“This goes no further,” I whispered. “Don't touch me again, Killian. Not unless Raza gives us his blessing. This is wrong right now, and I refuse to be wrong when it comes to Raza.”
“But you will speak to him?” Killian asked.
“I will try.”
Chapter Twenty
I was lying awake in my bed later that night, watching the lime-streaked sky through the window of my chic hotel room, when my cell phone rang. I always brought it with me when I traveled in HR. And frankly, it was a hell of a lot more convenient than scrying.
“Yes?” I answered.
“Ambassador, this is Councilman Murdock.”
I sat up in bed.
“Yes, Councilman?”
“Could you come back to San Francisco? We've made some progress with the investigation.”
“So have we,” I said. “We'll be there in a few hours.”
“Oh, I was hoping you could travel over with twilight.”
“Twilight is hours away, Councilman,” I explained. “We're in Iceland at the moment.”
“Oh, I'm terribly sorry! It must be... oh hell, I don't know the time difference. It's 5:30 in the evening here.”
I glanced at the bedside clock, “1:30 AM in Iceland,” I laughed. “The sun also rises later here, dawn was around 9:30 this morning. So don't expect us for another eight hours or so.”
“Alright, thank you, Ambassador. My apologies again for waking you.”
“It's fine. Good night, Councilman,” I hung up the phone and looked to Cat. She had lifted her head to listen to my conversation. “We leave in the morning, go back to sleep.”
She laid her head back down but continued to watch me. I knew she could feel my unease. I had hoped to head back to Fairy right away. I needed to talk to Danu... and Raza. Though it was the later that kept me awake. I hadn't decided if I really wanted to bring this consort thing up with Raza. I mean, what would I say? 'Hey, honey, I know we've talked about this, and I said I didn't want to, but now I think I want to sleep with more men.'Yeah, that didn't sound so good. How did you bring up polyamory delicately? To a possessive dragon-djinn, no less?
I tossed and turned, trying to get past my moral hangups to the truth beneath. Was this right? Or was I letting my desires seduce me into doing something that would hurt the man I loved? Was it fair to Raza? I wasn't about to give him the same kind of leeway. That didn't seem fair to me. Ironically, a lot of fairy rules weren't fair. One of them concerned the consorts of queens. Fairies had a pretty open view on sex and relationships. Pretty much anything goes as long as everyone is consenting. Except for royals. When royalty married, the king gave up his right to have consorts. The queen could have as many as she liked, so long as her husband approved, but not the king. Why not? Children.
You knew, with absolute certainty, that any child born of a woman was hers. Yes, there were several ways to determine paternity, but they'd been falsified in the past... and had led to war. So now the rule was, queens only. Unless you felt the Call of Danu, which always resulted in a child, and therefore, the paternity wasn't in question. I may not be a queen, but I was a princess, and that was nearly as good. My children would be heirs to a throne.
Anyway, it made the issue of Raza wanting the same freedom moot. He couldn't have it. Period. That didn't stop me from feeling like I was trying to get away with something though. And what would Raza think? What would hefeelwhen I told him? The thought of hurting him made my stomach twist. But the thought of never being with Tiernan again... and never being with Killian ever... well those didn't feel so great either.
“Goddess damn it all!” I snarled and woke Cat, who had just started to fall back asleep.
She stared at me with obvious puka annoyance.
“Well, what do you think I should do?” I grumbled. “I bet you don't have these problems.”
Cat huffed a lock of fur out of her face, and tried, once again, to get to sleep.
“That's what I thought.”
Chapter Twenty-One
At dawn, we said goodbye to Hrafn, thanking him for our mini-vacay, then we twilighted over to the San Francisco Council House. They were waiting for us in the Council chambers, and this time there was enough room for my reduced Star's Guard to join us.
“Tell me,” I said as I took a seat.
That's when Tiernan and Bress walked in.
