Shape-shifters with ties to royalty: the new rock stars.
Fiona clamped down on her mental wanderings when indignation made her focus waver for a split second. The taller guard lifted his nose into the wind and leaned forward, staring into the shadows around her tree. His sense of smell wouldn’t be nearly as keen in this form as when he was a wolf, but still better than that of any human.
Deeper. She sent her mental command arrowing ever more deeply into her own brain, until she felt the almost audible click that signaled total control of her Gift. Air and light bent to her will in the space surrounding her. The scent of her body dispersed into the vestigial odors of the millions of tourists who crossed this courtyard. Her image vanished, hidden by the shadows caressing her. Even the sound of her heartbeat and breath floated away, broken up and scattered with the obedient winds. To any of the guards’ five senses, she simply did not exist, so long as she didn’t get close enough to touch.
Damn the luck, though. Her Gift had no control over the sixth. Intuition. Hunches. The peripheral senses of shifters who trusted their own instincts—they’d come near to unveiling her more than once in the past. Her lips quirked at the idea of how unhappy Hopkins would be if her outrageous streak of good fortune chose now to desert her.
She caught her breath and tightened her hand on the grip of her tranq gun as the shifter took a step toward her. There was no possible way she could outrun a wolf, not even one in human guise. It was the matter of a moment, anyway, for the more powerful shifters to transform, and these looked anything but weak.
The guard with his back to her glanced over his shoulder at his partner. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” the one with the nose said. “Nothing. Something. Maybe.”
The first one snorted out a laugh. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
“I don’t know. But whatever it is—”
The sharp sound of pebbles clattering to the ground interrupted him, and Fiona and the guards all turned their attention to the sky. Or, more specifically, to the roof of the building, from where the pebble shower had originated.
“Maybe a bird?”
“That was no bird.” The guard lowered his gaze and aimed one long last stare at the tree where Fiona stood—perfectly still, perfectly silent—with her gun at the ready. “But maybe what I thought I sensed over by the tree was.”
“Or maybe we’ve got vamps playing games,” the other one snarled, as he turned sharply on his heel and started running back the way they’d come. “I warned those freaks the last time they tried to hang out here—”
“Bloodsuckers don’t listen to warnings.”
Neither do ninjas, Fiona added silently, as the pair vanished behind the building, presumably making for the particular side door that was the guards’ preferred entrance. But with just a bit of luck, they’d call in for replacements who might choose a different door. The main entrance not thirty feet away from her, for example.
It took her fewer than ten seconds to make her way to the side of the double wooden doors and plaster her body up against the wall. Another ten seconds and the sound of pounding feet approached, and the doors swung open, spilling out a new pair of guards. This time, they were both human, but their reflexes were almost shifter-quick.
Fiona wasted no time in ducking under the arm of one guard to enter the building, seconds before he yanked the door closed. Still shadowed, she slowly stood, careful not to move until she’d scanned the area for further guards, either human or shifter. Glowing carriage lamps with modern bulbs lit up the dark hallway, their illumination dimmed for night but still bright enough for their light to pounce on any unwanted visitor.
It was a familiar sight and one she’d toured often enough, usually with guests from elsewhere. A left turn would take her to the Hall of Monarchs with its various and sundry thrones and coats of arms. Glorious, but not really what she was after tonight. Nor was the cinema room with its video of Elizabeth II’s coronation, or Processional Way, with its walls of shining maces, or even the Temporal Sword of Justice. No, Fiona wanted a jewel from a quite different sword and it was in the Treasury. The jewel part of the Crown Jewels.
One jewel in particular.
And all she had to do was liberate William the Conqueror’s sword to take it.
No worries.
Chapter 3
The Summer Lands, in the forest not far from the Unseelie Court palace
Prince Gideon na Feransel stared at Maeve and wondered, not for the first or tenth or even the hundredth time, how the smartest, most powerful Unseelie Court Fae prince in recorded history—himself, naturally—had been saddled with an idiot for a sister.
“Maeve, if you’d quit playing with your hair and listen for a single minute, I’d explain this in words even you could understand.”
Maeve continued brushing her silky blue-black hair and rolled her eyes at him. Which he hated—which she knew.
Damn Fae princesses were astonishingly arrogant.
“We tell the humans we’re cousins, because the closer relationship of brother and sister would involve certain expectations we don’t wish to entangle us.”
She handed her hairbrush to one of the fawning males who always surrounded her. “Such as?”
“We’d have to pretend to like each other.”
Her delicate features screwed up in a tiny moue of distaste. As Fae, she could never be truly ugly, but Gideon privately thought this expression came close. Of course, his taste ran to paler beauty. A certain blonde had caught his eye.
“You’re wrong, in any case, brother,” she said. “I know many human siblings who despise each other.”
“This is all beside the point, Maeve. Now if you don’t mind, please send your entourage away so we might speak privately.”
She shot a speculative glance at him, reminding him anew that vanity was not a signal of lack of intelligence. Anyone who underestimated Maeve na Feransel was a fool, and Gideon was many things, but never, ever a fool.
“Go,” she said, waving a slender arm. The various men—lesser Fae and human both—all bowed and fled, obeying her order with an alacrity that underscored his reason for the conversation with his sister.
He leaned against the trunk of a winged elm tree and inhaled deeply, comforted by the scent of all things green and growing. The soil beneath his boots was a touch dry, but he knew rain would soon arrive to soothe and nourish the forest. The connection with the earth and all things growing was so much a part of Fae nature that he sometimes wondered how humans survived without it. Perhaps it was how they could destroy nature with so little concern or remorse.
Perhaps he was a fool to try to save any of them, but then again, he did occasionally need them. All of that chaotic life-force energy was so delicious.
“I’ve put out the word that a very wealthy buyer will pay top money for the sword Vanquish,” he said. “I’ve also told Telios, but that fool vampire is more interested in murder and destruction than anything else, so I doubt he’ll be able to come up with a coherent plan to steal it.”
“Why don’t you just steal it yourself?” Maeve turned away from him and bent to admire a profusion of wild orchids tangled around the base of a jasmine bush. “I know you’re only after the Siren and what it can do. The power to enthrall shifters on a large scale? Why would you possibly care about that?”
“Power held is never useless. Far more important, though, is power withheld from others. If the vampires were to learn what the Siren can do, their misguided attempt to take over the entire world would be one step closer to its realization. Even you should realize that this would be utter annihilation for the Fae.”
“You do know that Rhys na Garanwyn is working with the Atlanteans toward the same end? Why not join forces?”