Page 35 of Fortune's Blade

He was furious, and he’d blooded something; his clothes were running with the evidence. His face was also splattered with it—for an instant, before he absorbed it and grimaced, because fey blood tastes nasty. And then he grabbed me.

“I need to talk to him,” I said, indicating Lord Rathen’s fight with Steen, right before it came our way and Louis-Cesare jumped us both over a swinging tail.

“I know!”

“Before Rathen guts him,” I added, in case I hadn’t been clear.

“I know!” he glared at me.

“Well, what’s the plan?”

“The plan? You mean to say you came down here without a plan?”

“Kinda thought I’d wing it.”

“Then let’s go with that,” he said grimly, and disappeared.

Louis-Cesare’s master power, known as The Veil, allowed him to slip out of phase with the world for a short time. That rendered him both invisible and untouchable to anyone still inside real space and worked amazingly well in combat for obvious reasons. It was one example of why he was so feared as an opponent.

But it wasn’t working so well this time. Or rather, it was, as I saw when he abruptly jerked me in beside him, likely so that we could successfully catch up to the fight between the chieftains that was rapidly wrecking the room and endangering anyone in their path. Only that wasn’t what we did.

Because we weren’t alone.

I had no sooner stepped inside the hazy, pale and washed-out world of The Veil, which looked like someone had thrown a piece of white gauze over reality, when I realized that things worked differently in Faerie.

Very. Differently.

“Merde,” Louis-Cesare said, as a dozen heads suddenly swiveled our way.

They were human heads, attached to human bodies, but they weren’t human. We could tell, since around each one the hazy figure of a dragon loomed, one thrashing and fighting and snarling and wreaking havoc in the real world. While here . . . their human halves languished, unable to join in the conflict except vicariously, because dragonkind had a sort of Veil, too, didn’t they?

And we had just made the mistake of bringing the fight to them.

“Merde,” I agreed, as the group lunged for us.

We didn’t know how to fight this way, which was why Louis-Cesare abruptly dragged us back into the real world. The transition was quick enough to make me dizzy and didn’t even help. Because the group’s dragons promptly turned away from their own fights and freaking leapt for us—again.

“Merde!” we both said in unison, right before a plume of fire the width of the room erupted from a dozen throats.

I found myself back in La-La Land, because at least The Veil didn’t have anything that breathed fire, which was anathema to vampires. But we only had a short time here, because Louis-Cesare had maybe two minutes of access once he pulled that particular trigger, and the clock was ticking. And once it ran down, he would not be able to access the Veil again for a day or more.

Which was a problem considering that a bunch of murderous bastards with evil intent jumped us as soon as we came through, because they’d expected it. That was what all the fire had been about. And this wasn’t much better than roasting to death, I thought, as somebody throttled me, several somebodies pummeled Louis-Cesare like he was a punching bag at the gym, and then the rest jumped us in a rush.

Right before we hit the ground outside of the Veil, and halfway across the room, because I’d just used my portable portal.

It didn’t take us out of Faerie, and probably wouldn’t work to take us much of anywhere inside of it, either, knowing how incompatible human and fey magic were. But it had succeeded in throwing us across the room, and I guessed Louis-Cesare must have pulled us out of the Veil at the same time, because we rolled onto the floor beside bunch of panicked sheep who decided that we were the last straw. And trampled us.

But being trampled by a flock is a lot better than being beaten to death by a group of seven-foot-tall humans. Or roasted by their dragons. Or crushed by a couple of battling chieftains, the latter of which was about to happen anyway, as they were headed this way!

Louis-Cesare flung us back inside The Veil just in time to miss them, landing us in the middle of the fighting chieftains in human form who crashed into us a moment later. That still wasn’t fun considering their size and savagery, but my husband threw himself in front of me, looking more wild-eyed and panicked than a senator had any right to. And I got an idea.

Because he didn’t look like a man who knew what the hell had just happened, which meant that maybe he hadn’t taken the exact moment that I opened the portal to decide to shift us back into normal space, after all.

Maybe the portal had done that instead, all on its own, and if that was true . . ..

Well, let’s test a theory, I thought, and opened it again.

As a result, the four of us tumbled back into the real world, with the two of them gripped by Louis-Cesare, who was trying to hold them away from me, and me throwing my arms around the threesome at the last second. And that seemed to be all it took to force a change on a dragon. Well, alright then.

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