Page 66 of Demure
“Yeah, you didn’t notice before when I was naked?” Sierra asked incredulously.
Aodhan reached his hand down to touch her thigh, clearly surprised by the smooth skin he felt there. “No. When I’m with you…I can’t explain it, but it's your soul that I am attracted to, not your body. I’m too distracted by who you are as a person to notice something trivial like your skin.”
Sierra turned to look at Aodhan, her eyebrows raised.
“I mean, I find your body beautiful as well, but beauty is a subjective thing. You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me in the way you speak, think, and breathe. I am happy that you are more comfortable with the way you look now, but I am attracted to you no matter your appearance.”
Sierra felt herself blushing, “I-I’m flattered.”
Aodhan placed a kiss on the top of her head. “Now tell me what happened next.”
Sierra continued the story, telling Aodhan all about the dungeon, as well as her time with Slaine. Eventually, she got to the part where Aislan rescued her and their trek through the jungle.
“And now, I’m here,” she finished, with a fake flourish.
Aodhan was silent for a few minutes, clearly taking in everything she had said, his arm running a languid path up and down her arm. “I know this might be hard for you, but can you tell me exactly what ritual my father was performing? I’m trying to figure out what prophecy he thinks he’s fulfilling.”
“He, uh, took some of my blood, twice, while I wastied down to this stone podium.” Aodhan’s grip on Sierra’s arm grew tight—so tight that Sierra had to wrap her own hand around his to get him to loosen his grip. “It’s okay, I’m okay, I survived, and I’m here,” she whispered, to calm Aodhan.
“I know,” he said at last. “I just can’t believe he thought he could hurt you and get away with it.”
“You have to remember, Aodhan, that not everyone knows how you feel about me.”
Aodhan opened his mouth to argue, then quickly shut it again, and Sierra knew she was right.
As if someone had been listening from the other side of the door for a good time to intervene, Aodhan and Sierra were interrupted by knocking.
“Isteach,” Aodhan called, and Braan poked his head in the door.
“While I’m glad to see you two catching up, we really do need to plan what we are going to do next.”
“You’re right,” Aodhan agreed. “Give us a moment to get dressed and we will be right out.”
Braan closed the door. “I’m timing you, so just one minute is all you get,” he called through the closed door, clearly reading both Sierra and Aodhan’s minds, both of which were currently contemplating if they could have a second round before it was time to join the others.
“We will have more time for that later, I promise,” Aodhan said as he stood from the bed and pulled on a shirt, before heading to the closet and tossing some leggings to Sierra. “Those will probably be a bit big, but I’d rather my friends not see you in just that shirt.”
Sierra slid on the pants, which, indeed, would barely stay on. Crossing the room, she peeked into the closet until she found a pair of pants with laces similar to what Aodhan was wearing. She eased the chord from the pants, tying it around the top of the pants as a makeshift belt to keep her pants in place.
“This will hold for now, but it probably won’t work for when we travel from here.”
Aodhan nodded, clasping her hand in his and heading for the door. “We will cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?” Opening the door, the two of them stepped into the common room to join the others.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Ivote we imprison Conlan and let him see how he likes it,” Braan suggests to the groans of Aodhan and Aislan.
“I already told you it won’t be that easy. Someone would let him out; all ofFuinseogloves him,” Aodhan argued.
“I vote we visit the other provinces and get him kicked out of the council, that will lower his influence,” Aislan suggested.
“We don’t have the time to journey to 12 different provinces and convince them to vote out Conlan. We would need 7 of the 13 to side with us to get a majority vote.” Braan rubbed his chin, while staring at the map on the table.
After a quick catch-up, the five of them immediately began debating strategies for what they should do next and how they could get Sierra back to the human world. Unfortunately, the entrance to the human world was in the forest on land that belonged toFuinseog, though it was likely they could go throughDarach,a neighboring province, to get there without being detected by Conlan. The problem was that Conlan likely had the entrance guarded 24/7, knowing Sierra would need to use it at some point. Additionally, leaving wouldn’t really solve the problem, because as long as Conlan lived, he had unlimited resources to come after Sierra again and again, and there was no way she andAodhan could always be on their guard. Plus, Sierra didn’t like the idea of putting the innocent lives of her family and coworkers at risk by returning to her former life without resolving the problem completely.
The problem was that they either had to get rid of Conlan, or at least get him voted off the panel that made decisions for Sidhe, because then someone else could try and convince the panel that keeping a human prisoner wouldn’t solve their problem. They could also try to solve the diminishing magic problem, but Aodhan was convinced that there was no problem—it was simply time and interbreeding taking its course—which is why he preferred not to try that route since it wasn’t an immediate solution.
Also, Sierra wasn’t really sure what was waiting for her in the human world at this point. She’d been gone for over a week, and the police had been contacted, meaning her sudden reappearance would raise questions she couldn’t answer. Not to mention that she was behind in her classes now and would likely spend a month trying to get her master’s back on track.
