Inked Destiny (24 page)

The Dragon was real. This place was real.

Yesss
.

Not Elfhome. But somehow connecting.

Yesss. See for yourself.

She turned to view the primordial forest behind her, heartbeat skittering as if in preprogrammed joy at its proximity.

It was a dark place, trees tall and wide, close-set like border sentinels. But enough light snaked through to hint at a trail. She understood instinctively it would lead to a fissure between realities, to a gate, like the one Eamon had spoken of during their lesson, only this would take her into the world his ancestors had been banished from.

A few steps and she could be on the trail. It would almost be like walking into the past, into shrouded memory.

Yesss
.
But to retrace your mother’s path is to travel to your death.

Etaín turned to face the Dragon, the magic pulsing against the soles of her feet becoming liquid fire. It surged upward to the vines inked in her arms, concentrated there in near agony before sliding to the bands at her wrists, the burn there seeming to waken the eyes on her palms, so she opened clenched fists to release hundreds of streaks of gold, as if Dragon fire had been converted to captured sunshine.

Choose one
.

There was nothing to make one stand out from another so she chose the closest of those shooting upward from her left hand.

The others winked out like the golden highways had the night she’d piggybacked on a murderer’s reality. Only this time she knew immediately who wore her ink, her vision filling with the sight of DaWanda above her, generous breasts cupped by hands she recognized as Jamaal’s.

Shit!
Etaín jerked away mentally, slamming the door on the scene, unwilling to invade a friend’s privacy.

Sometimes invasion is warranted. Sometimes it is necessary.

Her thought? Or the Dragon’s?

She couldn’t be sure and because of it, she felt a creeping uncertainty, a worry that maybe Eamon was right, and none of this was real.

A snort buffeted her with smoke and surrounded her in flame.
Earth-bound Elf. What does he know of a
seidic
born in a realm forbidden to him because of his ancestors’ acts?

Heat and haze faded and her palms were alight again with rays of gold. Each representing a person? Or a tattoo?

I could teach you to use this. With it you could identify the killer you seek. Yesss?

The sibilant sound of it made her think of a serpent in a tree of knowledge, a metaphorical image for temptation, and she was tempted. But the remembered feel of coils around her neck, choking off choice, had her asking, “At what cost?”

Fire came on a controlled breath, the Dragon creating a sigil burning in the air between them, taking up the entirety of consciousness and continuing to flame against her eyelids even when she woke.

In her mind’s eye she saw where the sigil would interlock on the insides of her wrists with the tattoos there. Understood it was ink that couldn’t be applied by others, that would require Cathal or Eamon to stretch the skin while she used the hand tool on herself.

Slowly the immediacy of it faded. She tried to put off confronting what it meant by snuggling in a cocoon of masculine warmth, but couldn’t. Finally giving up to sit and reach across Cathal’s naked chest to snag the tablet and colored pencils on the night stand.

He sat as well, distracting her with thoughts of sex when the sheet fell away, enough moonlight remaining to reveal the erection against a taut stomach. A tug on the comforter by Eamon hid it from view, refocusing her on the tablet in hand as Cathal muttered, “Asshole.”

“That’s Lord Asshole to you,” Eamon said. The twitch of very kissable lips would have derailed her for a second time if not for the tension running through Cathal and his lack of response.

“How long have you been back?” she asked Eamon.

“Only a few hours.”

“Before I came up to bed, Liam told me you’d gone to investigate a disturbance in the wards around the city. Did you find anything?”

“Nothing definitive.”

Cathal turned the bedside lamp on, her uneasiness growing at the increased tension in him. She stopped herself from reaching out, from touching him, afraid, very, very afraid she wouldn’t be able to control her gift. That she’d rifle through his mind to find the answer to what was bothering him.

Something must have happened. Not here, unless she’d slept through it.

At the club seemed more likely. When he’d arrived home…

Delight shivered through her despite a sudden surge of insecurity. Maybe being totally immersed in his own world, in everything normal, had led to him having regrets about this, about them. It would explain the fierce lovemaking. The underlying violence and desperation.

She bit her lip, the small pain clearing her head. Later, when she and Cathal had a moment alone, she’d ask him what was going on, why the change from when the three of them were together in the hot tub.

Selecting an emerald-green pencil from the box, she drew the sigil without commenting on its origins. When it was done, Eamon leaned forward, his chest touched to her shoulder as he traced the intricate design with an elegant finger. “It represents servitude. You saw this on one of the humans who are part of our world?”

He meant the ones who’d been in her line at the shelter fund-raiser,
the very same humans they’d fought about before she was taken by the Harlequin Rapist.

“I saw it in a dream.” Truth? Lie? What could she call it other than a dream? “How is it used?”

“At its core, it signifies an oath-bond. For you, most sigils are things to be applied in ink. That is what makes the
seidic
unique, and why Elves typically wear no tattoos. The
seidic
are rare and few have access to them when they exist at all. In this world, at the whim of the queen, the
seidic
are used to punish or reward.”

“But for some reason, you immediately thought I’d seen this sigil on a human. Why?”

“An aside first, Etaín. Because we don’t typically have access to the
seidic
, whose gifts include the ability to enhance magic or deny it, and even to gift it with the application of their ink, we compensate with magical focal points, things usually crafted for a single purpose. The earrings I wear are such items.”

Etaín touched a fingertip to the stud Eamon wore in his left ear, moved on to the ones above it, along the rim, smiling at the way his gaze heated as if remembering the feel of her tongue and lips on them. “You made them?”

