Jacob's Trial [Forbidden Legacy 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (18 page)

“Apparently not.” Hanging it up again, she waggled her eyebrows at Jacob.

“What are you doing?” His voice was deceptively mild, but he couldn’t disguise the amusement feathering beneath his words.

“What I do best. Negotiation requires a very clear understanding of what you want and what they want. There are rules to these types of interactions, and he’s blustering. He wouldn’t be calling me on a
phone
if he didn’t want something.”

Helcyon crossed his arms over his exquisitely chiseled chest. His chin dipped as he studied her. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Cassandra. Wizards are not known for their tempers.”

“Really?” She cocked her head, her voice hitting a falsetto note. “And yet, Jacob here is the epitome of reason and respect when he’s furious.”

Jacob ignored the digs and nodded to her phone. “It’s ringing again.”

“I know. Let him talk to my voice mail this time.”

The Wizards in the living room drifted toward the tiled hallway, filling the door with their curiosity.

“Forgive me,
Ms. Belle
, but to what end does he speak to your voice mail?” It was Paul who asked the question. The man’s too-quiet eyes seemed to have warmed since the previous morning.

“Because it’s about controlling the negotiation. Have you ever wondered why the Fae stand on so much ceremony?” She slid her arm through Helcyon’s, and he tucked her into his side, a bemused expression on his face.

“Makes sense.” Miller threaded his fingers together, cracking the knuckles. “You spend more time focused on the protocol so you don’t offend them. Means you have less time to think about deceit or maintaining the upper hand.”

“Exactly.” Cassie beamed at the man. Although he didn’t look that much older than Jacob, age hung on him like a cloak. “In this business, it’s all about controlling the media and the image they perceive. The minute you blink, they have you on the run, and they will hound you.”

“Men with cameras are hardly the same as the Wizard who controls the Council.” Dalton chewed a piece of bubble gum, the sound of chewing adding a wet smack to his words.

“Obviously the differences are in the degrees. But since the paparazzi can and will pursue their targets through high-speed chases, invasive maneuvers, and phone tapping, it’s an invasion of personality that can leave some a quivering mass on the floor. Then there are those that feed the beast, thinking if they give them everything they want, they’ll go away. Neither tactic really works, because that just makes the beast hungrier.” Cassie shrugged her shoulders. It was hard to explain.

She’d excelled in the art of negotiation for years. It seemed to come naturally to her. She knew when to shut a conversation off and when to act the supplicant. The only ones she ever seemed to struggle with were Jacob and Helcyon. The blood supply to her brain turned euphoric where they were concerned. It wasn’t until she’d escaped with Domoir that she realized just how overwhelmed the two of them made her.

Despite the warm languor running through her at their nearness, she could focus. Maybe it was the magic or the breathless passion. She was just glad that the return of reason didn’t mean she loved them any less.

The beep told her the phone had a voice mail, and she flipped it over, thumbed it on, and hit play.

“Ms. Belle.” The inquisitor general’s voice boomed out of the message, aggression and irritation thick enough that even the digital recording couldn’t diminish it. “You will not hang up on me again…do you hear me?”

Cassie bit her lip at the dangling vowel hanging off the end of his question.

“Ms. Belle?” His querulous tone gave way to puzzlement. “I cannot hear you breathing, so either you have consigned me to a voice mail or you have the mute button on.”

The placate-the-airhead tone was hardly an improvement over the dictatorial orders, but Cassie held onto the laugh trying to escape.

A long sigh filled the air. “Very well. You have made your point. If it would not inconvenience you terribly, I do wish to speak with you. Preferably before the Council session… Ms. Belle—Cassandra— you have my condolences on the death of your mother. Michael was not supposed to attack your family, and I should have been aware of it. Please return my call.”

He rang off. The little bubble of triumph deflated at the mention of her mother. The loss of her family still seemed alien to her. She’d barely had time to mourn them in the year since their death. She knew the Danae sent her first emissaries in the wake of her family’s attrition because of her connection to the Danae.

But it was more than that.

“How impossible is it for me to see him?” She met Jacob’s gaze with a hint of pleading.

“Cassie, sweetheart, the man is dangerous. More dangerous than you realize.” The apology hung in the words he didn’t speak.

“I know, and I know you’re both worried about him. But if he is my father, then maybe he can explain some of the things we don’t understand.”

“Hold the phone.” Jude’s voice crashed through the quiet intimacy. “Gustav is her father?”

“That puts a new spin on matters.” Miller’s brows gathered together in a frown.

“Yeah, a whole Vaderesque quality that’s downright creepy, thanks.”

Cassie spared a smile for Jude. She really did like the Wizard. Less reserved, he seemed more open to new ideas and quoted
Star Wars
when it suited him.

“Why do you think he’s your father?” Paul asked.

Cassie leaned into Helcyon, listening to the comforting beat of his heart. His arms wrapped around her, enveloping her in the warm cinnamon, sage, and woodsy green of his scent. A quiver that began in her belly shook its way through her.

“Because the one called Marcus said as much yesterday in my office when he showed up.”

“Vanagan Marcus never says anything without a purpose,” DuPois warned.

“He’s is right, Cassandra. Marcus has an agenda. His presence at your office and his interest in you are all related to that agenda.” Helcyon’s breath tickled her cheek, but she shook her head slowly, rubbing it against his side.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I still need to know. If the man is my father, what does that mean?”

“Why does it have to mean anything?” Jacob lifted his brows. “He’s the inquisitor general. He sits at the head of the Council, he determines which matters require their intervention and which don’t. He’s already ordered that you be brought to them for examination.”

“Which is a polite word for torture,” Jude offered, his expression dry, but even Cassie could hear the echo of pain in his words.

