You swore you would not leave me, Niniane said to Tiago. You made me believe in you. You made me love you. Promises are all well and good, mister. Now it’s time for you to make good on them. I can’t—I can’t take it if you don’t.

Aryal gave a sharp, triumphant hawk’s cry. The harpy leaped to her feet, sprinted to Tiago and skidded on her knees as she landed beside him. Her long hands blurred as she unlocked the shackles. Then Rune rejoined them, and they all worked to ease the shackles out from underneath Tiago’s body. “Take those away,” Carling ordered.

Aryal’s stormy gaze flashed up to meet Niniane’s for the barest instant. Then Aryal whirled from them, the shackles gripped in one hand, and she was gone.

Carling said, “I have to remove him from stasis and then cast the healing spell. If you believe the gods take an interest in our lives, now would be a good time to pray.”

Oh gods, please. Please. She threw the full force of her panic into the prayer. Then she pressed her lips to Tiago’s forehead and said to him, Tiago, you must stay with me.

Carling spoke even more rapidly than before. The lowvoiced Power-filled words made the world shiver, made Niniane’s bones vibrate, made Tiago’s body blaze with golden light. His back arched and he gasped as his face contorted in agony. Niniane wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head. He turned to bury his face against her breast as his talon-tipped hands dug into the ground.

She remembered the agony of her own healing. Her wound had been so much smaller than his. She suffered with him until gradually the tension eased from his body, and at last he rested against her, his face and body smoothing into their normal lines.

I’ve already told you more than once, faerie. I’m not leaving you. He spoke as if he had heard every word she’d said to him and was continuing the conversation. His mental voice was slurred, and his eyes refused to focus. Some day you’ll believe it.

She sobbed out a laugh and held him closer. I think some day just might be today, Tiago. I think it might be today.

He slipped again into unconsciousness. Carling sounded confident when she said the danger had past, but Niniane could not relax until she had torn open his blood-soaked shirt and seen for herself the shiny scar from the sword wound. It was about three inches long and looked almost silver against the dark tanned skin of his muscled abdomen. She put her fingers to it. There would be another at his back where the blade had passed through his body.

A sober-looking Hefeydd and three other Dark Fae soldiers came with a stretcher improvised from blankets and two poles. Under her anxious supervision they eased Tiago onto it. She kept one hand on Tiago’s shoulder as they carried him back to camp. Aryal and Rune kept a watchful pace alongside. The stretcher-bearers took Tiago to her tent without being asked. She directed them to lay him on her bed, and they did so gently.

“Please heat some water so I can bathe him,” she said, her attention on Tiago.

“Yes, ma’am.” Hefeydd lingered, and she looked up. The Dark Fae male’s brow was creased. He said, “If it pleases you, your highness, we want to help. May we do anything else for you?”

She tried to think. “He’ll be hungry when he wakes up. He needs a lot of meat.”

“With your permission, a few of us will go hunting.”

She nodded. She frowned. “You were the one Arethusa gave the packet to.”

Hefeydd bowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her gaze narrowed on him. “Why were you so cautious about giving it to Tiago?” What had Hefeydd known but not said?

The soldier’s eyes reddened. “None of us believed the Commander’s death was an accident, and I did not think anyone had the ability to slip up behind her without her knowing. Her killer had to be someone she trusted and, therefore, was most likely someone I knew too.”

She closed her eyes and nodded again, and he backed out of the space.

Rune had entered with them, carrying Tiago’s swords. He set them on the ground beside the bed, then knelt alongside her and helped her cut away Tiago’s bloody clothes. Without looking up from the task, she asked, “How’s Cam?”

There was a pause. Then Rune turned to put his hands on her shoulders. He squeezed her gently as he said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. She didn’t make it.”

It was too much to hear, on top of everything else. She rocked and keened quietly, and Rune hugged her tight. After a few minutes, she said, “Naida?”

