Once, tigress shifter Yelena Morozova wanted to change the world. Now she can’t even change herself. While searching for the reason behind her inability to shift, she stumbles through a magical portal—and into the arms of a dangerously sexy phae prince...

With the barrier between the phaedrealii court and the sunlit realm of the humans fading, Arazael must use all the strength he possesses to close the portals for good. If he doesn’t, no one on either side will survive the bloodbath. So when Yelena appears, Arazael can’t let her leave—not until he figures out how she got in. But the desire between them is impossible to deny, and soon he is tempted to keep her with him forever...

Dark Prince’s

Desire

Jessa Slade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Every time I open the first blank page of a new story, it’s a thrill. Thrilling like a rollercoaster, soaring and nosediving, laughing and screaming. (Let’s just say there’s a reason so many writers write alone!) DARK PRINCE’S DESIRE is the fourth story in my Steel Born series of dark and sexy preternatural beings and still I feel every bit as excited now—and terrified—to put it in front of you as I felt with the first story. I guess that’s part of the adventure. Thank you so much for following along with me wherever this adventure takes us!

Happy reading!

Jessa

Dedication

To MomMom,

I hope you’re still watching out for me.

Love, Jessa

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Chapter One

Arazael—known as Raze the Ruiner to the rightfully wary inhabitants of the phaedrealii, the court of the magical phae—braced his back against the cold marble wall, staring at the iron door in front of him.

“It is over at last,” he murmured. “After all the battles we survived together, I am done.” As he sank wearily to his haunches, the athame belted at his side clacked against the floor. The pristine white stone made the black iron even darker.

Raze was close enough that the cold-wrought metal bit at him, though he was not technically on the barricaded side and could have dragged his sorry ass down the corridor to escape the painful burn. In the sunlit realm, iron had given way to steel as the humans forgot the vicious wars that had decimated the phae. But here in the Queen’s dungeon, the torture of black iron was never forgotten.

He was the thrice-damned bastard who made sure of that.

A vein of darkness stained the white marble floor in a rough circle around the iron: the remnant of a ruined gateway that had once connected the phaedrealii to the human world. Two phae had escaped the court through that portal and now lived in the sunlight, their rebellion feeding a troubling restlessness in the court.

A rebellion that had to be crushed.

As if in answer to his thoughts, a crack appeared in the marble and traced the circular vestige of the portal, spreading in both directions, seeking an out. But the fissure found only itself as it reached the opposite side of the ring. Frost flowers bloomed in the wake. The delicate silvery tendrils of ice sparkled with poison salt.

“There is no out,” Raze said to the black iron. As if either of them needed the reminder.

The frost curdled, streaking the marble with improbable drops of crimson as it melted.

Averting his gaze from the iron and its caged fury, Raze drew his athame. The geas symbols carved into the steel refracted the flitting lights of the few will-o’-the-wisps who had followed him this far. He stripped off his gray gloves and pushed back his gray sleeve to bare his muscled forearm, revealing more geasa carved into his skin.

A few of the wounds were still raw. It had taken even longer than he’d feared and it was almost too late, but he’d finally marked every portal in the phaedrealii where the dangers of the sunlit realm might seep in—and where the even more dangerous phae might sneak out. His long-wrought spell needed only one last element: him.

“I’m sorry, my King. There was—there is no other way to save the phae.”

As the pool of blood and saltwater tears seeped toward him, he set the blade against the tangle of geasa scarred into his wrist.

* * *

Yelena Morozova counted the empty shot glasses in front of her. There were a lot. Or she was seeing double. Either was a bad sign since for all the best, fiery efforts of the high-powered home-distilled whiskey, she still felt the cold knot deep inside her. Maybe another shot. Or seven...

“Party’s over.” A hand reached over her shoulder to pluck up the bottle.

She whirled to set her back against the bar, her pulse pounding.

Beck straightened slowly, his palm held out in an appeasing gesture. “Sorry. Too fast.”

Behind him, Merrilee bustled past the pool table with a tub of rattling tall boys. “Silly Alpha, you should know better.”

Yelena let out a hitching breath. When she’d emailed Beck Villanova to see how he was recovering from his injuries, he’d talked about the peace he’d found back in his small Eastern Oregon hometown with his new girlfriend. He’d lured Yelena with the promise of long winter nights, much like her motherland, where she might find her idealistic dreams again. She’d gone, hoping he’d be right, knowing he wasn’t.

