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Anger narrowed Colonel Bennet’s dark eyes. A muscle in his square jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. He frowned at Liliana for a moment, then he seemed to grow larger, crowding the tiny space in the examination room.
Doctor Nudd swallowed and backed his lanky body as far as he could into a corner.
The prince didn’t shift to his Fae form, but dark power flowed up from the earth. Silent snakes of smoke in a dozen shades of green so dark they were nearly black crawled around his body until he glowed with an aura of flickering shadow. A ghost of silver spikes wreathed his head like a white flame crown.
Doctor Nudd went down on one knee.
Siobhan’s eyes got very large. If she hadn’t known before what Colonel Bennet was, she did now. She lifted her tiny chin in defiance, but she pulled the blankets around herself more tightly as the unseelie Fae prince turned his full attention on her.
Then the towering prince wreathed in the aura of his power surprised them both. He gave Siobhan a very slight, minimal bow. “I am in your debt.”
Siobhan swallowed and licked her lips. “The debt is paid.”
He shook his head. “Your debt to my Merlin is paid. However, as the spider-kin reminds me, I am personally indebted to you for shielding one of mine with your life.” His lips twisted as if he didn’t like the way the next words tasted. “I owe you a favor.”
The sprite in human form glanced at Liliana, blue eyes huge. A favor from a Sidhe prince was priceless. Siobhan could ask for virtually anything, and the prince would be required by his honor to use his considerable power to grant her request.
Liliana reached over and squeezed the sprite’s hand. Siobhan had earned it.
“What would you ask of me?” the prince said.
Siobhan handed her cup of hot cocoa to Liliana. She straightened her back and looked up at the prince wreathed in shadows of power.
His eyes glimmered red like hot coals in the dark glow of his power, the only sign of anger he showed.
“Look, just…just keep him safe,” Siobhan said. “I don’t want you to give me anything for watching Nudd’s back. Just, if he’s one of yours, then, watch out for him, yeah?”
Some of the red fire from the prince’s eyes faded as his brows pinched in confusion. “Why?” he asked the sprite, towering over her. “Why would a seelie Fae use a prince’s favor to protect a goblin?”
Siobhan’s small body tensed as if preparing to run or defend herself. “Because I don’t let any feckin’ court or any royal toffs tell me who my friends are.” Her faint Irish accent went thick. She trembled under the blanket, but she still spat the words in the face of the unseelie prince glowing with raw power.
Liliana realized that the people she had come to call friends shared one trait. They were all imbued with gargantuan amounts of courage.
The dark prince blinked and took a half step back, stoic face completely failing to hide his surprise. His dark power faded to a less intimidating presence. “Nudd has the full protection of earth and fire.” He bowed a little more deeply to the sprite. “But the debt remains. He was mine to protect already.”
It was Siobhan’s turn to look surprised. “Only a land-bonded Sidhe can offer the…” She swallowed. “You rule both earth and fire?”
The prince shrugged one shoulder minutely. “Within the borders of Fort Liberty, but my influence has been spreading. Some of Fayetteville and the wilderness in this area is mine now as well. I cannot protect him beyond my borders, but you can, and I see now that you will. For that alone, I would be in your debt.”
Siobhan scratched at the dried blood in her short red hair. “I’ve lived nearly two centuries, and no royal of any court has ever said a word to me, much less offered me a favor.”
“One has now,” the prince told her. The ice thawed from his voice, and the red disappeared from his eyes. “It was honorably earned, and it would please me to grant it.”
“If I may, sir?” Doctor Nudd said.
Alexander Bennet nodded permission for the goblin to speak.
Doctor Nudd directed his words to Siobhan. “Colonel Bennet knows about Pete, what he is, and he knows about me taking care of a Celtic wolf since he was a boy. In spite of that, he still offered me a place, and he treats Pete like one of us, even though he doesn’t know what the Colonel is. He’s not cruel and capricious like the Goblin King or Queen Mab. In the nine years since the land chose him, I have never regretted pledging my fealty.”
The prince placed a hand, with its attendant living shadow, on the kneeling goblin’s shoulder with an expression of pride. Some of the shadow of raw Green played over Doctor Nudd’s skin and sank in.
Doctor Nudd shivered. His face, often scrunched with worry, smoothed into an expression of peace that made him look centuries younger.
The edge of that shadow brushed the little sprite where Nudd’s hand rested on her knee.
Siobhan’s face turned speculative, looking down at the connection. “Can I carry my Kel-Tec on base?”
Colonel Bennet’s lip quirked slightly at one corner. “Is that how you would use your favor?”
