Storm Warned (The Grim Series) Read online

  “Stuffy? Now there is a word I haven’t heard in this kingdom before. I believe your visits with Morgan Edwards are giving you a new vocabulary.”

  She favored him with a laugh again and motioned him to sit with her on a green malachite bench hedged with flame-colored foxgloves that grew nowhere else in the realms. “That may be so, but I miss your own irreverent tongue, Lurien. There is no one, past or present, who has ever spoken his mind in my presence with such piercing canniness. There was a time when a single word from you would shock many of our elders while silencing many fools. Yet throughout the labored proceedings of these past few days, you have been as silent as a shadow. Has nothing been said, no opinion voiced, that you have felt the urge to answer?”

  “Gwenhidw,” he said, and her name on his tongue was easy and familiar. “Most of my urges the past few days have been violent at best. I have not wished to speak so much as throttle most of the delegates at one time or another. When the coblynau proposed seceding from the kingdom? I very nearly volunteered to throw them all off the high face of the palace into the great chasm below.” He sighed. “I do not have your patience, nor your gift for diplomacy. You are as perfect a monarch as there has ever been. The expansion into Tir Hardd is a mighty undertaking, and no one could bring about such a momentous thing, save you.”

  “I am very far from perfect, Lurien. And we are not in Tir Hardd yet.” She placed her porcelain hand upon his black-gloved one, their contrast sharp and clear, yet balanced in their combination. “I truly fear for my people.”

  “I know it. But I fear for you far more. You work as if you never tire, and you take many, many risks.” He clasped her hand as if holding a delicate bird in his palm. “I will do all within my power to keep you safe.”

  “You always have, my dear friend. But this time, promise me instead that you will keep our people safe. Promise me you will see them to Tir Hardd should I fail to do so.”

  Lurien’s heart pitched within him. He had spent most of his entire life fighting to protect Gwenhidw, and the thought of anything happening to her was simply unbearable. As for the concept that his determined queen might not accomplish her goal? Impossible.

  “You cannot fail,” he said gently. “You love the realms and all that are in them. And while I’m more inclined to solve things with a sword and a spell, you’ve proved again and again that love is a far greater magic.”

  “I hope so,” she said, sighing. “Promise me one more thing?”

  He could not deny her. “Anything.”

  “You’re so vigilant all the time. Always watchful, always on guard, forever hovering and seeing to my safety. Particularly with the envoys recently.”

  “I should not have told you that I wanted to kill some of them,” he teased.

  She smiled at that. “You did not ask me if I did. Tonight, at the party, I want you to delegate your responsibilities and just enjoy yourself.”

  What? “Have I grown tiresome to be around, dear Gwenhidw?”

  “No,” she chuckled. “Never that. Sometimes the weight of responsibility for everyone and everything seems too great, and it presses down on me. It would ease me greatly if just once, you attended as a guest and not a guardian.”

  “I will always watch over you,” he said simply. “I cannot do otherwise.”

  “But you can still be a guest. You can still have fun, can you not? Just this once? I already know you’ll put your very best hunters in the room with me. You could put two on each side of me—even three or four—if that would free you for a single night. Please?”

  “’Tis a strange request, but I cannot say no to you.”

  She sighed and leaned against him with her head on his shoulder. Her satin hair spilled across the black of his riding leathers, like moonlight upon still, dark waters. “Since you cannot say no, will you also permit me to rest here a while, dear Lurien?”

  His queen continued to surprise him. “Rest here for as long as you wish, Gwenhidw. For as long as the stars wheel in the heavens if that is your desire.” He put his arm around her and drew her close, but whether he was comforting her or himself, he could not say.

  Snatches of lively song came from the direction of the kitchen, and Liam realized he was hearing Caris’s voice as she worked. No radio accompanied her, no music video on the TV, yet her voice was pitch-perfect. It was unearthly, idyllic even—and it shook him to his very core. The tune was lower, softer, as if it had been tamed down from its ancient wild origins, but he recognized it instantly nonetheless.

  It was the very same cascading song he’d heard her play in his dream.