Instead, for the past week, she’d imbibed too much at Beck’s Sun-Down Tavern—as an NGO volunteer, she’d learned to drink army boys like him under the table—then spent the rest of her sleepless hours wandering around the chilled forest, the November wind nipping at her skin.

But no matter how much skin she exposed, no matter how the cold chomped down, still the verita luna—the Second Truth that was her wereling heritage—evaded her.

She’d been at the same hospital where they’d brought Beck with the wounds that had ended his military days, but she’d known even then his injuries weren’t as bad as hers. Shredded muscle and broken bones would heal, especially for a strong Alpha wolf like Beck, but her damage, though unseen, went deeper.

That cold at her heart sapped even a hint of hope. “If I fall to the il-luna, you’ll stop me.” She didn’t make it a question.

The wolf werelings glanced at each other, the bond between them like a silent song. Their merged strength soothed the jagged edges of her anxiety for a moment; together, they would be enough to end her.

But Beck shook his shaggy head. Though his hair had grown out of its regulation oorah high-and-tight, his jaw was set with the same obstinacy she remembered from grueling days of PT. “Don’t borrow trouble. You’ll find your way to the verita luna.”

When she growled low in her throat and he rumbled back, Merrilee touched his hand to quiet him, her blue eyes half-lidded. “Whatever happens, Yelena, we’ll be here. This is our home and we won’t let anything threaten that.”

Yelena nodded, grateful for the rock steadiness in the other Alpha’s stare. A woman who had brought a wolf to heel—sort of, since he was willing, anyway—was a woman to respect.

A pang of longing for the wolves’ closeness, even in their disagreement, shook Yelena more than she cared to admit. She’d never gotten around to seeking a mate, being too focused on “more important” things.

Some had thought teaching at a girls’ school on the edge of Helmand Province was asking for trouble, but she’d armed herself with grand dreams. She’d hoped to prove a fractured country might be put back together so maybe she could give her family hope to overcome their own difficulties.

She’d gone to Afghanistan to change the world.

Now she couldn’t even change herself.

She pushed away from the bar, relieved her feet stayed under her. “I need some fresh air.”

“Don’t go too far.” Sliding the tub of empty beer cans across the oak, Merrilee reached out as if to pat Yelena’s shoulder.

Yelena sidled away. The coldness inside felt too brittle to bear even the lightest touch.

Under a full moon, with fresh snow on the dark trees, the whole world seemed to have turned to black and white: beautiful but dead. At least the cold darkness kept everyone else away from her. Going so long without the verita luna left her vulnerable to lapses of judgment and loss of self-control. Those whiskeys weren’t helping matters either, but the effects of alcohol wore off eventually while the consequence of failing to change would only worsen.

She didn’t mean to wander, but numb as she was, she didn’t even notice the passage of time until her boots crunched through the snow to the edge of a high mountain lake. Ice rimmed the still, inky water, slowly freezing inward.

She knew too well how that felt.

If only she could sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. She hadn’t taught Hamlet to her students. Her half-sisters had been underwhelmed by Ophelia’s convenient madness, and she doubted the Afghan girls needed schooling in patriarchal oppression. So she’d focused on Shakespeare’s comedies instead, letting the language and the laughs form a bond with the girls. But in the end, tragedy had found them anyway, and now...

Like the mad Dane, she could see no way out. She was trapped, broken and plagued by nightmares when her only goal had been to set others—those Afghan girls and her troubled sisters—free in a world where their hopeful dreams might come true.

Her eyes burned with the cold and whiskey and sleepless nights as she edged down to the waterside. Past the frozen rim, the full moon blazed a white hole in the open center of the lake like a pathway to some other realm. If she thought for a second she might find her lost other half there, she’d willingly brave the water’s icy kiss.

“What dreams may come,” she muttered as she started to turn away.

Despite the stillness of the night, a ripple made the reflected moon dance. Before the wave subsided, a wash of crimson turned the white orb to blood.

Startled, Yelena glanced up at the moon—pristine-white, as always—and the sudden unbalancing made her boots skid.

