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I needed to get help but when I tried to call, I found that my throat had closed completely. Panic took me and I forgot I was angry with my husband—he might be the only one who could save me! And though I couldn’t call him with my voice, I hoped he could still hear me when I “thought loudly” as he put it.
“Help! Liath, help me!” I thought-shouted. “Help, I can’t breathe!”
Blackness was eating my vision by that time and I was just beginning to sink beneath the water when the door to the bathing room burst open and Liath appeared. His bronze eyes were wide with worry and he was wearing nothing but his sleeping trousers.
“Little bird?” He scooped me out of the bath, getting water everywhere and looked down at me frantically. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and gestured weakly to my throat.
“Can’t…breathe!”
“Hang on,” Liath told me. “I’ve got you, baby. I’m going to help you—I swear it.”
He rushed with me to the bed chamber and laid me, soaking and naked as I was, full length on the bed. Then he grabbed his moonstone dagger—which was never far from him—and slit his palm with its silver blade.
He placed his big hand over my throat and I felt the warm blood sliding down my neck as he whispered words of opening, clearing, cleansing, healing…
Slowly my throat began to open. At last I was able to take a huge, whooping gasp of air, filling my lungs until I thought they might burst.
“Alira? Sweetheart?” Liath knelt beside me on the damp bed, his bronze eyes worried. “Are you all right?”
“I…I couldn’t breathe!” My voice came out in a hoarse, choked sob and then I was crying—tears pouring down my cheeks because I had come that close to dying and I knew it. If Liath hadn’t been able to hear me, or if he had ignored my call for help because we were mad at each other—
“I would never ignore you, little bird. Never!” he growled fiercely. Gathering me into his lap, he cradled me close and stroked my trembling shoulders. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “All right now—I’ve got you, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I cried and buried my face in his broad chest as the fear slowly left me. Safe—I was safe in his arms, I told myself. Everything was going to be all right now that my husband was holding me and protecting me.
“I’ve only ever wanted to hold and protect you, little bird,” he murmured. “And…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Quill and I were friends. I should have—I admit it.”
I looked up at him.
“Did you only marry me because you felt sorry for me? Or out of a sense of duty to your best friend?”
“No, of course not!” Liath said fiercely. He stroked the damp hair away from my face and looked down at me intently. “I asked to marry you because I fell in love with you, little bird,” he murmured. “When I saw how brave you were—how you never let anyone break you, no matter how fucking cruel your cousins were. I admired your courage. And when I told Stableforth what I was considering, he was the one who researched your background and found the prophesies about one with the blood of both Courts uniting them again.”
I bit my lip.
“But…you didn’t just want me because you thought I was the one those prophesies were talking about? Because I don’t think I am, Liath.”
“I don’t know,” he remarked thoughtfully. “You were doing magic in the Mortal Realm today—I’ve never seen a Fae able to pull that off. At least, not in a building with that much iron in it.”
“I only did what I always did—I just reached for the sparks and used them,” I protested.
“Maybe you have some Mortal blood somewhere in the mix too,” he remarked. “Under special circumstances—like what happened to your ancestress, Talandra—a Fae child may have more than one father, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” I admitted. “But…is that why you wanted me? For my magic?”
“I told you, I wanted you—want you—because I fell in love with your beauty and your courage,” Liath said firmly. “I don’t fucking want anyone else but you, baby. And no, I’m not thinking of getting rid of you just because we haven’t consummated our Joining yet.”
I bit my lip, realizing that he must have heard the thoughts I’d been thinking during the banquet, when I had drunk all that “special wine” his Great Aunt Acosta had given me…
“Special wine?” Liath asked, frowning. His face grew dark. “Gods, the mad old bat!”
“What? What is it?” I exclaimed, looking up at him.
“I think I know what happened to you just now.”
Liath helped me sit up and reached for his dagger again, which he had left on the nightstand. He pricked his finger and did a warming spell first, since I was still damp and shivering. Then, once I was all dry and the bed was as well, he did a summoning.
