Frowning, Kiyo double-checked the iron wasn’t burning through the leather.
It wasn’t.
Her reaction had to be the weakening effects of the iron.
“I know you’re awake.”
Her eyes flew open and it was like the breath was knocked from his body.
Her irises were liquid gold.
The gold suddenly melted, and she stared up at him with the most extraordinary aquamarine eyes. Striations of gold remained in them.
He was surprised by the fear he saw in her gaze. He hadn’t imagined a powerful fae capable of fear.
But she didn’t know his intention, and she wasn’t completely invincible.
Plus, he’d gotten the drop on her. Of course she was afraid.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised. “I’ll explain everything once we’re inside. But first … apologies for doing this to you again.”
Her lips parted in question, but Kiyo broke her neck before she could speak.
Sliding her carefully out of the car, he gathered her into his arms, annoyed that her dress was now showing an indecent amount of skin, skin he’d touched and was adamantly ignoring the silken softness of.
Using his supernatural speed, he hurried across the lot, into the building, and up the five flights to the apartment he’d acquired for his purposes. Once inside, he laid Niamh on the graying mattress and pulled her dress back down around her thighs.
Retreating, he stared at her sprawled across the mattress on the floor of the dingy apartment. Her long, brown hair cascaded around her face in wavy tendrils. It wasn’t her natural hair color. The first surveillance photos Fionn’s research guy, Bran, had provided showed Niamh with light blond hair.
Tension drained out of Kiyo’s body as he settled into the grubby armchair that made up the small collection of furniture in the two-room apartment. Kiyo had kept the three table lamps lit for his return, preferring the warm light of those to the glaring overhead bulbs.
The beige paint was peeling off the walls, marred with food stains and fingerprints and even graffiti. But you couldn’t see that now. Nailed on top, without an inch of space between, were thin sheets of pure iron.
He’d made Niamh a cage.
Kiyo wasn’t sure how Fionn would react to his methods, but what else did he expect? Niamh Farren could teleport herself out of any room, and Kiyo needed to disable that skill long enough to explain who he was and why he’d come.
And if he felt she wasn’t amenable to the idea of him guarding and stopping her from using her powers without circumspection, then he’d have to consider keeping her here indefinitely.
Thinking of the vile bathroom he’d scrubbed clean with bleach only hours ago, Kiyo really hoped Niamh would get over his aggressive methods and trust he was who he said he was.
Months of living in this shithole as a prison warden instead of a bodyguard didn’t exactly appeal to him.
But Fionn Mór was not someone you crossed. Kiyo had known Fionn since the late ’60s. Kiyo had left New York several years before because it was no longer safe for him to remain there. Although he’d kept to himself and moved from borough to borough, he’d begun to encounter one too many older people who remembered him from their youth.
Since then, Kiyo had lived the life of a nomad, a mercenary for hire. He’d been a silent assassin, hostage negotiator, soldier, bounty hunter, kidnapper, bodyguard, and thief, to name but a few occupations in the unseen wars of the supernatural world. Even in the human world. There were humans who were aware of the supernaturals, some to fear and avoid, others who paid a great deal of money for the advantages of supernatural power.
The supernatural world questioned Kiyo’s longevity, considering he was a werewolf, and there had been those who’d tried to kill him as an abomination, and failed. There were those who’d tried to use him and failed at that too.
Among all the supernaturals who had guessed at his immortality, only one man had garnered a modicum of Kiyo’s trust. Fionn. Kiyo had thought him a powerful warlock. They’d met fighting each other in the underground matches, and Kiyo was satisfied to have found someone who could finally challenge him. Fionn never pried into his personal life and vice versa. As the decades passed with Fionn never aging, Kiyo had surmised the Irishman had been cursed with immortality as he himself had.
Until last year when he arrived at an underground fight with his mate, Rose. Fionn hadn’t known she was his mate then, but Kiyo had understood Fionn was fighting his attraction to the woman. He’d come to the fight to take out his pent-up frustration on Kiyo, and in a moment before the fight, Fionn’s eyes had flashed gold.
He’d demanded Kiyo forget he’d seen it, and Kiyo had obliged.
But the origin stories had filled his mind. Stories of the fae and the gate, how it had been opened over two thousand years ago, and the fae’s interference with the humans on Faerie had brought about the creation of vampires and werewolves. The fae had been true immortals, beautiful, beguiling … and with eyes that flashed gold when their passions were high.
Fionn Mór was fae.
Of course, now Kiyo knew the whole story. Fionn had once been human. An ancient warrior king in what is now Ireland. He’d fought the fae as a human king and in punishment for killing a fae prince, the Faerie Queen, Aine, had enslaved Fionn. In return, his wife and children were spared. But Fionn lived on Faerie for several years as the queen’s consort. Before she’d decided to close the gate between worlds and send the supernaturals and humans back to Earth, she’d turned Fionn into fae to keep him with her.
However, he escaped. Upon his return to Ireland, his wife, now remarried to the new king, wanted to kill him for what he’d become. But in respect for the king he’d once been, Druids cast a sleeping curse over him and buried him in the earth instead. Personally, Kiyo thought that was worse than death.
In the early 1700s, the Blackwood Coven found Fionn. They were a powerful North American coven obsessed with reopening the gate to Faerie. It took them two years, but they eventually broke the Druid spell and woke Fionn. They thought he’d be the one to help them open the gate. The ancient Irishman had plans to do that but only to take revenge on Aine. He waited, as a few others of his time had, for the fruition of a spell that Aine had cast before she closed the gate. She’d prophesied the birth of seven fae children born to humans who would have the ability to open the gate between worlds.
Rose Kelly had been one of those fae.
Fionn found Rose and wanted to use her to open the gate. In a twist of fate, Rose turned out to be Fionn’s true mate. Now he was determined to protect her and to protect the gate from reopening. He knew what the fae could do to the human world. Aine knew. That’s why she’d closed the gate in the first place. But the twisted fae bitch couldn’t help herself from toying with the supernaturals and the humans by casting that goddamn spell.
There were only three fae-borne left.
The now-dead leader of The Garm, a supernatural group made of vamps and wolves, who were religiously against the opening of the gate, had killed three of the fae before his death. He’d died at the hands of the fourth who had been turned into a werewolf by her werewolf mate and was now no longer a person of interest to those who wanted to open the gate.
At the head of that group was the Blackwood Coven. They’d been focused on Rose for a while, but she was extraordinarily powerful, as was her mate. So, for now, they seemed to have abandoned her as prey. They were focused on one of the two fae left. The second was an unknown. Not even Fionn knew who the last fae-borne was.