Page 91 of Dark Sun (Wicked Lovely 6)

“You really want us to stay here?” Cam asked.

Irial lifted his eyes, met Cam’s gaze, and nodded once. To anyone looking their way, it would appear as if he nodded to himself upon reading something pertinent.

“King’s not going to approve,” another Hound muttered.

“Does Niall know?” Leslie asked, even though she knew exactly what Irial would say.

Or not say.

Irial lifted a shoulder in a small shrug.

Leslie texted: “With Iri. Airport. NOLA. Love.”

Then she looked at Irial, back at the Hounds, and said, “Go.”

“Leslie?” Cam asked in apparent confusion.

“We need a little time to ourselves,” she said, leaning into Irial even with the metal arm rest jabbing into her side. “Just us.”

To a bystander, she seemed to be talking to Irial, but the Hounds knew what she was saying. They—like most of the Dark Court—acted as if she were their queen. No one really pressed the matter, and she was cautious not to issue orders. Today, though, she was taking advantage of their obedience to her.

“Just the two of us,” she repeated with emphasis.

Irial lifted his gaze, looked around at the fey creatures that were standing there watching over them. Hounds were stronger than many faeries, but this much steel had to be unpleasant for some of them.

“Begone,” Irial ordered.

They rolled through the airport boarding areas, an invisible wave of discomfort that the observant could track simply by noting the ripple of fear and anxiety that the passengers’ faces showed. Even seasoned businesspeople seemed suddenly ill-at-ease. The trick for those without the Sight was to notice waves of joy, or fear, or chills that seemed to roll across a crowd or street. That was often the result of passing faeries.

Once they were gone, and Leslie saw no other lurking faeries in the area, she turned to Irial and gently prompted, “Tell me what’s happening.”

Silently, he slipped the letter back into his case.

“A very long time ago, Thelma asked me not to seek her out. She was mortal, and I was not,” he paused and smiled. “Amnot. Will never be. I knew she lived a long life because I looked her up from time to time.”

He leaned forward.

“I gave her a vow. In fact I gave her”—he laughed as if there was a joke she hadn’t heard—“quite a number of them. The first before we acknowledged that she knew what I was, but the last vow . . . I never saw her again after it. Never spoke.”

All traces of laughter were gone, and Leslie felt waves of loss assail her.

“And so I never knew, and she never sent word. I don’t know how she could’ve, but if she had . . . I’d have known my daughter.”

Leslie stared at him. “She intentionally hid your child from you?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

Leslie reached over and took his hand. There weren’t a lot of words. Being a woman meant that her child—if she had one—would not be a secret. One notices such things. For men, though, the fear that a child out there might be yours, that you might never know, was a real possibility.

“She lived in New Orleans?”

He nodded. “A long time ago, I was there, and she was there, and we met, and . . . if things had been different . . .” Irial shook his head and simply noted, “I would have liked to know my daughter.”

They sat in silence, Leslie feeling his emotions and trying to send calm his way, until the plane boarded. They remained the same on the flight to the city at the mouth of the Mississippi River. She’d never been there, although it was on her list of places to see, but not like this.

By the time they landed, Leslie no longer worried that Irial’s sorrow would drown her. So she asked, “What year?”

He looked her way.

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