Page 5 of Caged By Dance and Desire

Whatever was making a Fae warrior anxious I should know about if only so I understood exactly what I was getting into—so I could better avoid the trouble inherent in this situation.

He tried again, speaking more slowly, and with more resignation. “I would not advise it.”

That cemented things. I turned back to the door and instead of knocking, placed my hand on the knob, turning. Unlocked. I opened the door, aware of the unhappy guard at my back, and inhaled as the scent of a slaughterhouse assaulted my nostrils.

I stepped inside, then halted, staring at the abstract wall art in the living room.

No. . .that wasn't art. That was blood.

I looked down and gagged, whirling and stumbling back towards the door. Mathen caught me by my upper arms, holding me steady.

“Lady Hasannah?”

“Get me out of here,” I said through shallow breaths. Under the coppery tang of blood was a sickly sweet scent that reminded me of vomiting after too much cotton candy as a child during a summer carnival.

His exhale contained regret. He pulled me from the apartment and slammed the door behind us. I leaned against his chest, not questioning my instinctive comfort in his presence, and his arms came around me loosely. He murmured something soothing, as if he was gentling a baby bird.

Ch?t ti?t. Oh, ch?t ti?t. I'd never seen so much blood before and along with the acrid scent of blood was the stench of fear.

Larry's hands curved in a rictus of claws, his chest shredded as if someone had attacked him before they'd taken his head.

Where was the head?

So much blood.

“He's—he's dead,” I said, finally able to speak. A faint presence stirred in my mind, attention turning and focusing in response to my distress. What? What was I thinking?

I pushed away, stumbled, my knees collapsing, and Mathen swept me up into his arms, ascending the steps back to myapartment. He shut the apartment door and set me carefully on the couch, his gaze scanning my place before he crouched, taking my hands and rubbing them between his own as he refocused on my face.

“He's dead,” I said. “Someone killed him. We have to tell the authorities?—”

Mathen's expression shifted, and I understood.

“We don’t?”

He stopped rubbing my hands, and just held them.

“But why?”

It was a stupid question. As shallowly versed as I was in Cassanian customs, I understood why. Larry had threatened me. Larry had threatened me in front of Andrei, and Andrei was no simple warrior, he was a High Lord. As kind and almost sweet as he'd been to me, that wouldn't extend to a human man who insulted him by threatening the woman he claimed—in front of his face.

No one, not even the District Lord, would try anything as banal as prosecution for what they’d consider a justified killing.

“It was for the best, Lady. The mortal earned the manner of his death.”

For a moment I didn't understand the heartless words because they were delivered so gently, his eyes creased with concern.

My stomach churned. I pushed to my feet and stumbled down the short hallway into the tiny bathroom, falling to my knees and flinging open the toilet seat just in time.

Mathen followed, hesitating in the threshold, then approached and knelt, lifting my hair and holding it as I threw up everything in my stomach.

“Do you—do you require a healer?” he asked in the same forcibly calm but secretly horrified tone of voice my brothers used when they found me curled up on my bed during a particularly bad bout of period cramps.

“No, I don't need a healer!” I reined in my hysteria because it wasn't his fault, and flushed the toilet, stumbling to the sink to rinse out my mouth.

Mathen released my hair and stepped back. When I glanced at him, he was all but wringing his hands. I almost snorted. Poor man. No one had given him a primer on how to deal with hysterical human women.

“Lady. . .Lord Andrei would never harm you in that manner. You are safe with him.”

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