“She’s dead too,” Rune told her. “The gun fired and exploded simultaneously.”

“It’s my fault. Those were my guns. I brought them with me.”

“Stop it.” Rune’s voice was calm and firm. He stroked her hair as she leaned against him. “Naida had gone over the edge. Cameron saved your life. She did a brave, good thing and died like a warrior. Don’t try to take that from her.”

She bit her lips. After a moment she was able to nod. She said, Thank you for getting Carling to act.

I had to. It was T-bird. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

She lifted her head to look at him. Rune, be careful. Carling isn’t quite sane.

Yeah, I figure. He smiled, his gaze serene. “Don’t worry, pip-squeak. You know how the song goes. ‘Every little thing is gonna be all right.’”

Trust Rune to quote Bob Marley. She would not have expected she would be able to smile back, but she did. She glanced back down to Tiago’s stretched-out form, and her smile was replaced with rage. “We are done with diplomacy. I want you to scour the camp. I don’t give a shit if it offends anybody or not. Use force if you have to. Durin and Naida mentioned someone named Ryle. Find him, and find out how much he knows. No one is exempt, not Aubrey, not Kellen. Nobody.”

“Bitchin’,” he said. His smile widened, and his amber lion’s eyes flared with a predator’s gleam. “Sounds like my kind of party.”

“Niniane,” Tiago said as he opened his eyes.

He was in her bed, in her tent. Someone had removed his clothing and bathed him. He broke into a sweat as he remembered the star of agony in his abdomen that had grown to fill his body with burning gold. He started to rise. Suddenly Niniane was there, kneeling beside him. She laid a hand to his cheek. “I’m here. No, please don’t get up.”

He looked at her hungrily. She was clean and dressed in a robe. The thin cuts at her neck were not covered, but her wrists were wrapped in bandages. Her face was drawn and pale, her lovely eyes haunted.

In his mind, he saw her bound and kneeling, her neck exposed and bleeding. One slice away from death.

His mouth opened as the breath left his lungs. He snatched at her and dragged her down. She grunted as he clenched his arms around her. He growled, “Every time I let you out of my sight, something bad happens.”

She put her head on his shoulder, her small body flowing to align with his and accommodate his tense hold. He put a hand to the back of her head and turned his face into her fragrant hair. She whispered, “Everything’s all right now.”

She pressed her lips against the bare skin of his shoulder. She was safe and alive, and she was with him. He dragged her underneath the bedcovers and curled his body protectively around her. His mind raced. “The shackles.”

She stirred. “Aryal has both sets of chains, and the key,” she told him, muffled against his skin. “She swears she’ll find a way to destroy them. She’s saying ‘my Precious’ a lot and talking about dropping them into a volcano.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “Naida,” he said. “Cam.”

She swallowed hard and shook her head.

He rubbed his cheek in her soft hair as he listened to the sounds of the camp. People were talking and moving around quietly. Enough time had passed, then, for calm to return. “How long have I been out?”

“Almost thirty-six hours. You almost died,” she whispered. “It was really close, really bad.” He stroked her back, soothing her, and they held each other in silence for a while. Then she stirred. “There’s food,” she told him. “Venison stew and pan bread.”

Hunger was a sharp, insistent ache, but his need for answers was sharper. He said, “Tell me everything, starting with when I left.”

She did. Since she had learned things after the fact, she was able to add more to the story than what had just happened to her. Aryal and Rune had split off to keep an eye on Aubrey and Kellen, the most dangerous suspects. In the meantime, Durin received Tiago’s order to get the troops ready to ride out. While Tiago collected food and water for the journey personally, and saddled his and Niniane’s horses, Durin passed his orders on and went directly to find Naida.

“Everything Naida and Durin did from that point on was in escalating reaction,” she told him. “Right up to the end, when Naida realized Aubrey would never agree with what she did or forgive her. Then she had nothing left to lose, and I think she just unraveled. Just imagine, a couple of weeks ago she believed Aubrey would be crowned and she would be Queen.”