She windmilled her arms but found nothing to hold onto. Her ass hit the snow hard enough to jolt a curse from her, then she was sliding. The icy rim at the shore shattered, and the shock of the lake water was as sharp as a knife. She drew a breath to shout—but darkness closed over her head.

Chapter Two

Raze pressed the point of the athame into the geas on his wrist, feeling his pulse beat against the steel. A bead of red welled up. His blood would feed the wards he’d carved around the court and seal the phaedrealii forever. He needed to slice deep and fast before—

Though he was holding his breath, the crimson frost that had melted across the floor riffled, as if an unseen finger swirled the pool. Suspicion stayed his hand. He was the only one in the corridor. Nothing could pass the wards he’d carved. Except...

Letting the athame fall to his side, he leaned forward to peer into the pool.

He had only a glimpse of a wild golden eye before a massive form burst from the shallow pool. Impossible, of course, but the phaedrealii had a way of throwing the impossible in one’s face.

Just as he was face-to-face with those golden eyes, not to mention the ivory fangs connected to a giant, infuriated tiger.

A spray of icy water followed the beast in a scintillating veil that smelled of dark forests and moonlight. And something hotter, spicier. Instinctively, Raze raised the athame, but the tiger batted it away. In all his battles during the Iron Age, even when defeat had become inevitable, he’d never lost his grip.

He lost it now.

The athame spun away down the corridor, the metallic clatter lost in the tiger’s roar that shook the marble. The sound vibrated in his bones, and the beast’s spicy breath swept his face.

He spun the opposite direction of the lost knife, whirling behind the beast, feeling the smoldering heat from that big body.

He had a tigress by the tail.

Not literally, though. The long striped tail lashed him across the thighs with power enough to stagger him.

This was no illusion of the phae, no glamour to melt away come daylight. This was a creature of sun and shadow, her pelt hued from richest gold and saffron to darkest night. And her claws were almost as long as his athame.

He dodged as she raked at him, faster than anything that size should be. He jumped the other direction, reaching toward his blade, focused on summoning it to his hand.... But one claw snagged in his gray cloak. He stumbled as she dragged him back with another furious roar, pulling him beneath her body, her front legs straddling him.

He lifted one bared forearm, the geas scars gleaming pale against his dark skin, to block her jaws. His hand braced against the soft, damp fur as he tried to fend her off. The thud of her massive heartbeat echoed through his palm, as clear as a morning bell tolling.

She froze above him, lips drawn back in a snarl. A surge of power almost made him turn his head, but he refused to look away from his oncoming demise. So he saw the faint shimmer on every long whisker and strand of lush fur that signaled her change.

This time he did shudder, the force of the verita luna irresistible. He’d never been so close to a shifting wereling. All but enclosed within her embrace, the sensation was... intoxicating. The shimmering energy danced across his skin like trailing fingertips, as if the verita luna wanted to mold him into something else, something new.

But he was no wereling with a Second Truth. The phae had a million faces, none of them true.

He steeled himself against the tingling in his skin that made his blood race. In another moment, that tidal pull in his flesh would get embarrassing under the loose gray clothes he’d worn for the final, bloody step of locking down the wards.

The tigress tilted back her head as the change pulsed through her, bones shrinking, hard muscles softening to curves, the coarse silk of her striped pelt merging into even silkier skin.

Bare, wet skin, and his hand remained centered in the valley between the enticingly full mounds of her breasts.

Crouched above him, the woman angled her head to look at him, and her cinnamon-hued hair streamed over her creamy skin to tickle his knuckles. Her eyes were still golden, still the beast.

“What did you do to me?” she growled.

With her suddenly smaller form pressed into his, the growl reverberated through him, a sensual rumble. She was wedged so close, her knees tightly framed his hips. He’d had phae lovers, once upon a time, but the wild heat of this wereling scorched those memories to ash even as other parts of him surged in silent answer.

“I haven’t done anything to you,” he said. Yet was implied. His free hand slipped down to settle on her haunch.

She reared back, sweeping his hands aside. If she’d still had claws, he would have had his last wish and filled the geas with his blood.

Instead, he only winced at the bruising blow and pushed to his feet, facing off with her across the bare white corridor where the shallow pool was rapidly drying.

