Page 99 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“You know how your father wishes us to deal with those who kill our own,” Tacker rumbled.
Fletch’s fangs gleamed in the green haze. “We’ll piss on their decaying bones.”
They both moved toward us.
Pete shoved me behind him, prepared to fight for my life again.
Not that it was necessary.
Luminescent stone exploded everywhere as an arm—afemininearm—from another cavern punched through the wall beside us. Screaming, I covered my eyes, shielded my jugular from ricocheting shrapnel. Pete forced me to the ground, his body my fortress. I felt the soft scruff of his beard on my forehead as I peered around his shoulder at the naked beyn slinking through the hole in the wall.
She was tall and buxom with flowing black hair and a gorgeous, round-featured face. Water cascaded off the curves of luscious breasts and an ass superstar, Jessica Hernandez, would envy. Had she just come from a swim?
“Christ!” Pete urged me flatter to the ground. “Cover your ears, Shorty.”
I clapped hands to ears without question.
“Fear not, noble harbinger,” a voice chimed through my fingers. I stared in awe as the dripping enchantress turned a set of earthy-green eyes on me. She smiled, and I instantly loved her. Every inch of her.
Pete and the Fomorians gawped as she sashayed between them.
“I only enthrall sinners. In saving each other, you’ve proven yourselves worthy of not just freedom, but also my help.”
Facing the thunderstruck Fomorians, she sang a trilling note until ensorcellment glazed their gazes, then took one docile hand from each. “You feyrs, however—you’ll serve me all the days of your lives.” She traced a finger across Tacker’s collarbone. “Won’t you?”
As if struck by Cupid’s arrow, he murmured, “Yes, my nymph.”
“Yes,” Fletch echoed, blinking like a robot with damaged system files.
The beyn led the fearsome Fomorians toward the deeper caverns, leashed like puppies. Never to feel the spray of the sea again.
Before she steered them out of sight, the ethereal beauty turned back to flash me one last smile. “If all the other fae I’d met in my life were anything like you, I’d have been friendlier to them, too.”
All my breath rushed out of me, chills crawling up my spine. “You’rethe water beetle?”
“I’m a Nixie. I live in the grotto.” She winked at me, all sauce and spice. “But sometimes a change of skin is nice.”
Being able to morph into a bug would certainly solve a lot of my problems.
The Nixie sighed. “Pity you’re so pure-hearted, sweet Danann. I’d quite enjoy your company in my lair. Our conversation would never run dry.”
I supposed good girl talk was hard to come by within the confines of a cave. “Thanks?”
“Word of advice.” Her glittering eyes grazed Pete, whose cheeks had flushed. From the heat of the scuffle or at just the sight of the naked Nixie, I couldn’t say. “Stay with this one. There’s something unique in his sacrifice for you.”
Huh?
With a flourish of her hand, the Nixie revealed the foggy knot of Pete’s tethers. She unbound them with a song of farewell, strutting away with her new chattels.
Pete’s hard breaths of relief pressed into my back as a shell of freed shadow tethers undulated about me.
Why the hell was I comforted by that?
Eighteen
PeteandIdidn’tspeak as we trudged the forest floor together, Sionna at our heels. Maybe neither of us felt the need to say I was coming with him, my independent survival in that brutal world a big question mark, or maybe we were shell-shocked.
When we finally reached the road, Pete barked for Bob, then plopped to the ground. He waited there, silent, for nearly twenty minutes before a braying donkey leading a wagon clopped into view.