  He didn’t have a perfect voice himself, but he did have a faultless ear when it came to tunes. Liam knew without doubt that he’d never heard such music before his battered brain conjured it as he’d slept in the hospital. What the hell did it mean?

  Aunt Ruby believed in psychic abilities. Uncle Conall believed in his gut and said it was the very same thing. Liam wasn’t so sure, since his own gut had never showed a tendency toward precognition before. Yet it wasn’t the prophetic aspect that bothered him. He could explain it away easily enough if he really tried. He’d simply heard Caris humming or singing sometime while he was asleep, and the tune worked itself into his dream. It was no mystery that she’d played a fiddle in his dream either. It was an instrument he himself played and loved. Once. If he’d been a tuba player, he’d probably have dreamed of Caris’s bare skin pressed against the shining gold surface of the great brass horn . . . Ah, hell. No question where the naked part came from, he thought as he readjusted his jeans, and his focus, at the same time.

  The issue was how the music made him feel—no, that wasn’t quite right. It was the fact that the music made him feel anything at all. The song opened something inside him that he had hammered shut. And dammit, it was going to stay shut. It had to, it . . .

  Caris was still humming as she came out of the kitchen and rounded the couch.

  “Why are you singing?” The words were out of Liam’s mouth before he could think and sharper than he would have chosen.

  She froze in place, a plate and a cup of coffee in her hands. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why are you singing?”

  “Ah. I’m very sorry to be making noise,” she said gently. “I should have thought it might bother your poor head.”

  “No, I just—it’s not noise. Don’t ever call it that. It’s beautiful, really beautiful, but I just can’t have it around me. I can’t have you singing near me.” His voice rose a little in spite of himself, as if instead of explaining, he were underscoring the words that were pouring out of his mouth unbidden. “I know it makes no sense, but I have to ask you not to make music while you’re here. Please don’t sing anymore—don’t hum, don’t whistle, don’t do anything. At least not here, not around me, not anywhere that I can hear it.”

  She stared at him as if he had struck her. Setting the food on the coffee table in front of him, she turned and left the room without another word. He heard the back door open and close—quietly.

  So much for showing Caris his better side . . .

  “Fuck!” he yelled, and threw his pillow across the room, where Brewster appeared to regard it with an accusing expression. “I know it,” he muttered at the silent moose head. “I’m being a total moron. Again.” When the hell had that become his default setting?

  Liam muttered every curse he knew, sitting up carefully as he massaged the explosive pounding pain that was his head. He survived the change of position without passing out or throwing up, but he was unable to avoid the rush of purest guilt as he regarded the colorful plate with its tidy sandwich, trimmed and nestled next to a fan of sliced radish and pickle. Dammit, hadn’t he just been thinking about what an incredible gift the woman was, that just maybe he’d like to take a chance on opening his heart again?

  “Nice way to treat a gift, asshole,” he tol
d himself. When he was young and his mom was ill, and he was angry at the whole damn world most of the time, he’d come home with a note from the teacher about his latest outburst or scuffle. Aunt Ruby would sit him down privately and hold what she called “a social autopsy.” Kind of like CSI investigating a social error—Here’s the corpse of the situation, what do you think killed it?—with the hope of preventing further fatalities. Often as not, it boiled down to missed cues.

  Hell, he’d done more than miss a signal this time. Caris hadn’t gotten a chance to give him a cue of any kind, not in time at least. He’d bolted from a musical dream that turned into a nightmare, and the very first time he heard her singing, he practically jumped down her throat.

  Liam had seen something in her face then, all right, something that didn’t add up.

  Okay, moron, think. He’d probably been too loud, but he hadn’t yelled, not exactly, and he hadn’t been particularly rude. He’d even said please. Puzzlement in her eyes at his strange request would have been understandable. Concern for the crazy guy with the head injury, certainly. Rolling her eyes at him for being “cranky as a wet cat”—as she’d once put it—would also be an appropriate reaction. So would some solid indignation, if she thought he was criticizing her talent or insulting her in some way, although he’d said her singing was beautiful. Yeah, so lovely that you asked her not to do it! Who wouldn’t believe that?