He growled, “Do you believe Aubrey?”

She tilted back her head and stroked his face. “Everybody believes Aubrey, Tiago. He has been beside himself. He has offered his resignation as Chancellor and asked to be taken into custody. And you know what? I finally learned where Duncan’s talents lie.”

He lifted his head to frown at her. “What?”

“Duncan, the Vampyre,” she said. “It turns out in 1890 or so, he founded what has become one of San Francisco’s premiere law firms. He’s expert at questioning witnesses and suspects, and especially at cross-examination, although after everything that happened, people were more than happy to cooperate. Between his skill, and Aryal and Rune’s truthsense, they’re confident everybody else in the camp—including Aubrey—is innocent. One of Aubrey and Naida’s attendants, a man named Ryle, was involved only peripherally. Naida had sent him to get Aubrey out of the camp quietly, but she hadn’t told him why. Geril and Durin were her two accomplices. She must have done quite a number on them to play on their greed and ambition. She all but promised to get Durin appointed as Commander, right in front of me.”

“So it’s really over,” he said.

She nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. “The sad thing is, Arethusa and Cameron didn’t have to die. If we had achieved more trust and openness—if we had all just worked together better, they would still be alive—”

“Hush, you can’t think that way,” he said. “All we can do is work with the information we have at any given time.”

The tears spilled over. “I know, but I liked Cam so much and she was so happy to come.”

“I know,” he whispered. He framed her face in his hands and kissed her damp eyelids, the tip of her nose, her mouth. “I wish I could take the pain away.”

“I don’t,” she said. “She deserves to be mourned.”

That may be so, but his faerie had suffered too much and he had had more than enough. If anybody so much as looked at her funny, he was going to come down hard on them with both sizefourteen steel-toed boots. Then he would consider seriously the merits of evisceration.

He kissed her again, gently, and she kissed him back. Then soothing became searching. She wound her arms around his neck, and he growled low in his throat and moved to cover her body. “Wait,” she murmured. “Don’t you want to eat first? You must be starving.”

“It has quite a high priority rating,” he muttered. He rested his weight on one elbow and ran his hand down the side of her body, looking for a way to open her robe. “It’s next on my to-do list, but you’re the first thing.”

The most important, the most urgent thing.

There was a belt at her waist. It was tied. He untied it and pulled her robe open.

She was naked underneath, and he swallowed as he stared as her gorgeous pink-tipped br**sts, that narrow waist, the impudent little gold navel ring and the silken tuft of private hair at the sweet, graceful arch of her pelvis.

He put his forehead down between her br**sts and swallowed hard. She was his life. It was as simple as that and he had almost lost her.

Niniane slipped her hands under his chin and gently urged his head up. Her face softened as she took in the harsh set of his face, his full glittering eyes. He shook his head. His throat had closed up, and anyway, he had no words.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. She stroked his face, his shoulders. She reached into the shadowed space between them, took hold of his erection and guided him between her legs. She pulled her knees up and cradled his long torso as he came inside her, came home.

Then the words came, and the force of his feelings shoved them out of his mouth.

“I need those chains back,” he said. “I’m going to shackle you to me. We’ll destroy the key. We’re never going to be more than two feet apart again.”

“Okay, we’ll do that,” she murmured. “I promise.”

“Don’t humor me,” he snapped. He pushed all the way inside. Then he rocked his hips, moving slow and gentle as he remained buried to the hilt. He felt huge and hot and he stretched her wide, and he found just the right spot to hit. With every thrust he ground hard against her pelvis, as he dug in as deep as he possibly could.

“I’m not,” she gasped. “I almost lost you too.”

She flung back her head, her eyes closed. Her emotions were too naked, the pleasure too intense. She dug her nails into his flexing back.

He slid a muscled arm underneath her, his hand at the nape of her neck, and he clamped her to him so tight she could hardly breathe. “Look at me.”