The Wood Queen (14 page)

Xan’s eyes never left hers and a slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Donna took a shuddering breath, feeling her heart beating crazily. “What?”

He shook his head, the hint of a smile spreading into something more real. His teeth flashed in the near-darkness. “Just thinking how unbelievably beautiful you look.”

Her cheeks burned. “Stop it.”

“No, I mean it.” He grinned, quickly tugging off his own shirt and tossing it behind him.

Swallowing, Donna gazed at his chest and wondered if she was drooling. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the almost ethereal glow of his skin.

Xan trailed warm fingers across her stomach and she tried not to worry about whether her tummy was sticking out too much.
Should I suck it in?

He splayed a large, warm hand across her ribs with a strangely determined expression on his face, and his fingertips brushed the edge of her bra. Of course, she thought with disgust, she just
had
to be wearing her oldest underwear today. It had been the first thing she’d grabbed this morning while dressing to meet the Wood Queen.

Was that really only this morning?
She didn’t want to think about it—not now, with Xan.

Donna wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Just lie there? She desperately wanted to touch Xan, and yet her limbs felt impossibly heavy. She could quite easily stay
there with his hands on her, unmoving and unthinking for the next few hours.

His voice was husky, “Come here.”

Donna wanted to argue:
But I’m so comfy
. Still, who was she to argue? She took a deep breath against the sudden trembling in the pit of her stomach and wriggled into a sitting position beneath him.

“Look at me,” Xan said.

“I am,” she replied, still gazing at his chest.

“At my
face
, Donna.” There was laughter in his voice, and that was all it took to break the unbearable tension she’d been feeling.

Swallowing a nervous giggle, she forced herself to meet his eyes. His pupils were huge; they’d almost swallowed the stunning green that marked him as something other than human.

“I want you so much,” he said. There was no false seduction in his voice; all she could hear was the naked vulnerability that occasionally sneaked through when he was with her. “But we should wait.”

Wait
? What did he mean,
wait
? “But I’m ready now,” she heard herself saying, her voice almost a whisper. “Xan—”

She stopped talking as he put his hands on her waist and shifted them both so that she was sitting on his lap, her legs wrapped around his hips. If this was his idea of cooling things off, she needed to have a serious talk with him.

“This isn’t right,” he continued, earnestly. “I don’t want to take advantage of you, not when you’re so upset. It’s not the way I imagined it.”

Fighting the slowly rising tide of disappointment and trying to focus on the positive, Donna touched his cheek. “You’ve imagined this?”

He laughed, golden cheeks flushing. “Of course I have. Shit, Donna. I may be a gentleman, but when it comes down to it, I’m still just a guy.”

Warm laughter bubbled inside her chest, and the feeling of joy was so unfamiliar—so
shocking
—that for a moment Donna didn’t even recognize it. She blinked back tears and threw her arms around him, squeezing Xan as tight as she dared and wishing that she could just stay here with him and never leave. She didn’t want to think about the alchemists and the demons, or the Wood Queen, or even her mother. Not right now. Everybody she knew except Navin played games with her, made life-changing decisions
for
her, and it made her sick. It seemed as though all the people in her life spent their time manoeuvring various pieces around a giant chess board (like the games of alchemical chess that she’d watched Quentin and Simon playing, back when she was a child), and she herself was one of those pieces—nothing more than a bargaining chip or an expendable infantryman sent kicking and screaming to die for a cause she didn’t even believe in.

Donna looked into Xan’s eyes and saw her determined reflection gazing back. No, she wouldn’t be the Order’s weapon. Not for anything—or any
one.
Her mother’s fears
for her would
not
be realized. She was a person, not a thing, and only she had the right to decide how she would live her life.

Feeling the comfort of certainty slip into place, Donna took a deep breath and pressed her lips against Xan’s. Here was something else she had the right to decide—who she wanted to be with, and when she was ready to take that step. She might only have known Xan for a few weeks, but she wanted to enjoy the fleeting moments of safety while she could.

Alexander Grayson might be many things, but he had never pushed her around or forced her to do anything that made her miserable. Sure, he had the whole otherworldly-guy-with-a-past thing down pretty well, but “mystery” did not automatically equal “dishonesty.”