She cast one searching glance around her. “I slipped into the lake and then...” Her gaze arrowed back to him. “This is the phae court.”

He nodded once. Holding one hand open in front of him, he knelt to retrieve his dropped items. The wereling watched suspiciously as he tucked away the knife and gloves. In his mind, he imagined her long tail lashing.

He kept his voice steady and soothing. “How did you breach the phaedrealii?”

“I have no idea.” Her tone was anything but soothed. “How did you spark the verita luna?”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.” She paced, her long legs eating up the width of the corridor, each bare footfall in the pool slapping her ire. The remaining water didn’t even cover her toes. She spun on her heel to face him. “Do it again. Change me.”

A note of desperation made his eyebrows rise. “That’s your trick, not mine.”

She snarled, and he glimpsed the beast inside her. “I want out.”

For a moment, he thought the beast itself spoke to him. “I can’t let you go.” When she took a threatening step toward him, he lifted one finger and added, “Not until I find how you got in.”

“I told you. I fell into the lake. I swallowed some water and then I was here.”

“You swallowed more than water,” he noted with a deliberate sniff. “Overindulgence in spirits is a time-honored way into the phaedrealii.” She sputtered, but he asked over her indignation, “Where is this lake?”

Her jaw worked a moment before she answered, “Mad Dog Valley. In Oregon.”

Ah, now he recognized the scent on her. A pair of wolflings from the small mountain stronghold had recently driven off the Queen’s hunters. Raze had sealed that gateway behind the disgraced phae, as he’d sealed all other routes.

And yet this tigress had come to him along that path.

Apparently, his geasa weren’t complete. Just as well he hadn’t yet killed himself.

What had he missed? He studied the tense wereling in front of him, which was no hardship. Lean muscles rolled easily under her skin, and she seemed oblivious to her nakedness. He didn’t have that calmness, and the rough abrasion of the robe only made him more aware of the difference.

But her stripped splendor and the scent of night clinging to her hair wasn’t what he needed. He needed answers.

“I am Raze,” he said. “Prince of the phae and vizier to the Queen. What shall I call you?”

She barred her teeth in an insincere smile. “A taxi?”

He tilted his head. “This is a joke from the sunlit realm, I think.” He’d had little to do with the world since the Iron Wars.

Her smile upended. “Not joking. I want out. But first I want to know how you forced the verita luna on me. Tell me.”

Despite the demand in her words, the furious gold had faded from her eyes, leaving a darker amber flecked with green. Raze relaxed a bit since she seemed less likely to rip him apart.

“This court is a place of enchantment,” he reminded her. “Perhaps the magic here inspired you.”

“The Second Truth isn’t a two-penny magic charm I rub between my fingers,” she snapped. “It’s what I am.”

He hummed in the back of his throat and traced his gaze over her nude silhouette. “Your wild side is quite charming, although I admit, I find this shape even more so.”

A rosy flush brightened her cheeks, and she angled one arm across her body. The move only served to plump the curves she sought to hide. Beads of water glistened on the upper swell of her breasts and across her flared hips. He was a beast himself to tease her, but he had not been named the Ruiner for his kindnesses.

“No wonder Mom said to stay away from phae,” she muttered.

“Your name,” he reminded her. “Your name in exchange for my cloak.”

When she narrowed her eyes, a glint of gold shone beneath her dark lashes, but she said grudgingly, “Yelena,” and held out her hand. “Morozova, of the Amur tribe.”

He shrugged out of the gray cloak, keeping the loose trousers and sleeveless tunic for himself. But instead of passing over the robe, he took her hand—though he should not have done so without his gloves—and raised it to his lips. “Yelena,” he breathed across her skin before his mouth grazed the soft ridges of her knuckles.

From the way she clenched her fist, he guessed the courtly gesture had expired sometime since he last walked the sunlit realm. A pity, for the touch told him much. Under the pads of his fingers, he felt calluses with a reserved strength behind them. This was no pampered house cat.

Also, the simple touch was a pleasure.

She, however, did not seem particularly pleased as she plucked the cloak from his slackened grip and slid it over her shoulders, wrapping it tightly around her waist. Scaled for his breadth, the folds went nearly twice around her until she secured the belt. The gray cloth looked rough and dowdy against her creamy skin. With a whisper of magic, he could match the cloak to the amber glow of her eyes, reweave it as a silken gown to skim her curves....

