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… And oh, once he was safely back in civilization, Queen Lorelei would come to regret her impulsive abduction! He might not choose to report this foolish incident to his emperor, but Gerard would know—and better yet, she would know!—that he had outwitted her and won this latest and most outrageous round of their endless, circling challenge.

Ah, how that defeat would burn! Savoring the image of Queen Lorelei’s furious chagrin—her bright blue eyes flashing with rage, her chest heaving—he wrapped the thick duvet from the bed around his shoulders. Very nearly smiling, he set both hands on the bottom of the window frame for balance, swung his legs through, and dropped lightly down towards that soft, waiting snow and freedom …

Only for the world around him to abruptly shift the instant he released the wooden window frame.

Instead of landing on cold, crunching snow, he landed on soft, sucking green moss. The building he’d just escaped was nowhere to be seen, and the duvet around his shoulders was suddenly far too hot for comfort.

At least five different types of pine trees speared upwards from the dark, shaded ground around him, mingled with beech and oak. All their scents combined with something deeper, wilder, and unfamiliar that made the back of his neck prickle with a warning of grave danger.

As he turned in a slow, defensive circle, the scent of fresh roses arrived to overwhelm them all.

“Finally!” Queen Lorelei landed on the moss before him in a shower of rainbow sparkles and clapped her hands as if he were an actor in a private play for her entertainment. Her smile was so infuriatingly condescending that he almost forgot how to breathe as he stared, open-mouthed, at her. “I knew you’d find your way here eventually if I waited long enough. Come along, now, General. No more dilly-dallying, if you please. We’re already running late for our adventure!”

5

It was astonishing just how easily Lorelei’s mood could be uplifted by that look on Gerard de Moireul’s face. The amount of incredulity and outrage expressed by an infinitesimal widening of that man’s eyes and a single pulse of a blood vessel in the left side of his forehead was enough to set her up for days with delight. She would be feasting on this memory for weeks to come!

But she knew she had to move fast, before he could recover his legendary equilibrium. Fortunately, she’d woken from her earlier nap with a brilliant new idea, and she had sent off an urgent missive in preparation just before her magical defenses had shrieked in warning that her prisoner was about to escape … a full quarter hour earlier than she had expected.

Even so. It was all going to work out perfectly.

“This way!” she said brightly and turned to skip through the soft green pathways between the trees.

“Careful,” those trees all whispered to her. They leaned close and rustled their warning to her through their needles and leaves with a tingling breeze that tickled her skin in warning. “Danger. Enemy. Close.”

Of course the Golden Beacon was her enemy. She’d known that for as long as she’d known of his existence. But Lorelei had no fear of anything he could do to her here in her own natural domain. If he had even half the common sense she credited him with …

There. Her lips curved into a smirk of satisfaction as she heard his hard, impatient footsteps catching up to her. She’d known he would be too wise to attempt any escape through these particular trees.

“Tell me where you’ve brought me, Your Majesty.” The inclusion of her title was a mere formality; he’d rapped out the demand in the tones of any longtime general demanding a report. That thick duvet he’d worn like an improbable cape was gone now, left behind as they’d left behind the chill of a winter afternoon to step into this warm, autumnal morning. He shifted out of the way of a curious copper birch just before its questing leaves could brush against his shoulder and aimed a quick, wary glance around them. “I’ve never in my life seen any woods so thick with magic.”

“Welcome to the fae realm, darling—and to the glorious kingdom of Efaelen, in particular.” Reaching out, she gently stroked those trailing, copper-tinged green leaves that he’d snubbed, humming over them in consolation. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the trees. As long as you don’t share your true name with anyone here, you’ll be perfectly safe. You are my guest, after all.”

“Your prisoner,” he ground out.

Goddess be praised, she really had gotten to him this time, hadn’t she?

“We-e-ell…” Drawing to a halt, Lorelei laid one hand on his closest broad shoulder and batted her eyelashes up at him, teasing rainbow glitter into the air—and onto his white shirt—with malicious intent. “Of course, it’s entirely up to you how you think of our relationship, my love, but you may wish to clear your head a bit before you make any firm decisions … or describe our situation to anyone else we meet. After all, if you’re my guest in this realm, then obviously, I couldn’t allow any harm to befall you. All of my fellow fae will understand that. But if you’re no more than my prisoner and an enemy to boot…?”

She lifted her shoulders in a careless, taunting shrug, allowing the implications to rest unspoken between them. The heat of his skin radiated through the cotton of his shirt into her palm like a furnace. She tried not to take note of it … but oh, Sylvana help her, that thin cotton was useless as a shield! Why couldn’t he have kept the duvet wrapped around him on their journey, for her sake? Lorelei could feel each tightly bunched muscle in his shoulder now so clearly that she had to bite the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from stepping back in self-preservation … or falling forward into madness.

Gerard didn’t shift away from her touch, but his amber eyes narrowed dangerously as he gazed down at her. “Do you even have a fixed plan at the moment, Your Majesty? Or is this all one more series of reckless leaps into the dark?”

“Darling! Don’t you wish you knew?” Laughing, Lorelei retrieved her hand and blew him a taunting kiss before dancing ahead through the welcoming trees, out of reach of any more too-perceptive questions. It took very little effort to persuade these old friends to lean even closer behind her, stretching their branches in his path.

As he slowed to manage the obstructions behind her, she braced herself for the next step of her challenge. Whether or not anyone else believed it, Lorelei always had a plan … but occasionally, it did include worryingly unreliable components.

If she were truly sensible, she would kill him now and be done with it. She’d held off seven years ago for fear of sparking war; now, that fate was on its way regardless of her actions here. None of the other generals under Emperor Otto’s control could lay claim to even half of the Golden Beacon’s strategic brilliance; none of them would be as lethal in the battles soon to come. But every instinct in her body whispered that she needed him alive and at her side—no, not at her side, of course, that was silly, but on their side, the side of all three Queens of Villainy and every vulnerable magical citizen they were desperate to protect.

Turning the Golden Beacon’s allegiance might sound like an impossible goal, but then, what kind of scandalous fae queen would Lorelei be if she didn’t ignore accepted rules and fight the battles that no one else even dared to attempt?

Without any fae blood in their veins, no full human could navigate the aetheric barrier between the fae and mortal realms. With Lorelei as his guide, though, Gerard would finally see for himself the true wonder and beauty of fae magic—and the vibrancy of the people his emperor wanted to erase from the mortal realm.

Better yet, when it came to changing sides in the battles to come, what could be better than for Gerard and Lorelei to bond in the face of shared peril and prove exactly how well they could work together? It was an idea stunning in its simplicity … even if it did mean encountering Efaelen’s immortal ruler for the first time in years.

Something twisted in Lorelei’s chest at that reminder. It wasn’t homesickness—how could it be, when these very trees had sheltered and guarded her since earliest childhood? But when she thought of everything that had changed since then …

Enough. Phoenixes didn’t roll around in the ashes of their past lives; no more would she. By the time she led her reluctant guest out of the woods into a gloriously bedecked and sunny field five minutes later, Lorelei was beaming as if she’d never for an instant doubted her welcome.