injuries. “Oh shit, did I hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Nothing like that. You just cried out.”
But Conal could feel the burn of Darkbane’s tattoo on his cheek. It was a good thing she’d been alert enough to wake him before things got out of hand the way they had last night. He fell back against the couch with a groan. “Sorry about that. I guess I drifted off.”
She frowned. “You were shouting Siobhan’s name.”
Conal winced. There was nothing a woman enjoyed more than hearing her lover call another woman’s name. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” He scrubbed both hands over his face.
She caught one wrist and pulled it down so she could meet his gaze. “Conal, it wasn’t exactly the kind of shout that makes a woman jealous. Want to talk about it?”
No. But Helena deserved to know what she was getting into -- and exactly why Siobhan wanted a piece of him. “I guess I’d better.”
Helena studied him thoughtfully. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I do. You deserve to know how I ended up in this mess.” He sighed and rose to gather his discarded clothing and get dressed. He felt naked enough as it was.
She watched him a moment, then stood and began pulling on her own clothes. After a few moments of heavy silence broken only by the rustle of fabric, she said, “I have wondered about that. I know it got ugly, but… I never understood how you got involved with her to begin with.”
Conal sighed and stopped, staring broodingly at one of his stepmother’s colorful abstracts -- a bright red spiral against a square of vibrant green. Helena moved over beside him and rested her chin on his shoulder. After a moment, he asked, “What do you know about the Morven Sidhe King, Ansgar?”
“He was King Llyr Galatyn’s brother. And everybody who knew him hated his guts.”
“That’s putting it mildly. My father was a Sidhe lord, Taran of Elidor. He led an assassination plot by a cabal of Morven Sidhe nobles who’d gotten sick of being methodically terrorized.”
“Based on everything I’ve heard about Ansgar, can’t say I blame them. I gather they failed.” She caught his hand and led him back to the couch. Sighing, he sat down beside her, fingers curling around her long, tapered ones.
“Yes, most of them were caught and executed with Ansgar’s trademark viciousness. I think a dragon was involved. But my father, his best friend Lord Ferrel, and a dozen of his co-conspirators escaped. They gated to Mortal Earth, planning to lay low and try again later. Later never came, because Ansgar spent the next 345 years sending his Royal Assassin after them. Gorin whittled down the band little by little. By the time I was born in 1898, there were only five left.”
Helena’s brows lifted. “1898?”
Conal shrugged. “I may be half human, but I got the family immortality.”
“How old are your sisters?”
“Thirty-five. Different mother, obviously. Mine was one of Dad’s mistresses, a prima ballerina named Mireille Benoit, who basically handed me over to him and lost interest. He’d been a pretty rich man by that point.”
“Not hard to get rich when you can conjure all the gold or gemstones you want,” Helena observed.
“Wasn’t that easy. They couldn’t use magic because Ansgar was watching for it. That’s how the king tracked down the rest of the band. They’d get careless with a spell, and Gorin and a dozen killers would be all over them. Eventually none of us used magic at all if we could avoid it, and when we did, we shielded it heavily.”
“Sounds like an interesting childhood,” Helena said, in a dry tone that said she knew just how “interesting” it must have been.
Conal snorted. “That’s putting it mildly. I spent the next seventy years trying to make sure my father didn’t get killed. There were a couple of World Wars in there -- we fought with the Allies. Taran loathed tyrants, and he and his people were warriors first, last and always.” He grinned. “Ferrel always said nothing relieves boredom like a cannonball flying past your head.”
“Ferrel?”
“My father’s second-in-command.” He hesitated, eying her for her reaction. The Morven Sidhe had a different attitude toward sex than humans. “And his lover. In some ways, he was as much my father as Taran.”
To his relief, she didn’t turn a hair. “Where do the twins come into this?”
“In 1978, my father fell in love with a sculptor named Hope Donovan. He always had a weak spot for artists.” Catching Helena’s blink, he