With a ruthlessness to befit his name, he crushed the fantasy. He wore the crude homespun because every twitch of his power sustained the geasa. He needed all his magic to find the flaw in the wards.

And she was the key.

“There was a phae portal in that lake,” he confirmed. “But it should have been closed. I am uncertain how you got through. Or how to send you back. What were you doing when it opened?”

“Nothing.” She wrinkled her nose. If she’d had whiskers, they would have twitched. “I was looking at the moon, and it turned red.”

Bloodied water. Raze glanced at the cell door. The slow weep from the iron had halted, and the metal seemed to quiver with silent intensity. The silence of attentive listening.

“Come.” He reached for her arm, but she avoided his touch, as lithe as a tabby arching away from an unwanted petting. “If you want out, I need to be in the center of my power.”

She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Do I have another option?”

Inclining his head, he considered briefly. “No.”

She swept one hand ahead of her. “Then after you.”

He stepped ahead of her, making his way down the corridor.

Leading had never been his intent. Despite the legacy that made him a prince, in the desperate days of the Iron Wars he had become a soldier. He’d served as vizier only because so few survived, but now, with the barrier between the phaedrealii and the sunlit realm fading, he knew he had to finish what they’d been so loathe to do: seal the court forever.

If he didn’t, no one—not the phae, not the werelings, not the humans—would escape the bloodbath.

Chapter Three

Yelena followed the hulking phae, making note of the twists and turns of the corridors in case she needed to find her way back. She didn’t trust him—no one should trust any of the phae—but something about that black iron door made her hackles prickle and she was relieved to step away.

Plus, she needed to keep this Prince Raze in sight. Somehow he had triggered the verita luna. Was it a phae trick? But maybe the trick would help her sisters with the change.

She reached down inside herself again, feeling for the glorious power of the tigress, but found only fleeting wisps, all that remained after her nightmare in the desert—

No, she’d sulked enough. This was her last chance to find her way back to what she was. Though the brief change had relieved some of the pressure inside her, she couldn’t be without the verita luna for much longer or she’d go crazy.

How had he done it? Her skin still tingled with the aftermath of the change, but more, she remembered the feeling of him pinned between her legs when she’d straddled him in both her forms. He was big and solid, formidable in a way she had not expected. She’d had no real dealings with the phae, not when they’d kept to themselves for so long, but she’d always thought they were wispy, languid, sort of metrosexual-y.

Not this one.

She let her gaze trace the expanse of his wide shoulders narrowing to lean hips. The sleeveless gray tunic revealed what she’d thought were Byzantine tattoos down both heavily muscled arms, but the ambient light coming from nowhere caught a faint pale gleam within his darker skin, and she realized the marks were scars.

Yelena knew scars. These must have hurt like hell. For a heartbeat, the detachment she’d cultivated since coming home wavered, her careful facade splitting as intricately as his skin. If he looked, he’d be able to see the ugly truths that had brought her to this place.... Well, not to this place in particular—where the hallway had widened into an intimidating expanse of soaring columns and flying buttresses, like the hallucinations of a first-year architecture student with a better understanding of grandiosity than gravity—but to this place in her life

Then she remembered where they were—the phaedrealii—where nothing was real, where every shifting surface was an illusion.

“Dreams,” she said suddenly.

Raze glanced back then shortened his stride to fall into step beside her. Despite his size, he moved with an almost animal elegance that reminded her of her own people as well as the more instinctual human warriors she had worked alongside. “What about them?”

“When I walked down to the lake, I said, ‘Perchance to dream.’”

His look sharpened. “You sought to drown yourself, to die?”

She scowled at him. “You know Shakespeare.”

“Along with the drunken wanderers, some poets have found their way to phaedrealii.” His hand dropped to the long knife tucked against his side. “Dreams and death are common paths to the court. Although only one leads out again.”

They had come to an arched doorway where a stairwell spiraled down. The mellow glow of the corridor did not reach past the first curve of the stair. Tiny will-o’-the-wisps drifted in the darkness, their firefly lights twinkling.

Yelena balked. “I’m not going any farther.”

