He considered me a moment, then laughed, and the sound made me feel suddenly ebullient, drunk with euphoria.
“Stop it,” I hissed. “Quit amping up my feelings!”
“I am what I am. Even when I ‘mute myself,’ as you say, my presence overwhelms mere humans—”
“Bull,” I cut him off. “When you were kneeling on the beach in Faery, and touched me, you felt like a man and only a man.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it had been better than this. He could tone himself way down if he chose. “I know you can do it. If you want my help finding the Sin—er, the Book, turn it off, and turn it all off. Now. And keep it off in the future.” I’d picked up a superstition from Dani, the young sidheseer I’d met recently who’d warned me about casting certain words on the wind I didn’t want traced back to me, so now, whenever I spoke of the Sinsar Dubh aloud, out in the streets, especially at night, I tried to remember to call it simply “the Book.”
V’lane shimmered, flashed brilliant white, then faded and resolidified. I tried not to gawk. Gone were the iridescent robes, the eyes that burned with a thousand stars, the body that radiated the fire of Eros. A man stood before me in faded jeans, a biker jacket, and boots; the sexiest man I’d ever seen. A golden, horny angel stripped of wings. This V’lane I could deal with. This Fae prince I could keep my clothes on around.
“Walk with me.” He offered his hand.
Sidhe-seer walk with Fae? My every instinct screamed no. “I’ll Null you if I touch you.”
He considered me a moment, as if debating whether to speak. Then he shrugged, but not well. The human gesture only made him look more alien. “Only if you wish, MacKayla. The desire to Null or the instinct to defend yourself must be present. If you do not desire it, you may touch me.” He paused. “I know of no other Fae who would permit such intimacy and risk. You speak to me of trust. I am giving it to you. Once you touch me, you could alter your intent and I would be at your mercy.”
I liked that: him at my mercy. I took his hand. It was a man’s hand, warm, strong, nothing more. He laced his fingers with mine. I hadn’t held hands with anyone in a long time. It felt good.
“You spent time in my world,” he said, “now I will spend time in yours. Show me what it is you care for so deeply that you would die for it. Teach me of human ways, MacKayla. Show me why I should care, too.”
Teach this ancient creature who, in his most recent incarnation, was over one hundred and forty-two thousand years old? Show him why he should care about us? Right. And I was born yesterday. “You never stop, do you?”
“Never stop what?” he said innocently.
“Trying to seduce. You just switch tactics. I’m not stupid, V’lane. I couldn’t teach you to care about us in a million years. But you know what really pisses me off? I shouldn’t have to justify our existence to you, or any Fae. We were here first. We have the right to this planet. You don’t.”
“If might makes right, we have all the right to this world we need. We could have exterminated your kind long ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“It is complicated.”
“I’m listening.”
“It is a long story.”
“Got all night.”
“Fae decisions are not for humans to know and understand.”
“There you go, getting all superior again. You can’t fake nice for more than a few seconds.”
“I am not faking, MacKayla. I am trying to know you, to earn your trust.”
“You could have earned some of my trust by being around when I needed you. Why didn’t you save me?” I demanded. I’d been scarred by my hellish time beneath the Burren in ways I didn’t fully understand and, although my body had healed, and I felt stronger than ever, I wasn’t certain I was necessarily the better for it. “I almost died. I begged you to come.”
He stopped abruptly and spun me to face him. Though his body was as warm and solid as mine, his eyes blazed inhuman fire. “You begged me? Did you cry my name? Pray to me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Figures that’s what you’d hear.” I stabbed him in the chest with a finger. It sent erotic recoils up my arm. Even “turned off” he was turning me on. “The important part in there is that I almost died.”
“You are alive. What is the problem?”
“I suffered horribly, that’s the problem!”
He caught my hand before I could poke him again, turned it up, and grazed his lips across the underside of my wrist, then bit it, sharply. I snatched it away, skin stinging. “Such a naked, defenseless wrist,” he said. “How many times have I offered you the Cuff of Cruce? Not only would it prevent lesser Unseelie from harming you, with it, you could have summoned me and I would have saved you. I told you this at our first encounter. I have offered you my protection repeatedly. You have refused me at every turn.”
“A cuff can be removed.” I sounded bitter because I was. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
“Not this—” He closed his mouth but it was too late. He’d slipped. All-powerful Prince V’lane of the Supercilious Fae had slipped.
“Really?” I said dryly. “So once it’s on me, I’m stuck with it forever. That’s the tiny little inconvenient catch you’ve never happened to mention to me before?”
“It is for your own safety. As you said, a cuff could be removed. How would that serve you? Better that it cannot be taken off.”
Barrons and V’lane had both been up to the same trick all along: trying to put their permanent mark on me. Barrons had succeeded. I’d be darned if V’lane would. Besides, I was pretty sure Mallucé would have cheerfully sawed off my arm to remove the cuff, which made me really glad I hadn’t been wearing it. “You want me to trust you, V’lane? Give me another way to summon you. A way that costs me nothing.”
He sneered. “And make a Fae prince answerable to a sidheseer?”
“Allow me to put it into perspective for you. I saw the Book again the other night, and had no way to contact you.”
“You saw it? When? Where?”
“How do I summon you?”
“You dare much, sidhe-seer.”
“You ask much, Fae.”