Dominic. Elizabeth Amber
more talk of progress toward peace. Our stronghold in the east fell last week. Even the temple of Bacchus isn’t sacred to some. A month ago, it was attacked.”
“By whom?” all three lords demanded simultaneously.
“Demons, most likely,” Carlo informed them, earning himself a sharp look from Dominic.
Seeing it, Carlo set a hand on his friend’s sleeve and ducked his head close to speak in an undertone. “The term doesn’t carry the taboo here in this world that it does in the other. You may speak freely.”
Emma gaped at that hand, wondering anew at her husband’s easy way with this man. When it was withdrawn, she raised curious eyes to Dominic’s face.
In the depths of his dark-lashed gaze, she detected a challenge of some sort directed her way. Did he think she would be jealous because Carlo had made a friend? On the contrary, she was glad someone had been watching out for him on the battlefield. However much emotional and physical distance there might be between them, she would prefer that her child not lose its father before it was even born!
“What of the mirrors?” Raine asked, his intelligent brow creasing.
“Only the statue in the front exterior niche of the temple was destroyed.”
“‘Only,’ you say?” Lyon echoed, sounding flabbergasted. “What of the statue’s contents?”
Carlo shrugged. “Dominic has been to the temple in the aftermath. Let him tell you more of it.”
“The amulet was stolen,” Dominic put forth as he stabbed several slices of venison from the platter a servant offered to him. Though an expectant pause fell, he seemed to think his words sufficed, for he didn’t elaborate.
Carlo filled the breach. “The rumor is that although most of the statue was smashed, two pieces of its anatomy were left in pristine condition.” He paused for dramatic effect. Once the four women had leaned in, he said, “Its right hand. And its male organ.”
Juliette gasped, putting a hand to her throat. Lyon slid a huge paw around her, offering his wife a reassuring smile.
“Each was painstakingly severed from the body,” Carlo gleefully continued.
“Carlo! That’s hardly conversation fit for the dining table,” Emma scolded, but he only shrugged, an unrepentant grin playing on his sulky mouth.
“Grim news,” Jane added. “But let us save such talk for tomorrow. When everyone is less…tense.”
An intimate glance heated the air between her and Nicholas. Emma automatically looked away. Having grown up in their home, she’d witnessed thousands of similar private exchanges between them over the years. Even at the age of twelve when she hadn’t yet understood the precise nature of what such glances between men and women meant, she had already begun to feel like an intruder when she’d intercepted them.
A desire to avoid making more such intrusions was one reason she’d leaped at the only invitation to marry that had been presented to her. However, the happy state of all three of the Satyr lords’ marriages was an all too painful contrast to the sorry state of her own.
For the duration of the meal, Emma said little, and Dominic was equally quiet. Whenever he did speak, she noticed a formality in his way of phrasing things, as though he was uncertain of his Italian.
She was glad when his voice came, for it gave her an excuse to look his way. On each occasion, she drank in the sight of him from a safe distance, fascinated by the strange pull he exerted. It was as if he were a steady, sure planet and she a hapless moon wobbling uncertainly within his orbit.
However, he spoke little, and she wondered if he kept his thoughts to himself fearing a misstep with their language. The idea that there might be a chink in the self-assurance of this rugged male softened her toward him. When he looked up and read the gentle sympathy in her face, his expression lit with a blazing heat that was so quickly snuffed she thought she must’ve imagined it.
Still, it left her breathlessly wary.
As it often did when the family gathered, dinner conversation eventually turned to the ancient vines that covered the sloping hills at the center of the Satyr compound, and the wine they produced.
But as the daylight further waned, talk dwindled, too, and the atmosphere grew ever more charged.
4
Though it went unspoken, everyone at the table was well aware that once night fell, a carnal ritual peculiar to the Satyr would begin. This knowledge was apparent in small ways. In the manner in which each Satyr husband watched his Fey wife. And in the wanting glances and subtle touches that passed between them.
From the corner of her eye, Emma saw that Nicholas had begun toying with her sister’s silky, blond hair. The knuckles of Raine’s left hand were surreptitiously dusting Jordan’s nape. Lyon’s hand had disappeared under the table in Juliette’s direction, and although his wife avoided his gaze, her cheeks had suffused with pink. The air around the three couples fairly hummed with their mutual desire.
Heat suffused Emma’s cheeks as well when she thought of what would happen between her husband and herself, once they were alone.
She glanced to the far end of the table. Carlo had seated himself next to Dominic and was fawning on him in a manner that was almost flirtatious—actually going so far as to run his fingers along the other man’s sleeve or to offer him delicacies from his plate now and then. Carlo had always gravitated toward weaker men he could dominate. Why had he chosen to befriend a man so imposing? On his part, Dominic largely ignored these overtures and ate with the methodical precision of one who took in his food as fuel rather than for any sort of enjoyment.
They made an odd sort of triangle, for while her attention was on Carlo, his was on Dominic, who in turn had for some reason decided to focus on her.
Was he perhaps wondering why Carlo had chosen to marry her? She, who was so different from the rest of them?
She’d wondered that very thing herself often enough. In the beginning she’d thought he loved her, but now she was sure he never had.
And why should he? She wasn’t as delicate and beautiful as her sister or her aunts, for they each bore the blood of a Fey king who’d selected their beautiful Human mothers as his mates. Although she was blessed with a keen intelligence and an insatiable greed for the written word, such things didn’t attract men.
She possessed no extraordinary abilities. In fact Emma was the only one in the family who was entirely Human.
Everyone else had the blood of either Faerie or Satyr flowing in their veins, mingling there with Human blood. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t help but feel like an outsider.
“Is there more of the Sangiovese?” Carlo’s voice was beginning to slur from the effects of drink. She frowned at him and gave an imperceptible shake of her head, but he mutinously refilled his goblet.
As usual, wine flowed freely during and after the meal, all of it the best-quality vintage produced by grapes grown in the vineyard on Satyr land. Thick green bottles and amber ones wrapped in raffia, all with the trademark SV molded into their sides, had been brought from the cellar and uncorked to celebrate the occasion of Carlo’s return.
The others were more conservative in their consumption, cognizant of the fact that it would soon be Moonful. Emma abstained from taking spirits altogether, for in her current condition they made her ill.
As time passed, she grew more worried at Carlo’s continued abandoned imbibing. It was crucial that he have his wits gathered sufficiently tonight. He must not fail to bed her. He of all people should be aware of that.
She caught the concerned question in Jane’s eyes but could only raise her brows and shrug in response to indicate that she was confused as well. Impossible to know what impulses might be driving her husband.
Toward the end of the evening, Nicholas drew Carlo