The phae tilted his head. His dark hair was too short to fall into his eyes, but it had just enough length to start to curl, a quirky contrast to the unyielding slash of his high cheekbones and tight jaw. “Into death? Or dreams?”

“Neither.” She glowered; she wasn’t going to forgive him for that “drunken wanderer” crack. “Not until you tell me how you inspired the verita luna.”

When he crossed his arms, the open neck of his tunic gaped, revealing more scars descending over his collarbones to what she could see of his broad, smooth chest.

She swallowed, suddenly certain the scars were no glamour. How far down did the wounds go? The phae were known for their perilous beauty, but she sensed these marks were not meant to be alluring; quite the opposite, they were the sign of something very, very dangerous.

Still, against her better judgment, her fingers twitched to confirm the marks were real. That he was real.

He stared at her, his gray eyes hooded. “What did you dream?”

She snapped her gaze up from the taut line of his chest. “Excuse me?”

“At the portal, which should have been locked, you spoke of dreams. Dreams of what?”

She shifted, her bare feet making no sound, but uncomfortably aware of the rest of her bareness under his borrowed cloak. “What does it matter? Dreams don’t come true.”

“Here they may.” He paused, then his gaze sharpened. “The verita luna. You’ve lost the way. That’s why you wanted to know how I triggered it.”

“No, I—” The lie was bitter in her mouth, and she choked on it. Of all the places where a lie should have been easy. “It’s none of your business.”

“It is now.” He took a step toward her. “That is what brought you here. You are trapped, unable to change, just as we—” He cut himself off as he prowled behind her.

She whirled to face him again. The threatening heat of his big body made her already sensitized skin tingle. As a cat, she would have rubbed against him to release the static charge. A longing for her tigress arrowed through her, as piercing as the knife at his side. She could not admit he was right; to say it made it too true. She hedged, saying, “You think my answer is here.”

“The phaedrealii is rarely a place of answers.” When she opened her mouth to press him, he set one fingertip to her lips, silencing her. “Not that the sunlit realm is any better. But if ever you might find what you seek, it will be with me. Now come.”

His touch burned on her lower lip, and she found herself tilting toward him as if gravity had shifted. His scent—like a storm brewing in the boreal forests she called home, mist and mountain struck by lightning, wild and evergreen—lingered in her flared nostrils. The unintentional change she’d just gone through must have unsettled her more than she’d thought.

But when he turned, she followed. What other choice did she have?

* * *

Which was more dangerous: a tigress by the tail, or a tigress on his tail?

Raze’s spine tingled with awareness of the force of nature prowling behind him as they descended to his lair. She might be smaller than him at the moment, but the wild heat of her was the same in either of her forms. He didn’t doubt holding her would be risky whether her claws were feline or verbal.

But she’d tacitly confessed she’d lost the verita luna. Curiosity prickled more than the sense of danger, both sensations an irresistible lure. Just as well he was no cat or this curiosity might get him into trouble.

He glanced back, and the prickle in his spine shot out along every nerve as he found her golden-green gaze fixed on his backside. She instantly glanced away, but her pupils were blown wide and dark, not just from the low lighting in the stairwell but from something else, something more edgy.

The steep pitch of the stairs left his head level with her belly, and though his gray robe covered her now, his mind’s eye had no trouble seeing right through the rough weave to the memory of her bare curves. His previously loose trousers suddenly felt very constricting.

The werelings had wanted no part of the Iron Wars, and he’d had few dealings with them back when the phae walked the sunlit realm. He knew they were sensual creatures, prone to grand passions of the sort that had been the Undoing of the phaedrealii. Phae magic was destabilized by unruly emotion, and that unpredictable animal fever couldn’t be allowed to wreak havoc on his painfully wrought geasa. Not now, not when he was so close.

She was too close, which was why his pulse was racing as if the fever had already infected him.

“I suspect...” His voice sounded harsh, even to himself, so he cleared his throat and started again. “I suspect the depth of your longing for the verita luna brought you through the lake gate, even though it is locked.” The Queen had crafted the portal with a volatile new compound, which had no doubt exacerbated the already erratic qualities of a doorway woven from algae spores.

Yelena pursed her lips—her wide mouth was the same dusky-rose-red as the tips of her breasts had been; would her tender, inner flesh be as lush?—and he almost fumbled on the last stair.