  Instead, Liam had seen a raw, deep hurt and an even deeper disappointment, laced with grief and anger. I hit a nerve of some kind, he thought. But he couldn’t begin to guess what it was connected to.

  On top of it all, what the hell had struck his own nerves? Liam was as baffled by his outburst as he was by Caris’s reaction to it. Maybe he should have told her the real story. That he’d turned his back on his own music—and then it had turned its back on him. He could neither play nor write, and worse, he didn’t want to. And dreaming of Caris’s song, that primal, enlivening tune, had set off a terrible struggle within him. He was torn between following it and running away from it.

  Her music had not only made him feel; it made him feel much too deeply, tearing him wide open and laying bare much more than his heart: it had uncovered his goddamn soul.

  And while his gut might persuade his heart to consider a relationship, his soul was not on board with anything of the kind. His soul was where his music lived—or had lived—and it was definitely closed for business, windows and doors nailed shut. If Caris could cross that barricade with only a casual tune, how on earth could he bear to have her around?

  Boundaries. He’d have to set boundaries, that’s all—and in the moment he thought it, he realized how crazy that was. You can come this close to me, but no further. You can make me feel this much, but no more. Yeah, right, that’ll work. Not!

  Obviously, it just wouldn’t work out. She’d have to go, that was all there was to it. He could still send her away, back to wherever she came from, couldn’t he? It wasn’t too late to ask Morgan and Jay to give her a ride, not too late to pull back from where his heart was headed. Not too late to put the brakes on and . . .

  Hell yeah, it was too late.

  Liam slumped back on the couch. He’d had the very same dream twice, heard Caris’s strange wild song in that dream and again in waking life. It wouldn’t matter if he sent the flesh-and-blood woman to the other side of the damn world. He had no control over the dream woman that lived in his head or the tune that was stuck in there with her. And when you have that nightmare again, or think about Caris for the hundredth time in a day, what are you going to do then, smart guy?

  He had no idea. But for now, he’d better be thinking up a damn good apology. It might be too late to fix things—Christ, he hoped it wasn’t—but she deserved to hear him say that he was sorry. Of course, that meant he had to fight his way off this frickin’ couch and follow her . . .

  The back door slammed behind her, but Caris didn’t even notice. She walked briskly into the living room to find Liam standing unsteadily, with his hand braced on the bookcase for support. The surprise of seeing her nearly took him down again, but he grabbed a shelf with his other hand and tried to adopt a casual pose. Normally she’d offer to help, ask if he was okay, but at this particular moment, she didn’t care.

  “How dare you,” she said. It was not a question, and the fury that was in her made her voice thick. She’d barely gotten halfway across the yard before raw anger erupted from somewhere deep inside her and turned her right around. “How dare you tell me not to sing!”

  “Caris, I was wrong. I’m sorry. I just got myself up to see if I could follow you—as you can see, I wasn’t nearly fast enough. I want to apologize, explain—”

  “Let me explain something to you, good sir. I grew up with everyone and their dog telling me it’s a wicked, wicked sin to sing, to make up songs, to play music, to be who I am. And I’ve spent an even longer time without the ability to sing or play or do any of those things that make me myself.”

  Her feet took her across the room until she was within what her da would have called “spittin’ distance” of Liam Cole. She had to look up into those vivid blue eyes, but she wouldn’t let them mesmerize her this time. She needed music like she needed air. Hadn’t she always told herself that it would better to be alone than to be with someone who couldn’t understand that? It was yet true—though she hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. Still, the words had to be said. “There’s no denying there’s something between us, Liam. We’ve done nothing but make eyes at each other since we met. But you need to be understanding that if you cannot abide music, then you cannot abide me. I’ll not be separated from it again.”

  Fully expecting that she’d burned her bridge, Caris turned to leave, but a big hand on her shoulder tugged her back.

  “My turn,” said Liam. “You’ve said your piece, and you’re right. You’re right about all of it, except for one thing. I don’t want you to be without your music. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, because that’s what happened to me.”

