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The queen had taught her so much, so many skills that she now employed to successfully thwart her mother’s attempts to gain control over her again. She owed the queen everything.
“Can you shift to your fae form?”
Lorelei frowned. She recognized the healer’s voice, but it seemed impossible. Rosamunde? You’re the one tending to me?
Yes, I’m here.
But you’re in danger. You’re only protected in Ferrenden Peace? What if Margetta finds you and why did you come here in the first place?
Rosamunde chuckled. So many questions, child.
Lorelei was an adult, ninety years in the realm world. But Rosamunde’s age was as yet unknown, well over a thousand years, so Lorelei supposed the queen had cause to address her as she would a child. In realm-terms, Lorelei was still very young.
She tried to lift her head, but couldn’t. She was so weak and she still hurt.
But she would heal so much faster in her fae form.
She’d also create a new level of pain when she went through the transformation, but it couldn’t be helped. She had more to consider here than her own comfort level. For one, the queen was always in danger once she left her kingdom, and for another Lorelei still had a job to do in protecting Mastyr Seth.
I’ll shift now.
Good. Just remain in this position, reclining on my lap.
No problem.
She squeezed her eyes shut, accessed her shifting vibration, and let it flow, focusing on the fae form she’d been born with so many decades ago.
But the pain!
She cursed mentally, making use of every foul word she’d ever heard in the course of her life. She hoped she didn’t path them to Rosamunde, but even if she had, she wasn’t sure she cared.
In the end, she blacked out.
When she woke up, Queen Rosamunde had left and Lorelei had been moved to a different room altogether. She snuggled beneath a warm comforter with a wood fire blazing in the stone fireplace across from the foot of the bed. She turned onto her side and glanced out the window. She could see that night had become day and the snow had started to fall once more. Her internal clock told her it was late afternoon. She had slept a long time.
Everything was quiet, except that she heard Debussy’s Clair de Lune coming from the living room. She smiled. Seth was playing the piano, expertly, beautifully. He lived a rich life, full of
divergent interests, and in this way he seemed so different from the other mastyrs. He loved music, books, mathematics, and living in the mountains.
She shivered suddenly, a sensation that had nothing to do with a chill in the air, but with a powerful memory, something she would never forget, of the first time she’d ever laid eyes on the Mastyr of Walvashorr.
Two months ago, the day after Mastyr Quinlan and Batya left Ferrenden Peace on the queen’s orders, Lorelei had been walking along the third story catwalk that looked down into the Queen’s receiving room.
The upper stories of the stone castle enjoyed a flow of heat from the lower fireplaces so she’d gone exploring. She hadn’t known that Mastyr Seth had stayed over an extra night.
But she’d entered a short hall with a secrecy screen that allowed her to see into what proved to be Mastyr Seth’s bedroom.
He had the large balcony doors flung wide open so that fresh, cold air blew through the room. Though night hadn’t yet fallen, the northern light flooded the room without the dangerous direct rays that would harm vampires and to a lesser degree fae and other realm-folk.
He wore his long, thick brown hair in the Guardsman’s woven clasp, but little else. Just black work-out shorts and a white tank top hanging from his waistband. He used the shirt occasionally to wipe sweat off his forehead.
She watched mesmerized as he dropped lithely to the floor and on the tips of his fingers performed at least a hundred quick push-ups, then shifted to his buttocks and crunched out at least as many sit-ups. He was leaner than Quinlan b
y a lot, but his muscles had a ripped, heavier look.
Desire for him had begun like a small wave that got bigger and bigger, finally swelling over her until she felt dizzy. She’d never had so powerful a reaction to a man before, of any species, in the whole course of her adult life. The need to touch him, to connect physically, became almost a compulsion, something more wolf than fae.
Had she been in wolf form, she might have charged into the room and bumped him with her nose, then her body, just to make contact.
