Shadows and Light

when he’d seen no further sign of them over the winter months. Or else they’d come back. If that were true, what could he say that he hadn’t already said to make the Fae Ms-ten and heed his warnings? If they wouldn’t listen to him, the Bard, was there anyone besides the Lightbringer and the Huntress whom the Fae wouldn’t dare ignore?
    There was one. He’d have to think about that. Think hard about it. But right now ...
    He turned his head and looked at Lyrra, who lay with her back to him. As a Fae lover, he could simply have left, offering to return when and if she was ready to welcome him back to her bed. As the Bard, he could have had a heated argument with the Muse about who was right and who was wrong back at the Old Place. As a husband, he had the bad feeling that he should apologize—except he couldn’t figure out what he should be apologizing for.
    “I would have stayed behind you if I could have,” he said quietly. “I truly wasn’t sure where you’d gone, and I was past the game trail so fast it wasn’t safe to turn back.”
    “Stayed behind me,” Lyrra muttered.
    Aiden winced at the anger in her voice.
    She rolled over and propped herself on one elbow to look down at him. “Stayed behind so that if those creatures caught up to us they would have swarmed over you instead of me.”
    “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he protested. Not consciously, anyway.
    “We can’t afford to lose the Bard.”
    He focused on the ceiling again, not quite sure why her words stung so much. “There would be another to take my place.”
    “Not for me,” she said quietly. She raised one hand, rested it on his chest just over his heart. “One day I’
    ll have the words to tell you how it felt to reach the safety of sunlight and realize you weren’t there. One day I’ll tell you how it pained my heart to stand alone for those moments, not knowing if you were coming back to me. One day. But not tonight.”
    She kissed him in a way that made him forget every song he ever knew. He reached for her, then hesitated. Pulled away enough to catch his breath. “Lyrra ...”
    She smiled at him; then she released the glamour magic to reveal her true face, the feral beauty of the Fae. Suddenly, she seemed wild and strange, something that frightened him a little and excited him even more.
    “ ‘Tis a custom between husbands and wives,” she said, stretching out over him. “We quarreled today, did we not?”
    “We did?” He couldn’t remember, not while he was staring into her woodland eyes.
    “We did,” she replied. “And when a husband and wife quarrel, they have to make up.”

    “They do?”
    “They do.” She nipped his chin. “So we’re going to make up, and you’re going to prove you came to no harm.”
    He wondered briefly if it was the danger they’d faced in the Old Place or the fact that he still wore the glamour that gave his face the illusion of being human that made her more aggressive and demanding.
    Then she kissed him and he didn’t care what the reason was.
    “Let’s try not to break the bed,” he gasped.
    She kissed him again, and he didn’t care about that either.

Chapter Six
    Liam hesitated for a moment, then knocked on his mother’s morning room door. Entering the room, he saw her at her small desk, writing in that hurried yet careful way she had.
    “A moment, if you please, Liam,” she said distractedly.
    “Of course.”
    He smiled as he wandered around the room while she finished her letter. His father had always been furiously insulted if Elinore didn’t stop whatever she was doing to give him her total and immediate attention. There’d been some fierce arguments about the value of her work for the village and the estate compared to properly sympathizing with her husband about the inadequate shine of his boots. He knew which his father had considered more important.
    Elinore set aside her pen, then turned in her chair to smile at him.
    She was more relaxed than he’d seen her in a very long time, and she smiled at him a lot lately—ever since he’d gone to the Old Place to introduce himself to the witches there.
    “ I met Nuala while I was out riding today .”
    “Yes?”
    “She told me you called at the Old Place yesterday. And she gently suggested that I remain here at the estate. She said anyone who intended to bang heads with Breanna deserved a sympathetic ear waiting for him when he got home.“
    He’d mumbled something to the effect that they