise up in it.  That could never happen.   

“Kinsler means to have her either way.”

I knew his name would pop up eventually, but mine was a bomb exploding without warning.  The blue clad guard in question stood at attention directly in front of me staring off into the woods where I stood.  The other one in the conversation said, “The half human girl, Grace is her name.  Bet she has some grace on her back.”

I gritted my teeth. 
Sleezeball
.  I held my thoughts at bay with not even an eye twitch.

The other guard hushed him, “Dude.  Control yourself.  This is Kinsler’s woman you’re talking about. She will be queen.  You better control your thoughts before she plucks your eye out for looking at her the wrong way when you do see her.”

Just when I thought this one had better manners, he pegged me as a wench.  I was heartless in his eyes.

“Just a female, Dirk,” Sleezy remarked.

“I have seen her.  She’s a knockout. I don’t know how the humans ever saw her as their kind.”

That’s just it, they didn’t.

“She’s gonna mate with him and make a bunch of blimey Kinsler brats.  I have no care for a woman who would mate with that.”  Sleezy spit on the ground like it was a distaste to utter the words even.

He thought even less of Kin compared to me.  Ha!

I listened in a little more and only learned that Kin would probably return tomorrow since he seemed to have made a pattern of coming every three days.  Sarah was relieved to return.  Ian never asked about my absence, so I assumed he didn’t know I left.  I thought wrong.

The next day Sarah was disinclined to return, but did anyway.  We made our way back to the same exact spot and waited.  I changed my mind at last second and asked Rion to cover us both with glamour as we hid behind a wide oak tree, six feet closer than before.

The guard’s clockwork predicted time was accurate.  Kin slithered up to the same crudely outspoken guard I nicknamed Sleezy, giving him a clinical greeting and some short unwanted small talk.  I noticed the guard resembled Bane, but with long dark hair instead of Bane’s lion mane.  He was the same build as the myriad of Fey men had, winter and summer.  Built like a brick.  The difference being Pike and Ian were both gorgeously laid out with hard muscles and a strong build, but most of these men were more like concrete bricks from the pyramids of Egypt.  Huge!  Solid walls of “I don’t take any crap from anyone” and always looking for a fight. 

I pictured one of these guys meeting up with a human cop or even a great and mighty UFC fighter or something.  “
Parc
the car here and see what happens to your face!”  I was beside myself with laughter.  I could be such a dork sometimes.

Sarah saw me grinning to myself and asked with her sign language hands what was funny.  I shrugged to avoid talking.

“Any news from Catrin?”  Kin asked the guard.  My smile disappeared. 

“No sir.  She has not given us any
private
visits since your last appearance,” Sleezy, the crude guy said with a smirk.

Add a little sour patch to the crappy pie serving called the Unseelie court.  They were not impressing me.

Kin growled and moved into him, not at all nice like.  “You go near her and I’ll snap your neck in two.”

I shivered.  Kin was lethal.  He would always be lethal. 

“Relax sir.  Just a bit of fun.  She is still innocent in virtue.”

I saw Kin relax his shoulders but I was sure it was only me who caught it.  His heart wasn’t completely stone.  His hard angles were softer inside but perhaps only when that soft affliction was threatened.  Like when he was with me, but this wasn’t about
me
this time. 

“Very well, I will check back with her another time.  Tell her I wish her well.”

He cared more than he ever let on about others around him.  He was this resentful son of a cruel, harsh winter court king, but inside he had more heart than even his court knew about.  He spent years being the worst to me.  Maybe it was just a front like he claimed.

And what about Catrin?  He cared for her in some way or at least it was implied.  Who was she really to him?