Kinked

FOUR

Numenlaur.

The name resonated in Quentin’s marrow. His emotions roared as he heard Dragos say it, a single outcry of the soul.

Numenlaur was the first and oldest Elven land, the fabled birthing place from which all others had come. The Other land had been closed off from the rest of the world for millennia.

Once upon a time, he would have been filled with curiosity and wonder at the chance to see Numenlaur, and he would have given anything to go. Now he still felt the echoes of that same compulsion, only it was underscored with dread and grief, for Numenlaur had become a wasteland, emptied of the Elves who had once lived there.

As if from a distance, he heard Aryal ask, “Why do you want us to go?”

Dragos’s expression shuttered as he looked from the harpy to Quentin. He assessed them both, his golden gaze moody and calculating. He said, “Ever since the battle at Lirithriel Wood, Pia has been keeping in close contact with her friends in the Elven demesne. They remain completely overwhelmed with what happened.”

Quentin had no idea what his own expression might reveal. He turned abruptly, putting his back to the other two as he struggled to get in control of his feelings.

“Overwhelmed” was a massive understatement. Two months after the battle in Lirithriel Wood, the Elven demesne in South Carolina remained devastated. One of the ancient Guardians of Numenlaur, Amras Gaeleval, had apparently gone mad and enslaved all the Numenlaurians in a Powerful enthrallment, driving them to attack the Elven demesne just outside of Charleston.

Gaeleval had tricked his way into Lirithriel then tried to enthrall the Elves there as well. He did not manage to capture everybody, but he drove those Elves he did enthrall to attack their own people. Friends cut down friends, and families were decimated. Gaeleval had set fire to Lirithriel Wood, killing its spirit in an attempt to drive the High Lord Calondir and those Elves he had not managed to capture over the crossover passageway to their Other land, where they would have faced extinction at the hands of Gaeleval’s army had not Dragos, Pia and the Wyr become involved.

For the first time in decades, Dragos himself had called the Wyr to war. In a confrontation in the Elven Other land, Dragos killed Gaeleval and broke the enthrallment. In the process, Calondir, the High Lord of the Elven demesne in Charleston, had also been killed. So had at least a third of the Numenlaurians.

Of those who had survived, a significant number were still catatonic. Others failed to recover. They were lethargic, distant and without appetite, and many were physically malnourished and ill from a multitude of problems that had occurred through long neglect and lack of proper shelter.

The surviving Lirithriel Elves that Gaeleval had captured ended up faring better overall than the Numenlaurians. They had been enthralled for only a short time, and they were physically healthier and more robust. Even so, many struggled to reconnect with life. A few, unable to cope with losing so many friends and family, had committed suicide.

Quentin had lost friends and family members too. The High Lord Calondir himself had been his uncle by marriage. The Elder tribunal had deployed a Peacekeeping presence to Lirithriel, setting up a small city of Quonset huts as field hospitals, and aid continued to pour into the Elven demesne. The Elves faced a long, hard road to survival.

Dragos had continued speaking. “As far as I know, Numenlaur continues to be abandoned. It has occurred to me that others may also have realized this, and may be interested in what they can find there. I want you two to go and assess the situation.”

Quentin swiped at his face with the back of one fist as he glared out the window. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. He said, his voice low and savage, “If this is some kind of order to loot in disguise, I won’t participate.”

In the glass of the windowpane, he watched Dragos’s blurred reflection turn to him. After a moment, Dragos said in a measured tone that spoke of self-control, “If I felt the desire to loot for Elven treasures, I would not send others to do it. I would go myself. What I want you to do is prevent others from looting. Check the land. Secure anything you might find dangerous. If anyone has trespassed, kick them out. From my understanding, Numenlaur has only one crossover passageway that leads to central Europe. Secure the entrance if necessary. If you haven’t killed each other by then, report back to me.”

Of all the assignments Dragos could have picked, this was actually one that Quentin wanted to do. Marginally calmer, he asked, “Have you contacted Ferion about this?”

“I haven’t bothered to,” Dragos said. A hint of bite had entered his voice. “Numenlaur does not belong to Ferion. Besides, he’s in over his head as it is.”

Quentin couldn’t disagree. His cousin Ferion was a good man and would eventually make a fine High Lord, but too much had happened, and the losses and destruction were catastrophic.

After a moment of silence, Dragos asked, “Any questions?”

