Blade Dance (A Cold Iron Novel Book 4) Read online

  “Miach’s Druids aren’t like that. It is difficult for me to admit it, because I hate them, and I think I may always hate them because of Brigid, but Miach’s stone singer isn’t evil. And the archaeologist he is training, the one who is bound to Conn of the Hundred Battles, isn’t evil, either. The Prince breaks them in too fast and too hard. Power is always a terrifying responsibility, more so if you aren’t ready for it. When Druids come into their power, they receive the entire collected wisdom of their race, in the blink of an eye. Even before the fall, when the Druids trained their young up from birth to be ready for it, some of them went mad. More, probably, than they realized.”

  “Aren’t you worried this Druid will come back?”

  “Davin is well-protected now and the Fianna are on their guard. More, we have Garrett to cast a silence on the creature. If he comes back, we will handle him.” He tugged at the towel wrapped around her breasts. “I wanted to make love to you here the other night,” he said. “I almost didn’t answer Iobáth’s phone call.”

  “I was tempted to throw your phone out the window.”

  “You can’t tonight, because I left it at home. How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said. “But still a little fragile.”

  “Then I’ll treat you like a china doll, my beautiful berserker.”

  “Maybe not that fragile,” she said.

  “Let’s see if I can make you break apart, then.”

  He unwrapped her towel, bearing her to his sight. He knelt beside her and fanned her wet hair out over the velvet quilt, then kissed her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts, her belly, and finally the place that was already slick and aching for him. She felt cherished, wanted, loved, and—for the first time, really—free to enjoy what he was doing without shame.

  His tongue worked magic on her. It moved with a sinuous slowness that seduced her into pulling her knees up, heels on the edge of the bed, and finally, at his urging, let her palms knead her own breasts. Her hips came up off the bed as the first waves of her climax washed over her, and she did, at last, break into little pieces for him.

  He entered her slowly after that and rolled them onto their sides, her knee thrown over his hip, her face pressed to his chest. They found a gentle rocking rhythm together, and she resisted the impulse to run ahead of him into her own pleasure and stayed the course with him, waiting for his cock to twitch inside her and his movements to become frantic. When he finally came, she let herself go with him, and the warm rush deep inside her triggered a deeper and longer climax.

  “Now we need another shower,” she said.

  “That sounds fun,” he replied, nibbling at her ear.

  “You haven’t seen my shower. I can barely fit in it alone. There won’t be any fun, unless you want to pass back to your house naked and shower there.”

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “You first.”

  “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I’m not getting up until I have to. You first.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, then turned it over. “I thought you didn’t have any tattoos.”

  “I don’t.”

  She felt the bed dip as he reached over to turn the light on. “Yes, you do,” he said, lifting her arm up and showing her a mark just below her elbow, and just past where the Prince Consort had pushed her sleeves in the mound.

  She rubbed at it. “How did this get here?”

  “It’s Druid ink,” he said, reaching out to forestall her rubbing.

  Ann let out a sigh. “In the mound. The Prince said that we tripped a set of wards. There was ink on the floor. He wanted to examine my body for tattoos, but I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea.”

  “You should have let him,” said Finn, standing up, naked and beautiful.

  “Really?”

  “No, actually. We can deal with that ourselves. I’m going to shower. Then we’re going to pass home and Miach will figure out a way to get that off you.”

  “What does it do?” she asked.

  “I have no idea, but whatever it is, it comes off tonight.”

  “I won’t argue with that.”

  She slumped back on the bed and closed her eyes, listening to the water run in the next room. The floorboard creaked beside her bed and she opened her eyes.

  To find the Druid grinning down at her.

  In her house.

  He had an iron knife in his hand.

  A week ago, she would have frozen. She would have known fear. She was past that now. She didn’t think. She acted. She felt . . . glorious.

  She rolled off the bed with the preternatural speed of the berserker and grabbed the lamp off the table. It was heavy and made of glass and it felt good in her hand. Satisfying. Powerful. She swung it up into the Druid’s face before he had a chance to pass. The glass shattered. She didn’t cringe at the sound or the shower of tiny shards. It was music to her.

  And she didn’t give him time to react. The same speed and instincts that had become hers when she accepted her berserker nature were given full expression now. She slashed his neck with the fragment in her hand and watched the blood pour out, showering her velvet quilt and her carpet and her naked body.

  The water stopped running in the other room. Finn opened the door and emerged. The smile on his face faded when he saw the blood.

  “It isn’t mine,” she said.

  He looked down at the dead Druid.

  “Nice work. I take it your power came when called.”

  “Yup. Be careful, there’s glass in the carpet,” she said. “And on the bed.”

  “Don’t move.” He passed around the room, collecting his shoes where he had kicked them off and wrapping his arms around her and passing her back to his bedroom at the other end of Charlestown.

  He led her into the shower, which unlike hers was big enough for two, and he washed the blood off her and together they discovered that the Druid’s tattoo was already fading from her wrist.

  “His magic is dying with him,” said Finn. “It must have been a tracking geis. Small, simple, probably finite in duration. That’s why he had to come for you tonight, before it faded. He must have been waiting for you to be someplace unwarded.”

  He worked shampoo into her hair. It smelled like vanilla and oranges, and when someone came knocking at the door, he ignored it and they let the water run over them until her skin pruned.

  He shut off the water and they toweled off. “What will we do about the dead Druid in my house?” she asked.

  “Patrick and some of the boys can go and take care of that. And Garrett will go with them and ward your apartment, if you mean to keep it.”