As that thought crossed her mind, Xan pulled away for a moment and smiled at her, understanding smoothing away the worried expression he’d been wearing ever since telling her that they should wait. Maybe he felt the shift in her, from emotional-wreck-seeking-comfort to someone who actually knew what she was doing and was making a choice based on love.

Love
? Donna caught her breath as Xan gently pushed her back down against the pillows and stroked her face with fingertips that made her tingle all over. Did she love him? It wasn’t as though
he’d
professed true love to her, although she knew he cared. Could she really feel something like that so soon?

She didn’t know, but whatever this was—whatever this might one day be—the delicious sensations racing through her body, reminding her that she was alive, left her in no doubt that it was absolutely
right
.

But as Xan leaned down to kiss her again, that sense of rightness suddenly transformed into a gut-wrenching pain.

She doubled over gasping, holding her arms around herself as though she might be able to hold the pain still, keep it quiet so that it couldn’t do any damage. It felt alive inside her. Donna didn’t know how she knew that for sure, but the thought arose, unbidden, with cool certainty.

Xan’s eyes were filled with shock and concern. “What’s happening? Did I hurt you?” He grabbed her shoulders, frantic. “Is it me?”

You?
she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. How could it be anything to do with him?

She remembered that he didn’t know about what had happened to her tonight, about the power that had brought her to his door when she’d simply thought of the place she’d most wanted to be. Maybe he thought she was having some kind of freaky reaction to making out with a half-fey guy, but she couldn’t reassure him because there was no breath left in her body.

There was only light.

It was a different sort of light than the warm glow that had filled Xan at her mother’s bedside. It was the same light she’d experienced in Aunt Paige’s study—her tattoos became flashing silver beacons and moved across her arms so fast that her fingers went numb.

Xan was kneeling on the bed in front of her, clearly unsure whether or not he should touch her again. “Donna, your eyes!”

She reached out to him, half-blinding them both with the radiance from her hands. “It’s okay—”

She didn’t get to finish; she couldn’t reassure him before she left him. There was no time. She barely had the presence of mind to grab Xan’s discarded shirt before the power took her.

The earth moved—and not in the way she’d been hoping for—and her mind coalesced into a sharp point of need. Where did she
need
to be?

There was a moment of clarity, and then nothing.

This time Donna landed on her hands and knees, already heaving but having nothing in her stomach to bring up. She was relieved they hadn’t gotten around to eating anything yet.

She was half-dressed (barely even that) and somewhere in the middle of Ironbridge Common—with no money, no cell phone, and no idea of how the hell she was going to get back to Xan’s.

Crap
.

And it was freezing.

Donna sighed with relief when she felt the material of Xan’s black shirt clutched in her left hand.
Thank you, thank you,
she repeated to herself, not really sure who she was thanking but saying it anyway. Just in case.

She tried to stand up, but her head and stomach had something unpleasant to say about that. Whatever was happening to her, she had to see Maker—and fast. Except, of course, Maker seemed to be good at his own sort of disappearing act lately. She looked down at her tattoos, which were spinning crazily around her hands and arms, and desperately wondered how she could hide them. She must look like she was holding two spitting, silver fireworks.

God, this was not going to be easy to explain to a late passerby, or, worse, one of the Common’s night rangers.

The air was middle-of-the-night cold, and Donna pulled on the shirt while wishing her feet weren’t bare. At least she still had her jeans on. She didn’t even feel embarrassed noticing that, so maybe she was finally getting over her stupid shyness about this kind of stuff. And making out with Xan hardly seemed important in the face of her current situation.

She managed to pull herself upright, taking deep breaths as she slowly took in her surroundings. She knew Ironbridge Common so well, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out her exact location within it.

Because life can’t possibly screw with me any more … right?

She was relieved to see the faint glow of what must be the stylized street lamps that lined the main paths through the center of the Common. If she could see them from
here, at least that meant she wasn’t too far from the most familiar, well-lit paths. Clenching her toes against the cold, damp grass, she began picking her way through the gloom.

She was almost to the nearest lamp when her foot hit something sharp. She cursed, hoping it was just a stone or something relatively harmless, but by the way her heel stung, she suspected she’d just stepped on glass.

Wincing, she tried to hop while keeping the lamp in view. She was going to have to reach the street somehow, find a cab, and get herself out of here.