“Not the base pieces of jewelry. Metal work and stone craft aren’t my gifts, but the specifications, yes. They’re bound personally to me and useless to anyone else. The majority of Elves who are able to claim and hold territory are spell-casters. It’s because of that ability, humans can be made part of our world, and their lives extended.”

“Hundreds of years added just by wearing a spelled piece of jewelry?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. It requires a blood-oath given in a witnessed ceremony. It entails an acceptance of responsibility matched to a pledge of obedience.”

“Why servitude?” Cathal asked, a growl in his voice, and she
didn’t blame him, not when the word
obedience
set her teeth on edge.

Eamon shrugged, a gesture almost guaranteed to end the peace if Cathal’s behavior hadn’t already announced a change to it. “Few humans are touched by magic.” Meaning, in essence, they’d never be considered equal.

Not a thought for relationship harmony. She glanced down at the pad in her lap, the emerald green a reminder of the Dragon. “What about between Elves, or between Elves and something not human? Would the sigil be used?”

“It could be.” His tone said it wouldn’t often be.

Her mother wore no jewelry, nor did she wear the mark in ink, but Etaín shivered, realizing she couldn’t be certain her mother didn’t bear the Dragon’s sigil of servitude. Like the emerald green she wore, until the ordeal of the Harlequin Rapist was behind her, she’d been blinded to the truth of the marks she’d put on Cathal.

She hadn’t seen truly until she stood in the shower with him, the rivulets of water streaming down his arms turning the design into a circle in her mind’s eye, so she recognized that her mother wore the same pattern around her wrists, hidden by the entwining of other sigils—and even then she hadn’t made the connection as she did now.

Her father was
seidic
. Her mother had the gift of sight, she was now positive of it.

Even in paradise there are politics, and some pairings are viewed as a threat by those in power. Your mother found her way to my lake already heavy with child. She and I made a bargain, and on these shores you were born.

“What has you frowning so fiercely,” Eamon asked.

“I was thinking about my mother and the sigil.”

“You believe she wears it?”

“I think it’s possible she might be bound to the Dragon.”

“For your mother’s sake, I hope you’re mistaken. It would mean the magic controls her rather than the other way around.”

“
If
the Dragon isn’t real,” Etaín said, though sitting in Cathal’s bed, surrounded by the everyday things of a normal world, the absolute certainty she’d felt faded as she thought about the emerald-green water rippling toward the center, like dissolved magic condensing and solidifying into an avatar that never completely emerged from the lake.

Given the stakes, she tried to tell Eamon in detail about the dream, but the tightening of her throat and freezing of her hand when she might have drawn what she couldn’t say, was warning enough, and struggle would only make her lack of control obvious.

She applied the magic lessons that had left her an exhausted lump on the couch. Imagined the sigil that would divert and channel magic away from her in a harmless loop, but freedom to speak was returned to her only when she changed the subject completely. “I need to go to Stylin’ Ink in the morning.”

“I’ll accompany you. Cathal?”

Was there command in Eamon’s voice? Cathal couldn’t be certain.

His gaze strayed to the clothing he’d been wearing, eyes lingering on the pocket where the dead gangbanger’s phone was. What the fuck should he do with it?

Taking it to the police was out, given the dead body and his failure to call them. Taking it to his father could lead to a blood bath, though he realized he’d have to visit his father too, because guilt would chew him up if Brianna was targeted for revenge and someone got to her.

Hand it off to Eamon? Like a good little obedient human would?

He suppressed a snarl. That left Sean, and a lot of dancing around the truth about where the phone came from and why it might be important.

“No. I’ve got some meetings I couldn’t reschedule. Afterward I’m going to meet up with Sean to see if he and Quinn have gotten anywhere on the drawings Derrick delivered.

“Heath, my fifth, will accompany you as bodyguard,” Eamon said, yanking the string of paranoia that existed in Cathal because of his father and uncle.

The suspicion in his gut burned hotter. Why now and not before? Because Eamon knew about the gangbanger? Because he knew Cage’s boat was moored near Sean’s?

The magic chose him. I accept the choice though I wouldn’t have made the same one.
Eamon’s words, spoken to Etaín. Only now Cathal considered that with him out of the way, Eamon’s options expanded.

Regardless, she’d be safe with Eamon and the guards. Safer still away from him now that it seemed just as likely the drive-by in front of the shelter was meant to take him out, not Anton.

The wrap of Etaín’s arms and press of feminine curves allowed him to escape the darkness of his thoughts. What he needed was some breathing room and he’d have it in a few hours.

For now…

He captured her mouth, content to lose himself in her.

Nineteen

D
errick stood at the garage entrance. The smell of grease and oil, the blast of Mexican music and the sound of power tools along with shouts in Spanish all bringing back memories. The earlier ones were almost sweet, but the later ones, painful, though he straightened his spine, not allowing them to be more than just a scratch against his toughened emotional fortitude.

Never again! I refuse to be that needy again!

He steadfastly refused to look at the workbench where a particularly horrifying example of neediness had happened on his last visit here, when he’d tracked Emilio down after he’d been a no-show for their date.

I’m not that weak person anymore.

He touched the drawing in his pocket as proof of it. Etaín needed him and here he was.

Emilio looked up just as Derrick found him among the overall-clad mechanics. His smile was cocky, as though he’d known it was only a matter of time before Derrick came around again.

Oh please!
Derrick nearly rolled his eyes. Emilio was such a
boy
compared to Quinn.

He strutted forward, hips swaying to let Emilio get a good look at just what he was missing. This was the new Derrick, confident, strong,
loved
.