Page 14 of Pining for the Prince
“Should be good to go—as quick as you can.”
Gwil noticed Hyax’s left eye was twitching, and that wasn’t usual when he cast. “Are you okay?”
“There’s something not right. Just get it done, and we can worry about the weirdness after.”
Most of the glass was still solid and he half expected to feel resistance as he reached through, but there was nothing. He snatched up the watch they were after and replaced it with the inferior model. Hyax dropped the charm as soon as he could and staggered slightly. Gwil grabbed his arm to steady him. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, it’s just more draining than normal. We need to get out of herenow.”
“Can you portal? I know you’re not technically meant to but you must have leeway in an emergency, right?”
“Yes, but whether something going wrong during breaking and entering counts is debatable. Besides, I’m not leaving you here, and you’ve not had great experiences when you’ve used them before.”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ve a decent stock of rhesus positive at home. Even some plasma shots if desperate.”
He felt the crackle of magic. Hyax hissed and it was as if Hyax was flickering in front of him, as if he wasn’t fully present but being distorted between realms somehow. Hyax threw out an arm and opened one of his orange portals. “Now!”
Hyax grabbed his hand, stepped into the glowing light and pulled Gwil through with him. Gwil’s body sizzled as if doused in flames, but the pain itself was minimal. He collapsed forwards, fell to his knees and realised he was staring at the black and white floor tiles of his kitchen.
He gasped, struggling to breathe, and rolled onto his back. Hyax was at his side, unscrewing the valve on a pouch of blood, which he then held to Gwil’s lips. He guzzled it down, and closedhis eyes for a moment to stop the world from lurching from one side to the other. “Another, maybe two.”
It seemed to take forever for Hyax to return, even though he knew it was probably less than a minute; the first lot of blood had begun to settle his frayed nerves, but the second was the one that brought the most relief and the third chased away the residual sparks of ice in his bones. He stared up, Hyax was leaning over him, peering into his eyes. He sighed at the brush of cool fingers at his temple. “S’nice,” he slurred.
“Should I get a healer?”
“No, sleep it off. Fine now.” He closed his eyes, his kitchen floor was a reasonable place for a nap.
“Let me get you into bed.”
“I’m really not up to anything exciting,” he said, sniggering to himself.
“Prat,” Hyax muttered. He was always surprised by how strong the fae were because most of them looked as if they could be snapped like a twig and Hyax wasn’t any different, but he lifted Gwil to his feet with ease and then threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
He couldn’t say he cared much, and when he was dropped, none too gently onto his bed, he was asleep in seconds.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hyax sat in a chair by the side of Gwil’s bed, his feet up on the mattress. He’d taken to sitting in here for hours at a time, just to keep an eye on him. Midnight had taken up position on one of the pillows and Hyax suspected Gwil’s cat could sense something wrong with her usual food provider. He’d toyed with casting some sort of charm but he didn’t want to risk interference with whatever residual effect the portal was having.
Gwil moaned. He hadn’t thought vampires could sweat or run a fever, but so far Gwil had gone through two cycles of extreme temperatures as he’d healed but had yet to wake up. Hyax sucked thoughtfully on a lavender bonbon. He’d stripped Gwil down to his underwear, but he should change Gwil’s bedding sooner rather than later as it would be unpleasant when he woke up. Whether it would be more unpleasant than the awkward realisation of what Hyax had done was debatable.
There’d been a definite improvement over the last twenty-four hours, or it seemed to be the case, as he wasn’t an expert in vampire anatomy. He doubted Gwil would be too impressed if he took him to hospital, they’d have to explain why he was in that position and before long Goya from the Met would be sniffingaround and Gwil already had a loathing for the modern police force that went beyond rational. Still, he couldn’t leave him like this for much longer. He’d give him another day and, if he wasn’t awake then, he’d call a healer and deal with Gwil’s annoyance later.
The fact he hadn’t been able to solve the issue with Gwil and the fae portals was becoming a bit of a professional insult. He’d been researching the phenomena on and off since the first incident without much luck. Several years on and the little interest from his or the other tribes in learning why another species might have a problem using something not designed for their physiology, meant he had no resolution. He couldn’t ask directly as the first question would be why he cared about something that would only be hypothetical. Even if it was a future scenario, there was no good reply as to what he could be doing that would mean he’d need to provide a vampire with an emergency exit. And the one tribe who might have answers wasn’t keen to share or socialise with the other fae so for now it wasn’t an avenue he could explore.
He flicked through a book he’d found in the castle’s library, another volume where much of the content had been superseded by current magical theory, but there was the odd glimpse of potential that, if he could get the right handle on it, he was sure would help. He suspected Gwil might be able to travel to and from the fae realm but there was something about the energy flow when using them to travel from one part of the human realm to another that caused the problem. Maybe he could ask one of the researchers in the university, or rather have Cikla ask as she’d get far fewer questions, not being a member of the royal family, and having been something of an academic in her younger years.
The portal business was only part of it, because his other issue was what had happened to his magic when he’d been inthe museum. There’d been no long-lasting effect, pretty much returning to normal the moment he was out, but that didn’t explain the problem to begin with. Sometimes very powerful artefacts could distort his powers, and he’d felt whispers of a force in the British Museum, and several others before, but never on this scale. Once Gwil was better he’d go back, walk the building and concentrate on his surroundings.
What had surprised him was as of yet no one had been in touch about him opening a portal out of hours in a classified building. A breach of that nature should have triggered something, but he’d not heard a whisper. He supposed it could have been reported to the security council, whose standard response would have been a swift, insincere apology but Hyax wouldn’t have been in trouble for breaking royal protocol. Somehow he couldn’t help but think this was linked to whatever was going on with Goya, because Hyax had been with Gwil and that would have been enough to unleash the petty bureaucrat in Goya.
Hyax stretched. He’d been sitting here too long and he needed another cup of tea.
Gwil yawned and sat up, feeling somewhere between highly strung and having been hit by a lorry. The reaction to the portal was more extreme than the other time they’d tried it, when he’d only needed one bag of blood and some comfort chocolate. It wasn’t usual for Hyax’s magic to affect him, well not in a non-tingly-too-nice way, but the portals, which were tunnels through concentrated fae space, didn’t agree with him.
Midnight cracked open an eye and closed it again. Good to know where he stood on her priority list. His bedroom dooropened and Hyax entered sipping a cup of tea. He noticed a chair had been pulled close to the bed and a book lay open.
“Oh, thank fuck you’re awake.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “You’ve been asleep for two days. If it had gone on any longer I would have called a healer.”