And hope she didn’t get mugged, or worse.

Just as she had that particularly cheerful thought, she saw movement ahead of her. Half-expecting Ivy to appear—it wasn’t like things could get much worse—she tensed but kept going. There was someone waiting on the main path; someone tall was watching her approach.

She heard a familiar voice that almost made her break down there and then. “Donna!”

Xan burst into a run and within seconds was by her side, sweeping her into a bone-crushing hug and not letting go even when Donna gasped a protest. She could hardly breathe, but right at that moment she really didn’t care.

“What happened?” He sounded frantic; it must have been terrifying for him to have her just … disappear like that. Literally in front of him. How would
she
have felt if things had happened the other way around? She would have thought some kind of dark magic had taken him away from her. She would have thought she’d lost him.

Donna shuddered and burrowed deeper into his embrace. She didn’t want to think about losing Xan—not ever.

Finally, he pushed her away but still kept a death grip on her upper arms. She wondered if she’d have bruises tomorrow, but didn’t have the heart to tell him he was hurting her.

Xan was actually trembling. She could feel it all the way through his body as he held her. “Donna …” His voice was raw, almost as though he’d been shouting and had exhausted it. “You have to tell me what the
fuck
is going on. Tell me you’re okay, please …”

She couldn’t hold back a sigh of relief when he finally released her, but she resisted the temptation to rub her arms. She didn’t want to make him feel bad. “I’m okay, really. See?” She tried to stand up straight, but the pain in her right heel was pretty agonizing now.

He frowned. “You’re hurt.”

How did he know that? “It’s just a scratch. I think I cut myself on a stone or something.”

“Here,” he said, ignoring her protests. “Sit down, let me see.”

Xan led her to a nearby bench—one directly beneath one of the brightest lamps in the Common’s central meeting point—and pressed her down onto it. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders, and Donna gratefully poked her arms through the way-too-big sleeves.

She would really rather be getting back to the house, but Xan wasn’t going to budge until he’d seen where she’d been hurt.

“How did you find me?” It was uncanny, the way he’d reached her so quickly—especially considering the way she’d exited his bedroom.

For a moment, she thought Xan was going to avoid the question, but thankfully he met her eyes and nodded. It was as though he was confirming something to himself, or gathering the courage to tell the truth. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you about some things, Donna,” he said. He dropped his gaze and stopped, struggling to find the words. “I mean, it’s nothing really bad—I promise—but there are things I can do that I’ve been hiding.”

She tried to smile, despite how cold she was out here. “That seems to be going around.”

His lips twitched, but his expression was bleak. “It’s not that I don’t trust you; I’m just so used to keeping my abilities hidden. And I swear I’ve been telling the truth about how limited they are …”

Donna touched his cheek. “But they’re not quite so limited as you first let on? It’s okay, I sort of figured that out. It’s why I called you to the hospital to see my mom, you know. And then you started glowing.”

This time he did smile, and it was like the sun chasing away black clouds. “Yeah, I can see how that might have made you wonder.”

“And it’s not like I haven’t got some new things to tell you,” she continued, thinking of Aliette with something like terror.

“That can wait,” he said. “Let me see where you’re hurt, then we’ll get home.”

But as soon as he reached for her foot, Donna saw the shimmer of something
other
appear, as though reality itself was twisting into something new. The disturbance was right in front of her; she could see the air ripple just beyond the curve of Xan’s back.

He stopped moving, the warmth of his hand a pleasant tickle against her cold ankle. His eyes went wide and his face was rigid with a tension she didn’t understand. He turned around slowly, and she could no longer see the expression on his face.

Ivy had returned.

Xan released her ankle and stood up with a jerk, totally unlike his usually fluid grace.

The fey girl approached, an almost-human expression on her moon-stained face. If Donna had to describe it, she’d say it looked as if Ivy had seen a ghost.

Xan just stood there, staring. She still couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were tense under his gray sweater, and his back was completely rigid.

Sure, Ivy was sort of strange, but it wasn’t like Xan was unfamiliar with strange.

“Xan,” Donna said, wondering what was wrong with him. “This is—”

“Ivy,” he breathed, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Donna looked from one to the other. “Wait, you know each other?”