Quentin turned to face the others but kept silent. Aryal wore a scowl, but she said nothing either, only shook her head.

Dragos said, “Kris has your plane tickets. You’re departing out of JFK, and your flight leaves soon. You’d better be on it.” He paused. “Close the door on your way out.”

Quentin’s gaze clashed with Aryal’s. Her stormy gray eyes promised him anything but peace. So be it. He gave that promise right back to her in a thin-lipped smile.

It might be harder to engineer a fatal accident in what had become a virtual ghost land, but it could still be done.

And he was an expert at covering his own tracks.

Let the war games begin.

Dragos’s assistant Kris was waiting outside his office, plane tickets in hand. The young dark-haired male handed one envelope to Aryal and the other to Quentin. Aryal yanked out the contents of her envelope and scanned the pages. Her eyes rounded. “You booked coach?”

Kris shrugged. “Only seats available to Prague at short notice. Dragos said to book the first flight out, and that’s what you got. Meanwhile the corporate jet stays parked in the hanger. You guys must really be in the doghouse.” He looked at them sidelong. “Erm, just so you know, I’m supposed to verify that you both get on that flight. There’s a car waiting downstairs for you.”

“Oh hell, no.” Aryal’s shoulders twitched as she gave Quentin one last glare. “Nobody said we had to ride to the airport together. I’ll meet you there.”

Quentin watched her leave then looked back at Kris, who had settled at his computer again. “You ever take a vacation?” he asked the other male.

Kris shrugged, eyes on his screen. “This is my vacation.”

Quentin shook his head. Guess there was all kinds of crazy. He checked the contents of his envelope. Aside from documents he would need when he reached the Czech Republic, there was a printout of an electronic plane ticket. He noted the time of the flight and sighed. No wonder there was a car waiting downstairs. He had been so busy that day, sorting first through his sentinel duties and then seeing a healer and arranging matters at Elfie’s, that he hadn’t yet had time to stop at the penthouse to see Pia and the baby. He’d hoped to talk to her before they left, but now he couldn’t.

He gave Kris a nod and left, taking the elevator down to the lobby. As he went, he called Pia’s cell. It rolled over to voicemail without ringing, which meant her phone was turned off. Was that coincidence, or intentional?

After the automated prompt, he said, “I’m sure you know by now what happened this morning. I wanted to see you and Liam before I left, but now I can’t. Listen, Pia, I—I’m sorry.” Sorry for everything. Sorrier than you can know. He bit the words back, guilt sitting like a ten-pound weight in his chest. “I just wanted you to know, it’s never going to happen again. That’s a promise.”

After he disconnected, he tried Ferion’s number, but that phone call rolled over to voicemail right away too, as the new, overburdened High Lord never answered his cell phone anymore.

Instead of leaving a voice message this time, Quentin hung up then texted Ferion, his fingers moving quickly over the small screen. Going to Prague this pm. Will call when I get there.

For a moment he hesitated, teetering on the edge of adding more. But Numenlaur was too painful and charged a subject to put into a text message. He hit send, clicked off his iPhone, shoved it into his pocket and when the elevator doors opened, he strode through the crowded lobby to the main steps outside.

The day had started out bitter and was ending gray and bleak, but the bite of the cold wind felt good on his skin.

A black Cadillac Escalade idled at the curb. Winding through the heavy crowd of rush hour pedestrians on the sidewalk, he opened the passenger door. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons poured out of the interior. He looked inside.

Alexander Elysias lounged in the driver’s seat, his long body relaxed. As a pegasus, he had the distinction of being the only herbivore among the seven sentinels, all the rest being predators of some sort. The difference played out in his personality as well. He was easily the most even tempered and patient of them all.

Predator Wyr tended to be dismissive of herbivores, an unfortunate tendency that did not play out among the sentinels. All of them had watched Alex’s fighting in the Games arena. Not only had they seen Alex’s proficiency for combat for themselves, but they had also come to realize that his easygoing demeanor went hand in glove with a strong, steady personality, keen intelligence and a kind of innate dignity that tended to settle the most abrasive and volatile of them.

The expression on Alex’s handsome, dark mahogany face was pensive. It vanished into a welcoming smile as soon as he saw Quentin. The tension that had been knotted between Quentin’s shoulders eased as he returned the smile with a lopsided one of his own and slid into the passenger seat.

Going through the Sentinel Games together had been a bonding experience of sorts. Out of all the people who lived and worked in the Tower, Quentin had just two friends. One of them was Pia, and the other one was Alex.