“You started to say the phaedrealii couldn’t change either,” she mused. “Why not?”

Unbalanced by his misstep—and by his distraction at a simple pout—he spoke without thinking. “Because it would mean the end of us.”

To his relief, she was sidetracked when, triggered by his presence, light bloomed in his lair. Swirls of ammolite phosphorescence spiraled up the fluted columns of flowstone that supported the rough cavern rock far overhead. The glowing traceries branched out across the ceiling like spreading limbs and leaves, a tree of light.

Yelena’s dark pupils constricted in the sudden shine, revealing the wide pools of tigress-gold that shimmered with the iridescence around her. She turned in a slow circle, and in her wondering gaze, he saw anew the beauty of the quartz-studded walls only barely softened by the long falls of silky curtains. The lacy edges drifted on an imperceptible breeze that carried the faint mineral scent of wet stone.

A sudden wish to show her more—to point out the tiny spiderling phae constantly spinning the silk or to guide her deeper into the caverns to reveal the hot springs where he soaked away the agony of his scars—welled in him, a desire even more corrosive to his discipline than the blatant delights of her naked body.

He slammed a halt to the thought, as hard and jagged as the quartz. What in the deepest hells was he thinking? Sharing their magic had almost destroyed the phae. He couldn’t forget that, not even for one, impossible moment with a woman who reminded him of the world he’d lost.

He would have pulled his cloak more tightly around himself, but she was wearing it. He’d coax the spiderlings into weaving him another. Otherwise the tigress’s earthy perfume would haunt him forever.

“Come,” he said again. And this time he did not try to keep the harshness from his voice.

Her upper lip—ah, those lips would not be so easily purged from his memory either—curled at his brusque tone, but she followed him toward a small alcove carved with many sills and ledges holding boxes, bowls, bottles and bric-a-brac.

“A pack rat,” she muttered. “But a tidy one. You’d love my sisters’ matryoshki nesting dolls.”

That was the second time she’d mentioned her relatives. “You are close to your family?”

She watched while he chose a shallow obsidian bowl and various other items from the wall. “Very. Will that make it easier for me to get home?”

He shook his head as he mixed ingredients into a thin paste. “It doesn’t matter either way.” He scraped some of the ammolite from the wall. The dust shimmered like dragon scales as it fluttered into the black glass basin.

Her jaw thrust forward so furiously he could almost see her tigress whiskers bristling. “It matters to me.”

“I meant such connections won’t save you.”

“Oh.” Her face blanked like a mask. “I know that.”

Her bleak tone—a familiar echo to the emptiness inside him—made him pause as he studied her. She might try, but she could not rival him in detachment.

After all, he intended to sever the phaedrealii from the emotional enticements of the sunlit realm forever.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

She eyed him warily. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

He wanted to object that he hadn’t truly kissed her. But the surge of interest in his groin to correct that oversight told him more clearly than the court’s growing agitation that it was past time to lock down the geasa. “I will not kiss you.” He emphasized the words with the strength of a promise.

Even as he spoke, though, he knew all phae promises were lies.

Chapter Four

Slowly, Yelena raised her hand to his outstretched palm. Her hand looked small enclosed in his calloused fingers as he rotated her arm to slide back her sleeve and expose her inner wrist. He brushed the pad of his thumb over the paler skin, making her pulse leap. The rough cloak chafed at her sensitized skin—she imagined his big hands skimming over her—making her nipples peak.

His eyes narrowed and he withdrew his knife.

She stiffened, the sensual lull severed by the glint of steel, but his grip was too strong. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to mark you with a geas. The symbol will power a spell to reveal what traps you.”

She strained away, unease ramping up her heartbeat another notch at the thought of what the spell might reveal. Phae weren’t the only ones with secrets. “Werelings don’t do magic.”

“You are magic.”

“No, we just are.” She balled her hand into a fist.

His gray gaze turned harder than the stone around them as he reeled her closer, so close the scorching heat of his body surrounded her. “If you want to flee, then change. Right here in my arms. Slash me to ribbons and go.”

She froze again, though his nearness threatened to melt her. “You know I can’t.” She couldn’t find the verita luna and couldn’t leave until she found how he had uncovered it.

“Then let me do this.”