Ivy’s normally childlike expression was nowhere to be seen, replaced with an unknowable pain in the depths of her leaf-green eyes. “Alexander …”

Xan must have remembered how to move because he closed the distance between them instantly, standing within touching distance of her. “Ivy, you died—they told me you were dead! I looked for you, but I actually started to believe you’d really gone.”

She shook her head, joy beginning to light up her whole face. “It wasn’t a true death.”

He frowned, nowhere near ready to believe. Donna sensed anger simmering beneath the surface of tentative hope. “What the hell does that mean?” Xan asked. “And if you weren’t really dead, why didn’t you tell me?” For a moment, Donna thought he’d been about to embrace the strange-looking being, but now he withdrew into himself, pain clouding his eyes. “I mourned you for almost a year.”

Ivy hung her head, scattering leaves as she shuffled her feet. “I am sorry, Alexander. I couldn’t tell you I was still alive. You must believe me—it was for your protection.”

Xan shook his head, angry now. “Protection? You lied to me in the worst possible way. What was so bad that you couldn’t have gotten word to me, sent me some kind of message?”

Donna gritted her teeth and tried not to think about what Ivy might have been to Xan. Then her exhausted mind made a connection and she realized that Ivy must
have been the “mentor” that Xan had briefly told her about—the person who had taught him about his fey heritage when he was all alone with his confused dreams and memories—and who he had believed to be dead. Perhaps Ivy had also been his … what? His girlfriend?

Donna’s heart felt like it weighed a ton.

Then she immediately felt like a total bitch for being so selfish; she was better than this.
Wasn’t she?
Swallowing the painful tightness from her throat, she tentatively touched Xan’s elbow. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t look at her. “That’s what I want to know.” He was still glaring at Ivy. “I’m waiting to find out why the only friend I ever had faked her death and lied to me for the last year.”

The girl bounced with agitation, shedding leaves wildly as she tried to reach out to him. “No, it wasn’t like that—”

Xan knocked her hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Alexander, please,” she wailed. Her strange face was so expressive, and she made such a picture of perfect misery that Donna couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy.

Xan’s face went savage, his normally golden skin bleaching paler than Donna had ever seen it. His eyes spat green fire. “Forget it, Ivy. Seriously, don’t come near me ever again.”

The more angry he became, the more this strange creature scattered leaves and lost the human cast to her features. Beneath the glamour, Ivy’s face looked sort of pointed and foxlike. She was pretty, but in an ethereal way that left no doubt as to her faery blood.

He glanced at Donna, and she saw the glint of unshed tears in his eyes. It made her feel a little better, to know that this uncharacteristic fury was hiding a deeper pain. “And leave Donna alone, too,” he added. “If you screw with her I’ll fucking kill you myself.”

He spun away from them both, stalking to the edge of the pathway. When he reached the bench he gripped it with white-knuckled hands, bending as though trying to catch his breath after an exhausting run.

Donna stood frozen, feeling useless and horribly confused. She should go to him. She should go to Xan and comfort him, but her legs wouldn’t move. What was wrong with her?

Ivy stood crying silently, silvery tears making bright tracks down her thin cheeks. “Donna Underwood,” she whispered. “I only came to see if you had made progress on the queen’s task. I did not know you were friends with Alexander. Please, talk to him for me. Tell him I didn’t have a choice. I—”

“Oh, just shut up.” Donna was furious, but she knew her anger was more about her confusion than anything else. She knew she’d feel terrible, later, for lashing out at the nearest target—Ivy—just because it was way too easy. But right now? Right now it felt pretty damn good. “Leave us alone.” She slowly backed away, unable to tear her gaze from the girl’s horrified expression.

Xan’s voice shook her free of the sense of unreality that seemed to have taken hold of her. “Are you coming with me or not, Donna?”

Turning away from the now-sobbing girl, Donna ran toward Xan.
Of course she was going with him.
What did he think—that she would leave him, too?

As they headed back to the house, Xan with his head bowed and his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, Donna fought the urge to take his arm.

Whatever had just happened, she couldn’t stop the feeling of dread that was rising up from the pit of her stomach. Tonight, everything had changed between them—for the better, she’d believed just an hour ago. And now?

Now, that lingering thread of happiness had already turned to ash … just waiting to be blown away on the freezing winter breeze that cut her cheeks and made her eyes fill with tears.