Magic Rises

boring. I want to have a good time, I want her to have a good time, and I want to make a memory I’ll enjoy remembering.”
    “Too much information.” Hugh’s one-night stands were the last thing on my need-to-know list.
    “You asked. But you’re not his one-night stand, Kate. Or are you?”
    I gave him my hard look.
    He grinned, a wolfish sharp grin. “You know what I’m looking for in a partner? A challenge.”
    “Good luck.”
    He laughed quietly, a raspy sound. “Perhaps we’re overthinking it. Maybe your Beast Lord is leaning toward her because he needs a wife and her father isn’t planning to destroy everything he stands for.”
    Ouch. “Is that what Roland wants to do?”
    Hugh sighed and surveyed the people below. “Look at them. They think this gathering is about them, their petty territorial clashes, their problems, their lusts, wants, and needs. They gorge themselves, squabble, and flash their fangs, and all the while they have no idea that it is all about you.”
    Thin ice. Proceed with extreme caution.
    He turned toward me, blue eyes luminescent. “There are thousands of shapeshifters. Kill a hundred and there are always more. But there hasn’t been another one like you for five thousand years. I would slaughter everyone in that room below for a shot at a single conversation with you.”
    The imaginary ice was cracking under my feet. He was taking this someplace very strange. “Laying it on kind of thick, don’t you think?”
    “I’m only stating facts.” Hugh leaned back on the rail. “Spar with me. You know you want to.”
    I leaned forward and pointed to my forehead. “Tell me if you see IDIOT written on there.”
    “Scared?”
    I shrugged. “Scared of what will happen after I ruin your face and Hibla starts a massacre.”
    “You have my word I won’t let you anywhere near my face.”
    “Let?”
    Hugh grinned.
    In another minute, I’d need a rag to mop up all of the smugness dripping off him. “Big talk for someone with a scar on his face.”
    “If you win, I’ll tell you how I got it.”
    I waved my hand at him. “That’s okay. I don’t want to know that badly.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Does it matter? So far you’ve ducked every question I asked.”
    “I didn’t think I had a fighting style,” Hugh said. “If it comes within range, I can kill it, but I thought what I did was a hodgepodge of techniques that worked. It’s not something one ponders: what is my special brand of violence? And then I saw you. Admit it, you felt it.”
    I did. I’d never before seen anyone who fought like me. We had been completely in sync, so perfectly that the memory of it was disturbing.
    He looked at me. “I want to experience it again. Spar with me.”
    “Sorry, but I’m done playing.”
    “Kate, come on.”
    “I mean it. No.”
    Hugh chuckled. “Mean and a tease.”
    Below us Curran stood up. Lorelei stood up, too. Now what? Curran walked across the hall and out through the door under the gallery. Lorelei followed him.
    “Would you like to spy on the lovebirds?” Hugh asked.
    “No.” I didn’t need any favors from him.
    “Having the right intelligence is the key to winning a war.”
    “I’m not at war.”
    “Of course you are, Kate. You’re at war with yourself. A part of you knows that there is more to life than being the Consort. A part of you is wondering if he is betraying you. They are going to talk, whether you listen in or not, and hearing them won’t change what they have to say.” He nodded to the left. “I’m going. Feel free to join me.”
    Something inside me snapped. I had to know. I didn’t trust the man I loved enough not to listen in. That said volumes about me and right then I didn’t care. “Fine.”
    Hugh walked to the nearest door and held it open. I walked through it into a long curving hallway. I could see a balcony at the end. A light breeze, cold and spiced with the salty dampness of the sea, swirled around me. The sky was a brilliant blue, and against this happy, sunlit turquoise, the pale rail of the balcony seemed to almost glow.
    A long rug stretched across the stone, swallowing our footsteps. Voices drifted up from below. I stopped just short of walking onto the balcony and propped myself against the wall.
    Hugh leaned against the opposite wall, watching me.
    “You don’t take good care of yourself,” Lorelei said.
    And she was ready and willing to help him with that.
    “You make so many sacrifices.”
    He