“Hey there,” he said. “You’re the first thing that has gone right this whole gods’ cursed day.”

Alex said, “I can imagine. So far I’ve heard about fifty different versions of what happened this morning.” He craned his neck, looking beyond Quentin to the crowded sidewalk. “Where’s Aryal?”

“She decided to make her own way to the airport.” Quentin slammed the door, settled his pack between his feet, buckled his seat belt and slumped back. “No doubt she’s flying.”

“If it was any warmer out, I’d offer to shapeshift and fly you out too,” said Alex. “It can be a good way to beat rush hour traffic, but in this weather you’d freeze your balls off.”

A grin hooked the corner of Quentin’s mouth up. “Your concern for my balls is touching. Really.”

Alex laughed as he shifted gear and pulled away from the curb. “I just didn’t want you screaming like a girl in my ear the whole way.” He shot a glance at Quentin. His eyes were dark, intelligent and calm. “Want to talk about it?”

Quentin sighed and rubbed the back of his head, then admitted the truth. “Dragos banished us, and we deserved it. We’re supposed to work our shit out someplace else. He’s sending us to Numenlaur.”

Any vestige of humor in Alex’s face vanished. “Numenlaur. Man, that’s gonna be a hard trip.”

“Tell me about it.” He heard himself saying, “Still, I’m … glad he thought to send someone there to check on things.”

“Careful, buddy,” Alex said. “You might be getting close to admitting that Dragos isn’t as bad as you thought he was.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said immediately.

A smile crept back over Alex’s dark features. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

Quentin glowered at the lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. “I’m never going to like him. That’s all there is to it. He’s arrogant, demanding, he has an evil temper, and I’m pretty sure he invented the word ‘conniving.’ ”

“Go on, tell me how you really feel,” Alex said. “Don’t hold back.”

Quentin refused to smile. “As far as I’m concerned, he does only two things right. He makes Pia happy, and he loves Liam. Okay, maybe three things. I used to think the feudal system in the Wyr hierarchy was bullshit, but—it works.”

The other man drove quickly and competently, weaving through the slower vehicles. “And don’t forget, you were also glad he mustered the Wyr to go to Lirithriel.”

“Yeah, but I question his motives,” Quentin growled. “He may have done the right thing, but not for the right reasons.”

“There’s no way you can possibly know that,” Alex countered. “I’m more of a behaviorist. Dragos did the right thing. Period. That’s what counts. You can have all the right reasons in the world. They don’t mean shit, my friend, if what you do causes harm.”

Alex didn’t know anything about Quentin’s involvement in last year’s events. The other sentinel had spoken in his typical easygoing manner, but still his words punched Quentin in the gut. “There is that,” he said bleakly.

Despite rush hour, they made good time getting to JFK. Still, if Quentin had been a normal passenger, he would have been in trouble trying to make the flight. Because of his sentinel status, he would be able to expedite his trip through the security lines.

Alex pulled to a stop at the passenger drop-off curb and clapped him on the shoulder. “Have a safe trip, and as much as she makes you crazy, don’t kill each other. You’re both sentinels for a reason, you know, and we need you.”

Quentin grasped the other man’s shoulder briefly. “You and I have only known each other for a couple of months, but I already owe you many drinks for the times you’ve talked me down.”

Alex raised his eyebrows with that trademark smile of his that already charmed so many females and was fast becoming famous in the Wyr demesne. “Good thing you own a bar, huh?”

He laughed. “I guess it is. Catch you later.”

A flight attendant closed the door as he boarded the plane. Another one lit up when she saw him. She purred, “Let me show you to your seat.”

Oh please God, not another sex kitten. There was a time when he would have taken advantage of that purred invitation in her voice, but there were winsome, flirtatious sex kittens everywhere he looked, and they all had so many emotional needs.

“That’s all right, thanks,” he told her. “You’re busy.”

Her face fell as he turned away, but it was for the best. He had no interest and he didn’t have anything to give her. As he looked for his seat, he kept an eye out for Aryal. The flight from JFK to Prague was nine hours long. With any luck, they would be in opposite parts of the plane.

But his damnable luck had been running against him all day. He scented Aryal before he caught sight of her. She slouched in her window seat, chewing gum while she flipped through a magazine. She wore the evidence of her flight. Her hair was tangled as usual, and that high color burned again underneath her normally pale skin, glowing like a flame lit from within. Her feminine scent bore a clean, sharp freshness, like she had captured a slice of the wild March wind and brought it with her.