She noted he did not say “Trust me.” Just as well. Fear made her voice prickly even if she didn’t have her claws. “Will you ruin my skin like yours?”

His thumb danced over her pulse point again. “Never. That would be a sin not even the phae would condone. The mark will fade. But—” He glanced up and she caught a glimmer in his eye, like there-and-gone-again heat lightning high in a storm cloud. “Something tells me your heart is as scarred as my flesh.”

If he’d threatened to plunge his knife through her breastbone right then, she was too shocked to have stopped him. He thought he could see inside her? In comparison, the touch of the blade parting her skin was less invasive.

He traced an X so shallow she scarcely felt the sting before he set the knife aside. The X spiraled, as if stirred by an invisible force to leave a mark hardly larger than a thumbprint and nearly as elaborate. Raze scooped a fingerful of goop from the bowl and smoothed the ointment over the small wound.

She sucked in a breath at the sudden cold, but just as quickly, it mellowed into a pleasant warmth. Too pleasant. The sensation spread until her fingertips tingled. All those whiskeys she’d been downing at Beck’s bar hadn’t had this effect.

She clenched her fist until her nails—bitten shorter than her tigress would have approved—nipped at her palms. “Did you drug me?”

“That would seem unwise. An intoxicated tigress might be too much even for me to handle.”

From the amused gleam in his gray eyes, she thought he probably thought he was lying when he said he wasn’t sure he could handle her. She also guessed he had drugged her, or whatever the fairy equivalent was. The sparkling dust he’d scraped off the rock and spread into the wound made the geas seem to shift in her skin.... No, it was shifting. Her heartbeat soared for a moment as she hoped the change was the first sign of the verita luna, and she held her breath. But nothing else happened.

Raze tugged her closer to frown at the marking. “The spell reveals hidden barriers. It should show me what is blocking...” He angled his face to scowl into hers. “You.”

Distracted as she was by the simmering power in his grip—perhaps he would indeed be able to handle her if she slipped over the il-luna edge—she was slow to react to the accusation in his tone.

“Me?” She tugged halfheartedly at his grasp, but he only tightened his hold, and the strange zinging in her blood quickened.

“You blocked the verita luna, and you are keeping me from locking that portal.”

“What?” She sputtered, frustration pushing the fizz in her blood up into her throat. “I’m not getting in the way of your gate. I didn’t even know it was there. You think I’m blocking myself?”

“You fell into the phaedrealii because you can’t bear to see yourself revealed truly in the sunlit realm.”

The ring of steely truth—spoken by a lying fairy, no less—pushed her over the edge. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You werelings might have more refined senses, but you are as willfully obtuse as the humans. If you don’t want to see what is right in front of you, then...” He flicked open his fingers in a negligently graceful gesture, setting her loose as he walked toward a curtain of flowstone.

How dare he promise an answer and then turn away, jerking the answer above her head like a teasing toy?

She’d show him what came of tempting a tigress.

Shedding the confines of his borrowed cloak, she leapt at his back.

What she lacked without her cat’s strength and speed, she more than made up for in recklessness. His eyes widened in surprise as he spun to face her attack. If he’d had his knife, he might have had a chance. But she pounced with her legs ready to tangle over his, her fingers wrapping at his throat.

He stumbled under her weight, his back crashing into the stone curtain. His hands rose to wrap around her wrists. The geas he’d carved in her skin flared with sudden light that turned his stunned gray eyes to silver.

“What I see,” she hissed, “is a phae who cannot lie, skin-to-skin.”

She only meant to challenge him with that unfortunate-for-him quirk in phae nature, but her own nature welled up as she clung to him. As long as it had been since she changed, it had been longer still since she’d found someone to ease the equally vital wereling need for touch. Werelings were creatures of sensation, of emotion, but she’d quelled such simple longings to focus on her idealistic quest.

The Amur council had ruled her half sisters unfit, their control of the verita luna shift too tenuous to risk exposure in front of oblivious humans. Their exile was final. Unless Yelena could win them clemency. If she could show the council how she and other werelings like Beck were earning a place among humans, that might open a way for her sisters to walk free in either shape.

Instead, with her own loss of the verita luna, she was only proving the council’s case. Her sudden, inexplicable shift coming to the phae court was the closest she’d come to finding an answer for her problem.

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