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Vicious though she could be, Geneviève was also the kindest-hearted person he knew. She simply expressed it in ways not everyone understood.
“I am grateful to be here. Alive. With you,” he said.
“Maybe we can pretend it’s another honeymoon,” Geneviève teased. “I’ve never been to Scotland.”
He had. He’d been to a lot of places in the years he was waiting to find her. Scotland was lovely, and the people were kind. “We will be traveling to sites of interest in search of this place where the weapon might be found.”
“How droll!” Iggy interjected as he entered the plane and looked around. “Are we your chaperones for this honeymoon of yours?”
The formerly dead man tried to link arms with Beatrice, who quirked her brow and softly said, “Piggy.”
Iggy withdrew with an apologetic word. “No insult meant.”
At his side, Geneviève giggled and told Eli, “She turned him into a pig at our wedding.”
The fact that his wife could laugh after having been tortured was remarkable, and Eli had the sudden urge to make her laughter last longer.
He glanced at Iggy. “Is she planning on removing the hex at some point? Or will he always resemble swine?”
Geneviève laughed again, and this time Beatrice smiled, too. It didn’t undo anything, but Eli was certain that he’d raze nations for the lightness glimmering now in his wife’s eyes. Anyone or anything that threatened her was his enemy, and the fae—for all their taciturn reputation—were exceptional at grudge-holding and at meting justice.
The man who had burned his wife’s skin would suffer before death.
Eli motioned Geneviève forward. As the airplane had only a few seats, they were all able to recline flat. And though Geneviève rarely needed much sleep, right now she looked weary. Not in a way that she’d admit, but in a way that said that she needed to shut down to make sense of the situation. She wasn’t keen on running from a fight, and even though they were running toward a weapon, it undoubtedly still felt like running to her.
“Rest.” He opened the overhead and withdrew a warm blanket. “We’ll fly through the night, and you might as well recharge.”
Geneviève gave him a look that said she knew what he was really saying—that she was drained, and he was offering her logical reasons to relax—but she didn’t argue. The trick to life with a woman like her was to offer answers so she was able to feel no slight to her warrior-side.
“We are safe in the air, bonbon,” he added. “But I will take first shift awake.”
She didn’t ask if he’d wake her, and that was proof enough that she needed more repose even than he’d known. Geneviève had spoken briefly of her ordeal, but both the mental and physical cost of torture were hard to quantify.
“I’ll be alert to any dangers,” he promised her.
Geneviève nodded.
By the time she was curled up, blankets piled over her, and drifting to sleep, the plane had reached cruising altitude. Eli tucked the blankets around her, and then he went to the front of the cabin where the Hexen-Master and thedraugrqueen were searching images of historic sites in Scotland.
Eli poured himself a drink, took a seat, and said, “Progress?”
“The likeliest sites are Highlands, Hebridean Islands, and Orkney Islands.” Beatrice pressed her lips together in a thinking expression that was very similar to Geneviève’s. “The archaeology is Neolithic, not recent.”
“The oldest site there is likely Skara Brae, older than Stonehenge, but not visited as often.” Eli thought back to the last time he was in Orkney. “A storm exposed it in the nineteenth century. The earth was ripped away from a knoll . . . and under that was the Neolithic village.”
Beatrice looked pensive, but she searched for information.
Iggy, still not as at ease with the world of technology, simply watched. Calmly, the Hexen Master said, “Chester killed me not long after that time. He was drunk on rage during those years.”
“There!” Beatrice said, sounding more like she was about to direct a battle than discovering an image online. “Rightthere!”
She jabbed at the screen.
An archival history of the discovery, early exploration, later looting, and eventual preservation of Skara Brae was detailed. Part of the exhibit was a series of photographs, and in one was a familiar face.
One of the early archaeologists on the site was, without a doubt, Chester.
“He was here in 1865,” Beatrice pronounced. “The weapon isthere.It must be.”