  When she looked up into his eyes this time, she saw the shadows in them too, all the anguish and the anger she’d glimpsed at their very first meeting. His words registered slowly in her brain, perhaps because she was afraid she hadn’t heard them right. Dear heavens, does he feel the same way about music as I do?

  “Will you tell me?” she managed at last.

  He closed his eyes and nodded once.

  SEVENTEEN

  The moon was at its apex. Lurien might not be enthused about the party, but he would not draw attention to himself by being late. He entered casually through a side door of the massive throne room and stopped still . . . If this was indeed the majestic hall in which the queen had so recently called a great gathering of her people, then every whit of its formality had been very well hidden. The towering agate pillars glittered with the many-colored reflections of thousands upon thousands of floating lanterns. The glowing lamps hid almost the entirety of the vast vaulted ceiling, save the high clear center of the dome itself, which was reserved for the moon to shine through. Lurien was almost embarrassed for the orb—it was at its fullest and most perfect, and it had garbed itself in warm yellow gold for the occasion, yet its light was all but swallowed up in the splendor below.

  Cleverly tooled shapes cut away from the gently rotating lanterns cast countless, ever-changing shadows on the polished walls: creatures of every kind, from every realm and every world. Lions danced with unicorns. Deer pranced with warths. Songbirds circled bwganod. Lurien frowned however at the numerous dragons among the shadow figures—dragons with great horned wings, dragons that breathed fire, dragons with sharp teeth and long tails . . .

  As if that didn’t make Lurien uncomfortable enough, Gwenhidw had neglected to mention that she had planned a costume party. Frustrated and furious, his powerful fists clenched hard enough that they would have driven his nails deep into his palms if it hadn’t been for his
black leather gloves. For reasons he could not fathom, his queen’s main mission in life seemed less to expand the kingdom and more to imagine new and awkward surprises for her llaw dde. Surely no right hand in the history of the Nine Realms has had to contend with such a security nightmare.

  The seventy-nine envoys had been joined by all their advisers and assistants, and every one of them was masked. Masked! And from the crush of guests in attendance, it was obvious that countless invitations had gone out beyond the palace walls. Like the myriad shadows on the lofty walls, the costumes drew from both fae and human realms. The effect was nothing short of fantastical. Lurien was looking out over a sea of wildly imaginative guises and headdresses that bobbed and bounced as the wearers danced, pranced, minced, conversed, and even sang—some quite badly.

  For the most part, Lurien could not distinguish who was an envoy and who was not—except for a few of the larger and more obvious creatures such as the kelpies and the glittering fire drakes. It took every ounce of his self-control not to stare, however, as a huge basilisk slithered by him wearing a kitten mask . . . Meanwhile, an entire contingent of knee-high coblynau, dressed as human football players replete with shoulder pads and helmets, were sampling more or less continuously from the groaning boards of exotic foods that lined one wall. Elaborate silver fountains had been strategically placed around the vast dance floor, dispensing jewel-colored streams of exquisite wines and rare ales. A pair of eerily beautiful undines with large, luminous eyes lounged in one of the bigger fountains. Their notion of costuming appeared to have been to paint their naked bodies with crushed gems. As each enticing curve caught the light of the multicolored lanterns overhead, it was hard to argue with their choice.

  Still Lurien’s dark eyes didn’t linger. He was studying the crowd, seeking the person behind the party—though whether to throttle her or protect her he didn’t yet know. Perhaps both. At one end of the cavernous room, the great Glass Throne sat empty upon the green jasper dais, save for a shining drape of silver fabric carelessly tossed over one clear arm. Of course she wouldn’t be there. She’d be in the very midst of the chaos. He changed his focus then, looking instead for the hunters he had assigned to watch her. Lurien alone wore black, and only black. It was as much his signature as his waist-length dark hair, and it was eminently practical when trying to blend with shadows while hunting or while carrying out his duties to the queen. What his men would be wearing, however, was anyone’s guess. They were not soldiers, per se, but simply trusted followers and friends, loyal to him and, more important, to their queen.