Inked Destiny

The thought kicked one corner of his mouth up. Not imagining himself in it, but Etain wearing it.

Since Etain’s survival was no longer in question, he spat out the most relevant part of his interaction with Cage, without placing blame. “He offered sanctuary for Etain and me in Seattle and I was tempted not just by the prospect of having her to myself. It seemed reasonable to think you might want me dead.”

“The result of a human-on-human crime. The origins of it unattributable to me, so Etain would not hold me responsible,” Eamon said, filling in the blanks with uncanny accuracy. “A reasonable assumption for Cajeilas given the lack of a bodyguard accompanying you. My failure. It didn’t occur to me to offer one at your departure.”

Relief was a warm spread through Cathal’s chest. “You were kind of busy at the time.” His eyes met Eamon’s, both of them looking at a memory, a naked Etain in desperate need of the magical lessons that might well be the reason she was with them now.

“So I was,” Eamon said. “Cajeilas is neither my enemy nor my ally.”

* * *

It was only when Quinn’s car pulled into the estate that it occurred to Etain to wonder how he had known where she was, or that such a thing as a healer existed, and seeking one out would be preferable to going to the hospital. But the moment he emerged from it, she knew he’d become what the ink she’d put on him to cover the AB tats foretold, the Dragon’s yesss little more than a ripple preceding the soul-deep anguish at seeing Derrick.

Minutes became a crawl of agony encompassing the hurried trip to the bedroom where the healer waited, the horror of Derrick’s clothes being cut away and the damage beyond what had been done to his face exposed.

Tears escaped unchecked, her sense of helplessness intensified at seeing the shattered bones in his arm and leg. But when she would have offered comfort with a touch, the healer gently denied her saying, “No, Lady, your magic might interfere with my ability to help him.”

Cathal and Eamon took her hands, smoothing out the fists they’d become, nails digging ruthlessly into the eyes at the centers of her palms, while on the opposite side of the bed, Quinn hovered and Cage stood at his back, an unnecessary guard. Dragon.

He noted her regard, and amusement lurked in his expression, eyes flicking quickly at Liam then downward to her exposed arms, and she sensed Eamon’s shadowy assassin was the true target of the barb when Cage said, “You’ve been my dam’s pretty bauble all along.”

Eamon’s free hand flashed in instant command for Liam to go no farther than the step he’d already managed. “You’re here at my sufferance,” he told the Dragon.

Cage merely opened his arms to encompass the scene in front of him, including Quinn and Derrick. “The ink your new Elf wears suggests I might be hard to get rid of. The affection she holds for the mate of my new brother surely means you’ll be seeing more of me.”

“Sire,” Liam growled, eliciting a wide smile in Cage.

“Who did this to Derrick?” Etain asked, the need to understand allowing her to push aside grief and guilt.

Derrick whimpered and moaned, eyelashes fluttering as though he tried to fight through pain and unconsciousness in order to answer. “Lie still,” Quinn murmured, allowed to touch Derrick where she hadn’t been.

Her throat closed even though she knew from experience with the healer, that in the end, Derrick would be made whole. She braved the damage done to him, gaze going to the small Dragon she’d put on him years earlier. Not her gift to see the endpoint of magic according to…Cage’s dam if he was to be believed, and yet…

Seer’s daughter. Seidic’s daughter. Some pairings are a threat to those in power. It was followed by urging instead of a hijacking of body, her focus shifted to Quinn. The first righting of old wrongs.

Oh shit, she thought, snagged on the word first until finally the conversation around her burst the bubble of her inattention with Eamon’s asking, “And the bodies?”

“All four incinerated,” Cage said, with no small measure of satisfaction. “I had to occupy myself while my brother Quinn rediscovered his human form.”

“You searched them first?”

Cage snorted, emphasizing the reaction with flame and smoke. “No. They possessed no treasure of interest to me.”

“We would have valued their identities,” Eamon said, projecting the smooth of a calm ocean though inwardly he raged. He wanted this human business done, behind them.

“They are dead,” Cage said, slanting a glance at Cathal. “They are of no concern though I recognized one of them from outside of Saoirse.”

Both Cathal and Etain went rigid, taking the blame for this upon themselves, but if there was blame at all, it was equally shared. He’d allowed the events set in motion by the Dunnes to play out. He had believed that, in the end, they would serve him, driving Etain more fully into his arms.

“Derrick will be able to tell us what we need to know,” he said, a subtle reminder that this would be set to rights.

His hand tightened on Etain’s, a gesture of reassurance for her and a battling of the sorrow that threatened to well up inside him. The unhealed tattoos on his arms were a raw wound piercing heart and reaching soul.

It changes nothing, he told himself as he’d told her. She would still be his consort-wife, her gift used for their people.

Her ink, visible on the bare-chested Quinn, a man who’d been human days earlier, served as harbinger to a great deal of change. If this was one of the abilities of the seidic then it added another cause for assassination. Dragons had always symbolized chaos for the Elven, and threat, because they were magical beings his kind couldn’t sense.

Twenty-eight

Etain watched the miracle of Derrick’s body being knitted back together and smoothed into its correct shape by the glide of hands and concentrated magic. It awed her to witness this gift and be part of a world where wielding it was natural.

A laugh bubbled up with her radical shift in perspective, escaping when Quinn jerked the covers up to Derrick’s hips, the instant the healer moved above them. “He’d enjoy the ogling,” she joked.

“Well I don’t.” Dragon growl present in his voice, the exchange a tension relief for all of them, levity to carry them until Derrick whispered, “I fucked up. I just wanted to help.”

A thick stream of smoke erupted from Quinn’s nostrils, unseen by Derrick whose eyes were still closed. “I told you no.”

“Well sue me.” Little more than a mutter, but hearing the Derrick she loved had Etain kneeling next to the bed, asking, “Who were they?”

“Marc Sleepy Ruiz and friends Drooler and Puppy.” Beneath closed lids, Derrick’s eyes rolled at the street names.

“Why you?” Etain asked.

He turned his head, struggled until finally his gaze met hers. “I had a lead on Ruiz. I pursued it.”

“Instead of just turning it over to Quinn and Sean?”

“Strength is my new middle name.”

“That self-help book is going in the trash the next time I’m at your place.”

His laugh turned into a whimper and gained her a stern look from the healer and a growl from Quinn.

“They kept asking me what happened to Lucky. What Cathal did with Lucky.”

“Fuck,” Cathal said. “Fuck.”

“I’d love to,” Derrick said in a prim voice. “But Etain and I never share lovers.”

“There was a fourth guy,” Quinn said. “Older. Did you get a name?”