in a careless shrug. “I made the first move.” Was it Uriah's imagination, or was that a smirk on Ilex's face? Ivy sighed like this whole thing was boring, turning once again to Rowena. “It looks like you were correct about the spies in our house.”
“Seems so,” Rowena answered easily, turning to nod at the rest of the silently waiting coven to disband.
Kerrigan gave a twirl of her wrist, and a white parasol appeared in her hand. Callie and Astrid also conjured parasols, but Juliet seemed content to sit and soak up the sunshine.
One by one, the four witches sat down to have a little tea party inside their casting circle, making it plain by their actions they were completely unconcerned with the current situation.
A lion came to each of the four and lay down beside her, even Juliet, who didn't pull away or give any indication that it bothered her.
“I suppose I'll have to replace the Brownies,” Rowena drawled in irritation. “If I'd known your dad would suddenly give a damn about your life after having abandoned you at birth, I would have gone with a Tontu or two instead. Fairy spies. How plebeian. I don't think any of us have ties to Nordic deities.”
“Might be best,” Ivy agreed, leaving the circle to come to Uriah, looping her arm through his with a smile. “You don't have any Viking blood in you, do you?”
Uriah chuckled at the obvious attempt of the girls to exclude her father from their discussion. Uriah bent and touched a kiss to the tip of Ivy's up-tilted nose. “Not a drop. My people originated on this continent way before the Viking's discovered it.”
Ivy gave him a slow, sunny smile and winked at him. “Good. Tontu's it is. Tea, gentlemen?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Seated across from both her father and her brother, Ivy managed to keep her hands folded and steady on the table, but her insides wouldn't stop quivering. Uriah had his ankle hooked around hers, his hand on her thigh, quietly sitting beside her, calm and collected, as though he sat across from forest gods to shoot the shit every day of the week.
On her other side, Rowena lounged in the chair of moss-covered vines, Abel on her far side, still furry. His golden eyes barely cleared the tabletop. On any other day, it would have struck Ivy as strange to see her coven leader petting the six-hundred-pound lion like a house cat.
The two looked quite comfortable, which was good, considering the stakes had never been higher. Ivy did struggle to keep from staring at her brother. She could see their mother clearly in his features now that they were only a few feet apart.
Ivy had purposefully not set up seats on their side of the table, but with a wave of his hand, Ilex produced two more. A simple chair for himself, and a regal throne for their father with elaborate knots of thick tree roots. Flowers blossomed across the top, giving the illusion that the forest god was crowned in the delicate blooms in addition to the impressive rack of antlers.
Magic oozed off her father, a sensual spell, no doubt intended to make whoever he faced more susceptible to his will.
Unfortunately for him, not only had the entire Little Coven taken an extremely large dose of iron supplements, they each had cold iron disks in their bras to keep them sane in the face of any seductive fairy magic.
Abel argued it was probably overkill, the circle of iron filings, the barrier spell, their near overdose on vitamins, and the twisted iron collars Callie fashioned for all the lions. But Ivy wasn't taking any chances. Uriah even had an iron armband wrapped around his bicep, hidden beneath the sleeve of his shirt.
Donnatar had a cruelty about him that was palpable. He tried to hide it by amplifying his natural sexual allure, but it was there in his gaze—the complete absence of empathy staring back at her. Ivy had never looked into such cold eyes before.
Had her mother seen it when she'd summoned him?
Even if she had, would it have made a difference?
He'd been offering a desperate woman everything she'd been fighting for, and as she'd said in her journal, Ilsa would have done anything—and apparently anyone—to have a baby.
Ivy’s father sat back in his earthy throne, regarding her with eyes that had seen centuries filled with all sorts of people, and Ivy got a sense he was curious about her.
No more than someone might be curious