~ Prelude ~
AAIBHE, QUEEN OF the Seelie Fae, stood by her window overlooking the rose gardens of her palace on the Seelie Fae’s Isle of Tir.
Morgan LeBlanc stood behind her, resting his chin on her fair head. She pressed back against him and whispered, “You must go.”
He turned her to him and held her chin. “My love, I can’t tell you enough what you are to me, like one of those rare blooms in your garden, exotic and beyond description.” He frowned and asked, “And why must I go?”
Sadness filled her mind, but when he touched her, he made her feel as though they could come through this together. She rubbed her head against him, torn by what she felt and what she knew she had to do.
She could see he sensed her indecision as he whispered, “Let me stay, just a bit longer.”
He was so easy to love.
An exquisite warrior, noble of heart and character.
She had not wanted to love him.
Love brought loss, and loss brought such pain …
He was the Milesian leader, and the Council would be horrified at such a union. The Queen of the Seelie Fae and the leader of the Milesians?
All her world would be shocked into censuring her. How could she lead them through the dark times ahead if they did not trust her decision-making? And there would be dark times ahead.
Indeed, but how could she deny herself? She had been too lonely too long, and he … was superb in every imaginable way.
“You must go now,” she said softly.
His answer was to embrace her and kiss her long and hard, growling when he came away from that kiss to say, “I leave for you, because you ask it, but I—we—shan’t be denied much longer.”
He was upset, and he had a right, but they were from opposing forces politically. She had to be careful, as did he, though he denied it. He had told her that he and his son Chance would lead their people, no matter who they took as their lifelong mates. He had pointed out the Milesians were very pleased with Chance’s union with Princess Royce. So why not theirs?
She had said, “Because I am a queen, and you are, in essence, their king.”
She would have to be wise for them both. She smiled at him and touched his face. “I shall come to you as soon as I may.”
“If you don’t, I will come for you—mark me in this, Aaibhe!”
He was a dominant male, equal in strength to her, and was, she thought, just what she needed. Although her subjects loved her, and some even desired her, they were still her subjects who owed her deference and to whom she owed wise rulership. As a queen she knew and ably fulfilled her duties, but as a woman, at times she grew tired, so tired of forever leading, forever making decisions that affected her entire Realm as well as the Human Realm.
She smiled when he growled and mumbled, and then he was gone.
Aaibhe turned once more to contemplate without seeing the rare blooms he spoke of just outside her windows. They were like her feelings for Morgan—riotous, undeniably beautiful, and dangerous.
She had not felt this way in well over a thousand years.
The future, she knew, was edged in darkness. A rim of fire framed what she had seen, threatening not only her relationship with Morgan but all life, not only human life, which was forever at risk, but Seelie Fae life. She knew her Druid and Fios team would have to help her contain it once again; war seemed inevitable.
She would need her best Royals, her best Druids, and their lives would most surely be forfeit for the slightest mistake.
She had no way of knowing, no way of seeing the outcome.
Her sight, which only gave glimpses of possible events, was just that, a glimpse here and there, with no definitive answers.
Time travel, which had been denied to all other Fae in the last one hundred years and limited even to her, might have allowed her to go in and tweak events to better serve both the Fae and the Human Realms, but even that was not to be.
Perhaps it had been the indiscriminate travel into time that had brought matters to such a pass?
A knock sounded at her door, and she turned to welcome one of her youngest warrior princes, Trevor.
He bowed his head and then respectfully stood, tall, erect, muscular, and more a warrior today than he had been only a few weeks ago. His flaxen hair fell about in loose curls to his shoulders, and as he raised his head, their eyes met.
She could see he was still angry.
He looked so very much like his older brother, Danté, she thought as she stared into his deep golden eyes, but he was different, so very different. He still had to grow and learn.
Discontent glinted in the recesses of his Seelie eyes, but something else lay in their recesses, a sadness that went deep.
Trevor of Lugh must not be allowed to fall into bitterness, she thought. Pampering him wasn’t something she had the time to do any longer, nor could she waste any time teaching him what eventually he would learn. He was going to have to absorb everything he needed to know in one quick lesson.
“Trevor, sit with me.” She waved one elegant hand towards a high-backed chair, sat first, and waited.
He hesitated but did what she asked. She could see he didn’t want to. She could see he wasn’t just angry but discontented.
“Tell me,” she said, “why you are not satisfied with the results of your mission. After all, Pestale has been stopped, and in a manner of speaking he is being punished—denied all he had strived to accomplish.”
“Stopped? For now, but not punished. He killed Lana … and what of the humans he killed?” Trevor shook his head. “In my humble opinion, my Que