Helcyon’s arms tightened around her. He’d lost too many to the Wizards’ first rounds of “examination.” They had abused the Spanish Inquisition or maybe they’d launched it and twisted it to their own purposes. The history of all of it made her head hurt.

“So much of what is happening now is because of what happened before.” The statement sounded right.

“Exactly.” Jacob nodded his head. “We’re fighting a legacy that we had no say in.”

“Then we have to have a say in it, Jacob. We have to know what it is they want from me.” Cassie twisted, sweeping her gaze up to look at Helcyon. “The Danae has plans. The inquisitor general has plans. Apparently this Vanagan Marcus has plans. What about us? What are our plans?”

“Keeping you safe.”

“Not getting you killed.”

The men’s answers tripped over each other. It seemed ridiculous to believe they were in the middle of so much treachery, a bloody history brought to life in the real world. But wasn’t that what Jacob warned her would happen if she went through with the press conference? Hadn’t he told her that she didn’t know what all would crawl out of the dark if they shined a light on it?

As if following the trail of her thoughts, Jacob brushed his knuckles down her cheek. Her heart sang at the contact, the wild magic kindling in her heart and spreading tingles through her blood. The intimacy in the moment was profound. It didn’t matter that they were standing in a sunlit hallway, surrounded by the Wizards loyal to Jacob, in a house constructed of magic, in the middle of the Sierra Nevada while threats loomed from all sides.

The love blooming inside her was so fierce it hurt.

“What do you want, Cassie?” His voice was harsh, but she couldn’t look away from his unwavering gaze. “You wanted both of us, and you have us. What more do you want?”

That was an excellent question. Pressing her lips together, Cassie resisted the urge to blurt out her initial answer. Every choice they’d made so far resulted in increased danger. Last night, Jacob damn near died over her choice to retrieve her shoes. She’d dared to embrace her magic, and she’d discovered an ability she barely understood.

Every action she took was based on her understanding of the situation, but based on their conversation earlier there were pieces and emotions at play that she didn’t understand. Her lineage. Jacob’s lineage. Even Helcyon’s. Political maneuvers, blood feuds, and an even bloodier history ripe with misunderstanding and hatred.

“What I want is the time to be with you, to explore this connection we’ve found, to build on our relationship.” She hesitated. “What I want is to live. If you’d told me three weeks ago that this is where we would be, I would have called you insane. But now I can’t imagine not having you both in my life, and I won’t
not
have you in my life. But if we do nothing, they will continue to maneuver us how they want us to go, and we’ll always be fighting a defensive war.”

“Told you she wasn’t a pawn,” Jude muttered.

Jacob sighed and gave Jude a silencing look before returning his gaze to her. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it will be to take this fight to them? We aren’t even certain what they want, what is a win for them and what isn’t.”

“You know what? I don’t care what a win for them would be. I care what a win for us will be. A win for us is they go away and leave us alone. They live their lives and we live ours. We have peace.”

Rocking back on his heels, Jacob stared up at the ceiling. “Peace is a subjective term. We had peace when the Fae were bound Underhill.”

“You had an armistice. One that couldn’t last unless we faded completely.” Helcyon’s mild tone carried no censure. “But you ensured our mutual destruction, for had we faded, the world’s Wizards would have died out eventually as well.”

“That’s not a win,” Cassie murmured. Behind Jacob, his Wizards all nodded slowly to her. It wasn’t a win. Destroying the Fae meant destroying the Wizards. They could not reproduce. Those that survived the battles for dominance were doomed to fade as the Fae did. It might have taken centuries longer, but the end result was a world without magic.

“A world without magic will fade eventually, too,” Miller said into the quiet. “If we have learned nothing else in the last five hundred years, our interdependence is not one-sided. The Fae need the world. They need the belief of humans. The world needs the Fae and their gifts to restore the balance. The Wizards need the Fae to survive and the humans to protect or we run the risk of divorcing ourselves from our own humanity.”

“Everything is interconnected.” Helcyon slid his hands across her belly, palms flattening against the flatness of her abdomen. She could see in his eyes that he hoped that she was pregnant, and she understood why—because pregnancy meant the promise of tomorrow, the cycle continuing, the circle completing to begin again.

Covering his hands with her own, she swallowed her own reservations. She didn’t think she was ready to be a mother. But she sure as hell hadn’t been ready to commit to two lovers, to a war she had no part in starting, or to a bloody history she barely understood under its complicated layers of resentments, passions, and disappointments.

“And you’re the bridge.” Jacob’s gaze locked with hers, and he dropped his hand to cover hers and Helcyon’s. “That’s why everyone wants you. Wizard, Fae, and human. You’re the pivot upon which this all turns.”

“Then we fight the fights we can and we build a better world, a world where Fae, human, and Wizard can exist together.”

“Again.” Miller and Helcyon echoed the word.

“Again,” Jacob repeated, and his shoulders relaxed. He was in, he didn’t have to say anything, but Cassie read his commitment in the slow nod and the half smile.

“Fine. We do this. But we do it our way, our choices, and you,
Ms. Belle
, will listen to us and not decide at the last minute that you have a better idea.”

“Or need shoes.” Helcyon’s comment softened to a tease, and the tension cracked into laughter.

Jude clapped his hands together, and behind Jacob the Wizards nodded their approval.

“What do we do about my father?”

“We go with your original plan. We let him stew while we work out how to deal with this. Jude, get us food. Miller, we’re going to need a breakdown on the Council members. Paul, check on that prison guard. Dalton, work on breaking down who could have layered those spells. Michael had help, and we need to know who, that’s another measure of leverage. DuPois, go keep an eye on Vanagan. He’s up to something, and we need to know exactly what.”

Jacob was so fierce when he gave orders. Cassie grinned as the Wizards scattered to his command.