The seat beside her was empty.

It was his seat.

Of course it was.

He looked around at the large, packed plane. It was filled with mostly human passengers, although he caught sight of one or two of the Elder Races dotted throughout the cabin. No other visible Wyr. There wasn’t another empty seat anywhere in sight.

Of course there wasn’t.

He looked down at the person who occupied the aisle seat. A young teenage boy, maybe thirteen years old, sat hunched over an electronic game.

“Hi,” Quentin said to him.

The boy grunted but didn’t look up.

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars if I can have the aisle seat,” Quentin said.

That brought the boy’s head up. As he opened his mouth, a woman from across the aisle snapped, “You’ll do no such thing. Robert, ignore that man. Never take money from strangers.”

“But mom,” the kid said as he blinked up at Quentin. “It’s a hundred dollars and it’s just an aisle seat.”

“Get over here! Change places with me.” Quentin rubbed the bridge of his nose, watching as the boy got up. Resignedly, he shoved his pack into an overhead compartment, slipped out of his jacket and stuffed it underneath the seat in front of his, then he slid into the middle seat, buckled himself in and crossed his arms.

He was over six feet tall. Aryal was just a few inches shorter than he was. Together they were packed in like sardines, their arms, hips and thighs touching. Her heat and energy washed over him, sharp like vodka straight from the freezer but hot like mulled whiskey.

“Before you say a word to me, shut up,” she muttered out of the side of her mouth. “If I have to look at you, I’m going to punch you.”

God, yes. Adrenaline flooded his system. He was ready and itching for the fight, but there was nowhere to take it. If they started to brawl here, they might blow out the side of the plane and take everyone else aboard down with them.

On his right side, the mother of the teenage boy heaved herself into the aisle seat and glared at him. He said, “It was just a hundred dollars, and just the aisle seat.”

“Don’t talk to my boy again,” Mom told him.

Jesus. He let his head fall back against the seat with a thunk. He had to fly nine fucking hours like this. It was a goddamn pressure cooker.

Something was bound to explode. If something didn’t let up soon, he thought it might be him.

The flight attendants did their show-and-tell while the plane taxied into position and accelerated down the runway, lifting into the air with a mechanical roar. Cranky Mom on his right played Sudoku with a pencil. On his left, Aryal finished flipping through her magazine and dropped it onto her lap. He glanced sideways at it. Somehow she had found the time to buy a copy of Rolling Stone.

Aryal mimicked his position, crossing her arms and tucking her elbows tight against her side, while she leaned as far away from him as she could get, hunching against the interior wall of the plane and glowering out the window.

The relief at the inches of space she managed to put between their torsos was marginal compared to the upsurge of irritation Quentin felt. She had no fucking tact. None whatsoever. Her body language screamed that she would do almost anything to get away from him—anything except deplane.

Besides, she could lean sideways all she liked, but the seats were so goddamn miniscule, their thighs still touched. He looked down at the length of her legs alongside his. Her bone structure and musculature were slimmer than his, undeniably feminine while also strong and athletic.

He had watched her bouts at the Games. Hell, of course he had. Like most of the contestants, he DVRed the bouts so that he could go through them again, analyzing each fighter’s strengths and weakness. He had pored over Aryal’s fights time and time again. It was only smart to study his enemy in an effort to discover any weakness.

During the Games, the contestants had their own box. Once they had gotten far enough through the rounds that the contestants’ numbers were limited, the new contenders mingled with the five sentinels, exchanging sharp, assessing glances and friendly smiles. When he wasn’t competing, Quentin had lived in that box.

Aryal fought with power and confidence. When she struck, she was fast as a snake, and the one time she chose to change into her Wyr form, she rioted across the sands of the arena like a joyous minitornado.

The sight was so magnificent, Quentin was on his feet before he realized it, along with the rest of the stadium. She laughed as she fought, her face vivid and wild, talons out and flashing in the white-hot lights, and everything about her aligned.

She never once lost command of the placement of those huge, gray-to-black wings, and once when her opponent, a massive, thousand-plus-pound polar bear, lunged to strike at her, she leaped into an aerial cartwheel that carried her soaring over his head. As she had flown over him, she reached down in an almost leisurely movement, the talon of one finger extended, and raked a thin, teasing cut along his muscled back.

