Master of Desire (Merlin's Legacy #6) - Angela Knight Page 0,11

us to protect Conal and his family. Including you.”

Something small, white and very fluffy shot out from underneath the bed. Huge blue eyes stared up at them. “Why?” The cat’s voice climbed at least an octave in anxiety. “Is Conal all right?”

“He’s fine,” Helena said.

“Now,” Liam added.

Danu immediately caught the implications of his grim tone. “But he wasn’t before?” She had an accent as thick, sweet and Southern as pecan pie. “What happened?”

“Siobhan.”

Danu hissed, her ears flattening, her long, bushy tail lashing in rage. “That cunt!”

Helena suppressed the impulse to laugh. “Gotta agree there. Come on, Aislyn’s on her way.” She turned, almost tripping as the cat darted past her clawed feet. The little Familiar could move with surprising speed. Apparently, she was more fur than fat. And that was just one of the ways Danu’s appearance was deceptive.

Maeve told Helena once that a thousand years ago, she’d had a vision that spirits from an alien magical universe would soon arrive. She’d been waiting with her menagerie when the dimensional gate opened and the beings arrived… and promptly begun to die. The Mageverse’s magic was too alien for them to survive without living hosts.

The Mother had used her power to fuse the spirits and her animals. The result had been powerful Familiars with human-level intelligence and magical abilities. She’d treated them like her children ever since. Maeve did adore the Donovans if she’d given them three of those precious Familiars.

“We’re clear, Conal,” Helena called. “You can come in now.” She reached the living room just as he stepped through the gate, Essus on his shoulder, Darkbane shedding violet sparks in his hand.

“Conal!” Danu raced to launch herself at him in a weightless bound. He caught her neatly with his free hand, and the cat stretched to rub her head frantically against his jaw. “Oh, what did she do to you? Are you all right?” Shooting a glare at Essus, she snapped, “You were supposed to protect him, you useless feather duster!”

“He did,” Conal said. “Now let me sheathe this sword before I impale somebody on it.”

The cat huffed and leaped down, and he slid Darkbane into its back scabbard with the ease of a man who could do it in his sleep. Even as the blade clicked home, the apartment door flew open. Aislyn raced into the room in a whirlwind of agitated magic. “Oh, God, Conal!”

With an alarmed screech, Essus abandoned Conal’s shoulder to wing around the room as Aislyn threw herself at Conal. He caught her, hugging her so hard she grunted, his eyes squeezed shut in relief.

He never expected to see her again, Helena realized. It made her heart ache for her own family, whom she hadn’t seen since Christmas.

“I’m all right.” Gently, Conal pulled back a few inches. “And we’re all going to stay that way.” His voice held cold determination.

Aislyn put her hands on either side of his face so she could stare deeply into his eyes, as if trying to read the truth. Whatever she saw there made her suck in a breath. “It was bad, wasn’t it?”

He nodded toward Helena and Liam with a tight smile. “It would have been a lot worse if not for Maeve’s people. They took the bastards out.”

“You got three of them yourself,” Helena said. “Under the circumstances, that was pretty impressive.”

“Jesus.” Aislyn swallowed, looking sick. She was as beautiful as her brother was handsome, with a heart-shaped face and her own pair of dimples. Her eyes were the same unearthly violet as his, though her hair was a cascade of platinum curls that foamed around her slender shoulders. She wore a calf-length wrap dress in swirling royal blue silk that made the most of her lean, long-legged figure. Strappy yellow sandals displayed pedicured toes, nails painted with red polish.

The chime of an incoming text sounded. Conal released her to pluck his phone off his belt, read the screen, and swipe a thumb over it.

“What’s going on, Conal?” a woman’s tight voice demanded, sounding remarkably like Aislyn’s.

“Are you alone?

There was a long pause. “Oh, hell, what now?”

* * *

This time Liam’s gate transported them to Donovan Cable News’ Manhattan headquarters. DCN’s sixty-story blue-glass tower sliced toward the sky, curving like a katana. Five years among the Fairies had left Helena jaded when it came to gorgeous architecture, but even she was impressed. Donovan’s penthouse occupied the tip of the sword, offering a dazzling view of the city through its floor-to-ceiling windows. Unfortunately, nobody was in the mood to