Page 3 of Dark Fae's Destiny

As a single, shimmering tear drips down her cheek.

“I must go,” she says, turning away.

“Wait.” Daring to reach out, Quinn snags her by the wrist.

The look she gives him could shatter daggers.

“Tell us how to stop your father,” Quinn says as he stares her down. He doesn’t relinquish his grip on her wrist, though her fierce power makes night-blooming flowers push up all through the skin of his hand now as he winces.

“You do not stop him,” she says as she stares at Quinn, then Lucca, and me. “You cannot stop him.”

“Tell us how to free ourselves from him, then.” Quinn pushes as he pins her with his gaze. His Mentale Dark Fae energy rises in a black tidal wave all around him in the darkness. Flickers of gold and crimson fire blister the Wanderer’s white flowers from his hand and wrist, burning them off his body as soon as they grow.

She seems impressed by it. Staring at his unmaking of her flowers, she watches the phenomenon of someone resisting her power. Then she glances at me.

Pinning me with her dark gaze beneath the starlight.

“The weakness of my father’s heart lies beneath your feet. Ask my mother how to find it, for I cannot; she has gone back to the city of sunlight, water, and stone that she loved much when she was still in physical form, before my father twisted her into his darkness. The rainbows upon the water call to her; the endless stars in the vast night sky call to me. Farewell.”

With that, she waves a hand—causing all her beautiful vines and flowers upon the shore to die. As they wither to desiccated ropes and dead leaves upon the quay, she takes us all in one last moment.

Then wanders away, surrounded by a wind of magic and darkness in the night.

2

DECISION

Ariana, Lucca, and I return to the Red Letter Hotel Florence, sobered by the Wanderer’s words. Her final, cryptic message at Arturos’ send-off burns inside my mind; like someone’s singed me with a red-hot poker, I can’t get those words out of me.

They’re branded into my thoughts as I try to puzzle them out. The Wanderer is an enigma; she’s left us very little to go on, other than that clue about a city of stone, water, and sunlight. I think about where I might see rainbows on the water, as those words pour through me.

But every lake, ocean, or river has rainbows on it when the sun hits it just right.

“Quinn. You’re stewing,” Ariana says now as we return to my apartments beneath the Red Letter Hotel Florence. Ariana has been staying with me this past week since we re-took the Hotel from my nemesis, Florian Delano. She’s moved into my suite here beneath my cathedral-like crystal vaults, though she still has her own rooms she can go to inside the Hotel whenever she wishes.

She doesn’t, though, and it lifts my heart from our somber evening as she removes her jewelry at an ebony armoire and makeup table I had brought up to my lofted bedroom suite for her.

As she moves around my bedroom area, I watch her, fascinated by her wild red hair as it curls beneath the high moonlight. Her tall, slender, yet curvaceous Italianate figure is perfect, intoxicating as she slides off her high heels then sits on my ample ebony bed.

I’m lost in her, annihilated by her beauty until someone moves up behind me, rubbing my shoulders. Lucca, the third of our bound trio and my lover as much as Ariana, he chuckles as he massages me.

Tension I didn’t even know I had floods out of me now, to his strong, sure hands.

“The way you’re looking at Ariana right now is like you want to devour her, Quinn. Are you hungry? When was your last meal?” Lucca asks as he steps up beside me. He strips away his white fae Victorian tuxedo jacket, pulling open his cravat and unbuttoning his silk collar as he watches me.

I get lost in Lucca also now as I marvel at him, reveling in his strong, masculine beauty. Golden and glorious, Lucca’s short, ash-blond hair has been raked up into a delicious mess by the sea wind at Livorno, as his perfect sky-blue eyes stare me down.

He holds both teasing and gravitas as he regards me. My lover for a decade, my enemy for centuries, he’s everything I want in my bed, with his Adonis sculpted features and muscled but slender, godlike body.

Except for Ariana, who watches us both now from the bed.

“Lucca’s right.” Ariana considers me, cocking her head as her jade eyes penetrate mine. “You’re getting lost in us both tonight, Quinn, which means your other passions haven’t been properly fed. Have you eaten at all today, or were you too distracted getting everything ready for Arturos’ send-off?”

They have my number, my two Dark Fae lovers. I sigh as I gaze between them, though it’s a good sigh.

Glad we’re all together.

“I need blood,” I admit, even though some part of me hates to say it. Heaving another sigh, I glance at them both, though I feel hesitant to hold eye contact. “I haven’t had blood at all this past week since we re-took the Florence Hotel and our United Haven, thanks to how strong our new bond is now, with all our Dark Fae in it. I thought I could go without blood, since my Fae appetite for food has come back. I find I still need it, however. Especially when I’m under stress, like getting everything ready for tonight.”