It was a blatantly gratuitous maneuver, but it was so precisely executed, and the smile on her face was filled with such feral gaiety, Quentin found himself shouting along with all the others. In that moment all thoughts of resentment were temporarily suspended for sheer love of the artistry she displayed with such abandon. She owned that fight from beginning to end.

When she put her opponent on the ground for the last time, Grym, who had been leaning against the box railing beside Quentin, straightened and threw a fist pump into the air, roaring, “MY GIRL!”

The sentinel’s ferocious glee had broken Quentin out of the moment. Remembering it now, he scowled, shifting position carefully in his tiny space in an effort to get more comfortable. He sensed Aryal’s body tense. When he looked at her, he saw that her gaze had cut sideways. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he tried to get comfortable.

Unbidden and unwanted, Alex’s words echoed in his thoughts. You’re both sentinels for a reason, you know, and we need you.

Damn that pegasus.

Quentin was born a killer. He had the instincts of a predator. Despite that, he had never killed indiscriminately. His impulse to throttle Aryal was one thing, but the quiet intention to murder her was an entirely different thing. It was too far off even his screwed-up moral compass.

You can have all the right reasons in the world. They don’t mean shit, my friend, if what you do causes harm.

He shifted again as his admittedly dysfunctional conscience nagged him. He had thought he had the right reasons last year, and then he’d ended up causing so much harm. This time, hell, he didn’t even have any right reasons. She just drove him crazy.

So quietly that only he could hear her, she hissed out of the corner of her mouth, “Stop moving.”

In a quick, neat move, he took the magazine from her lap before she had a chance to react. Her whole body twitched as she made an aborted move as if she would snatch it back before she could stop herself. He flipped through the pages without really looking at them while she glared at him. On his other side, Mom tucked away her Sudoku book, slipped a circular foam airplane pillow out of a canvas bag and anchored it around her neck, then settled back in her seat for a snooze.

He was saturated with Aryal’s scent, drowning in her presence, and there wasn’t any escape for eight and a half more hours. Thank God her flight had washed away that irritating hint of arousal. Honestly, he couldn’t figure out what she and Grym saw in each other. They didn’t match in the slightest.

“It’s going to be a long month for you, isn’t it?” he muttered.

The look on her face turned heartfelt. “Gods, yes.”

Everything about her goaded him. Unable to stop himself, he said, “I just can’t figure you and Grym out. You’re so mismatched. Other than you, he seems so sane.”

For a moment an amused smile hovered on her lips. “That’s because you’re an idiot.”

He stared at her mouth. The anger that had been simmering all day had to come out somehow. He switched to telepathy. So what did you see earlier this morning when you spied on me at my bedroom window?

Her eyebrows shot up, her amusement vaporizing. That’s what set you off this morning, isn’t it?

He turned to look at her full on, his expression burning. What did you see?

Something complicated flashed across her angular, upswept features. Funny, he wouldn’t have tagged her as complex. Then there it was again, a hint of arousal in her scent. It was invasive, filling his lungs as he involuntarily took a deep breath. Unwanted. Delicious. A muscle in her narrow jaw flexed, and she looked furious.

Comprehension dawned. He laughed, low and angrily. He said, It’s not you and Grym at all, is it? You into chicks?

Once he’d said it, he couldn’t strip the image from his imagination. Aryal, bending over another woman, perhaps a petite one like the brunette hooker, one of her long, lean hands palming a breast while they kissed.

Fury at his own unruly imagination battled with his body’s reaction. His unruly cock began to stiffen.

Aryal’s gaze flashed. She said very softly between her teeth, “I’ve had a few chicks in my time. They’re tasty little morsels, like soft, pink hors d’oeuvres. You got a problem with that, asshole?”

FUCK. The shock of her words bolted through him, and a new image blazed in his mind. Aryal, crouched between a woman’s thighs, her dark head nestled at the woman’s pelvis.

His stirring cock turned into a raging hard-on. His entire body stiffened, rebelling against it, as his own scent filled the air. The ridiculousness of it didn’t escape him. There they sat, hazardously trapped and betraying themselves by reeking of their own cravings, while the passengers around them napped, oblivious to it all.

Then that internal whip that constantly drove him pushed him to whisper, “You and me. We’re going to have this out when we get to Prague.”

Aryal gave him a slow, dangerous smile. “You know we will.”