The House Of Gaian

Mother’s children.”
    “If that’s the case, maybe the Inquisitors did us a favor,” Liam said. “Their obsession to eliminate anything and anyone who would prevent men from ruling with impunity forced the rest of us to work together again. The Fae are remembering their place in the world and humans are remembering that there are others with whom we have to share the world.” He paused. “What has the House of Gaian learned?”
    “That we, too, need to be more present in the world,” Selena replied. Getting to the subject she wanted to discuss with him wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Well, she wasn’t that good at being subtle, so why try? “I wanted to talk to you about your sister.”
    Alarm flashed over Liam’s face before he regarded her warily. “What has Brooke done?”
    Anger sizzled under her skin, coated with disappointment. Maybe he was more cold-hearted than he seemed. “Brooke isn’t your only sister.”

    “That’s true,” Liam agreed, “but she’s the only one who would wheedle to have a third party intervene for her. If Breanna has a problem with me, she just marches up to wherever I am and yells at me.”
    Selena tried to muffle a laugh and ended up snorting, which made Mistrunner stop and turn his head to look back at her.
    “Oh, go on,” Selena said. After giving a snort of his own to let her know what he thought about these odd sounds she was making, he moved on.
    “So what does Breanna want to discuss with me that requires a third party?” Liam asked.
    “Well... she didn’t actually ask me to intervene—”
    “Ah.”
    “—but there are things a sister can’t really discuss with a brother.”
    “There’s a subject Breanna won’t discuss with me? The Mother truly is merciful.”
    The urge to stick her tongue out at him was almost overwhelming. She settled for turning prim. “Why don
    ’t you like Falco?”
    Liam frowned, obviously confused at the turn of conversation, which wasn’t a turn at all as far as she was concerned. “I do like Falco.”
    “But you don’t approve of him as your sister’s lover.”
    “Lover?” Liam sputtered. “He’s not— They’re not—” He fumed for a minute. “It’s not that I object, it’s just— They barely know each other. There’s no need to rush into being ... intimate.”
    Jackass , Selena thought, amused at the way he was blushing—and thinking it rather sweet that he would blush.
    “Liam, a few days from now, we’ll be meeting a vicious enemy on a battlefield. There is no way to tell who will walk away from that battlefield and who will travel on to the Summerland. Today may be all the time there is. Falco cares about Breanna, and she cares about him. Would you deny them the comfort and pleasure they can have from each other?”
    “I’m not denying her anything. She’d be the first to tell me it was none of my business, which isn’t true, but she’d tell me that. If she wanted to take him as a lover, she would have done so.”
    “Where? From what I’ve been told, there are so many of her kin living in the Old Place, there’s barely room there to pee in private let alone spend time with a man.”
    “If a man wants a woman, he can usually find a private place,” Liam said darkly.
    “Oh, I’m sure he can find a dark corner someplace if he wants to use a woman for a few minutes of sex
    —”
    “ What ?” Liam’s yelp made half the escorts riding ahead of them twist in their saddles, their hands reaching for weapons. He shook his head and waved at them to indicate there was no danger.
    “—but a man who wants to make love with a woman he cares about needs more than a corner of an empty stall in the barn,” Selena continued.

    “I. Do. Not. Want. To. Discuss. This.”
    “No, you just want to be pigheaded and uncaring.”
    “Uncaring? Uncaring ? What do you want me to do? Throw out all the Fae and other guests staying in my house and tell Breanna she can have her choice of the guest rooms for a romp between the sheets?”
    Selena felt a tingle in her fingertips, the sizzle of temper. Remembering that the man riding beside her also sizzled when his temper rose and still hadn’t learned to completely control his gift from the Mother, she put all her desire to smack him into one word. “Jackass.”
    His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He reminded her so much of a hooked trout tossed up on the bank that she found his expression much more satisfying than calling him a