  “Where would I live otherwise?”

  “Here?”

  “I’ll get fat from Mrs. Friary’s cooking,” she said.

  “I’ll make sure you get regular workouts.”

  “Will you teach me to fight with an ax?”

  “Only if you promise to keep it sharp,” he said, kissing her playfully.

  “I promise.”

  “Fae oaths are binding,” he warned, but the vulnerable look on his face told her he wanted a promise about more than axes.

  “I love you, Finn,” she said. “There’s never going to be anyone else for me.”

  “Nor for me,” he said.

  She could feel the frisson of magic in the air, knew that their promises had been as binding as any public ceremony, and she had no regrets.

  Downstairs the house was filling up and dishes were appearing on the sideboard. In the sunroom behind the parlor Miach was kneeling in front of little Davin, who sat in a wooden folding chair, holding his arms straight out in front of him, legs swinging, kicking the sorcerer in the absent way of children.

  “Stop kicking the mage, Davin,” scolded his father.

  Miach didn’t seem to hear. His concent
ration was fixed on a point in the air just above the child’s arms. A cloud of gray mist was forming, and as it grew darker, the marks on Davin’s arms grew paler, until the fog coalesced into a rope of ivy, solid, glossy, and real, and Miach snatched it out of the air.

  “Cool!” exclaimed Davin, leaping out of the chair.

  Miach strode to the fireplace and tossed the greenery onto the blaze.

  “Thank you,” said Finn.

  Ann tried not to show her surprise. Her lover had been incapable of thanking his son for saving her life a week ago, but now he was thanking his enemy. People did change. Sometimes it took losing everything once and nearly again, as Finn nearly had, but now the future stretched in front of them, full of promise.

  “That was easier than I expected,” admitted Miach, accepting a glass of champagne from a teenager who bore a distinct resemblance to him. Apparently the MacCecht young had been enlisted to help in the kitchen.

  “That’s because the Druid is dead,” said Finn. “Ann killed him.”

  The sorcerer’s eyebrows rose. “Did she now? Will tonight be an occasion for ink, then, Miss Phillips?”

  It felt right. A celebration of their victory, of family, of what she was going to build with Finn. “Yes. If we can put it somewhere that won’t upset the parents at school.”

  “The inner thigh is an excellent surface for a berserker’s mark,” suggested Miach.

  “No,” said Finn, immediately. “You’re not touching her thighs, inner or outer. An armband, just below the shoulder is discreet enough.”

  Miach gave Ann a questioning look.

  “How about just behind my shoulder? The school doesn’t have air conditioning, and I don’t want to be wearing long sleeves in June.”

  They ate dinner at an impossibly long table in the dining room, and Ann wondered how many pieces had been butted together beneath the tablecloth to make up that long board and where all the chairs had come from. There were too many dishes to count. Roast beef and roast turkey and a fresh ham and honeyed turnips and creamed spinach on the sideboards and silver bowls of mashed potatoes and warm bread and sauces passed up and down the table.

  There was a great deal of wine.

  Ann sat beside Finn at the center of the table, and Miach and his beautiful blond wife sat next to them, and the Fianna ate and talked and recounted old stories until finally Finn leaned across the table and asked Sean to recite a ballad for them.

  She did not understand the words, but the Fae language was musical, and some of the emotion reached her. Enough to realize that this was what the Prince should have shown her of their world. Family and stories and poetry. Her eyes were watering by the end.

  Dessert was cleared and Miach brought out his needle and his ink. The idea of Fae ink no longer seemed so outlandish to her. It appealed, even.

  “Something pretty,” said Finn to Miach, when the sorcerer suggested that Ann accept at least the gift of a small geis, a bracelet of ink around her wrist or ankle to help her channel her berserker gifts.

  “All right,” said Ann. “A bracelet.”

  “He can make it look like roses,” Finn said. “Or animals.”

  Ann rolled back her lover’s sleeve and touched the tattooed bracers on his arms. There was a tiny thread of thorns running through the pattern. She’d noticed it when she’d first seen them.

  “Like this,” she said. “Thorns.”

  “Perfect for a berserker,” said Miach. “Being a berserker is a gift, and a burden, just like leadership.”

  Ann drank a glass of whiskey, neat, and then when she saw how fine the point of the needle was, she drank another. Then Miach got to work.

  The tiny jabs hurt, one after the other, and her eyes watered, but she could feel the design taking life in her, focusing her power, and she knew it would be worth it. The lines Miach inked were surprisingly delicate, forming a slender filament of silver black around her wrist. When it was done, Finn held her wrist up to the light and pronounced, “Lovely,” and the Fianna drank a toast to their lady.

  After that, the drinking and songs went on late into the night, until the Lord and the Lady of the Fianna ordered everyone to find a bed or go home, and they climbed the stairs to theirs together, and Ann knew that with this man, she was finally home.

  About the Author

  D.L. McDERMOTT is an author and screenwriter whose credits include episodes of the animated series Tron: Uprising. Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Albedo One. The director of several award-winning short films, her most recent project, The Night Caller, aired on WNET Channel 13 and was featured on Ain’t It Cool News. She is married with one cat and divides her time between Los Angeles and Salem.

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/D-L-McDermott

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  Also by D. L. McDermott

  Cold Iron

  Silver Skin

  Stone Song

  Available from Pocket Star Books

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  Pocket Star Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Donna Thorland

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  First Pocket Star Books ebook edition September 2015

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  Interior design by Kyle Kabel

  Cover image by Masterfile

  ISBN 978-1-5011-0646-0

  Contents

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author