Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (free ebooks romance novels .TXT) 📗

that it seems nothing I’ve done so far has been good for the baby, but think better of it. Instead, I wrap my hands around the mug, soaking up the warmth and breathe in the deep woodsy fragrance.

Slowly, the muscles in my shoulders unknot, as though the fragrant steam has grown a set of fingers and is picking them apart a little at a time. The mountain of worries fades into the fog. My eyelids grow heavy, the physical exhaustion settling in.

“You should get some rest,” Laufey says when I am practically slumping on the stool. “It’s going to be a difficult number of years for you.”

Nodding, I murmur thanks and trudge upstairs. Chloe is down at the vet’s office but I lie on top of Addy’s bed anyway.

Please, gods, I beg a second before sleep claims me. No more dreams.

Of course, the bastards don’t listen.

“How can I be sure it’s mine?”

Pharaildis’s expression falls. She’d been so pleased to discover she was with child. So happy. Never in her wildest imaginings would she have expected to see that look of revulsion on her lover’s face.

“Surely you must know.” She reaches out a trembling hand, needing to touch him. “There’s been no other.”

He catches her hand in his before she can make contact with his chest. “No, I don’t know. I sneak into and out of your rooms easily enough.”

“I was virgin,” she protests. Tears threaten, but her pride is great enough that she refuses to let them fall. “The night we first lay together.”

He shakes his head, denying her claim.

“Please, John. It’s not so awful. We can be married.”

“I have a destiny,” he insists. “You’re asking me to deny my calling.”

She pulls back, stung. “I would never,”

He grips her wrists, hard. “Get rid of it.”

She blinks, sure she had misunderstood. “What?”

“Find a wise woman and have it taken care of.”

That he would suggest such a thing… “John, please. This is your child. Our child.”

Pain explodes across her cheek and it takes her a moment to realize he’d backhanded her.

“If you name me, I will deny you.” He turns and strides from her room.

She sits numbly for a long time. No tears will fall. Not for her foolish heart, which has been broken into a thousand jagged little pieces. Not for the life growing in her womb, the life her lover ordered her to snuff out. She is too angry to cry. At John, but mostly at herself.

A knock sounds on the outer door to her chambers. “My lady? Your father wishes for you to perform at the gathering tonight. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Pharaildis meets the serving girl’s dark eyes. “Tell him I will be there soon.”

She takes her time, dressing in her finest outfit. Covering the ugly red mark on her cheek. Her body is still her own, still capable of graceful movement, of enchanting men. There is nothing in her head, the rage blotting out all around her but her purpose. She takes no notice of her surroundings as she strides down the halls. Ignores the admiring glances that follow her, the envious stares of the women as she takes her place.

“There you are, my dear.” Her father smiles. “Would you delight us all with a dance.”

She nods and then waits. When the music starts, she turns and sways, bends and explodes into sensual movement. Power and grace fills her. The room disappears, the people disappear as she loses herself in the dance. It is a dance to enrapture, a dance to consume, a dance never to be forgotten.

When she falls into her final bow, her father is on his feet. “Name your price. Name it and so it shall be yours.”

She stands and stares out at the crowd, heart thundering.

“Deliver unto me the head of John the Baptist.”

Becoming Human

The hours grind into days and tumble into weeks. Winter turns to spring, to summer. My waistline disappears as Addison Sophia grows larger and larger inside me. I smile at her first kick. She’s a fighter, this one.

Like her father. The smile disappears.

No news comes from across the Veil. No sign of Nightweaver. No word from the Wild Hunt. Liam leaves us long enough to retrieve the rest of his pack from Germany and bring them to the farm.

“You don’t need to stay,” I tell the Alpha who has appointed himself as my surrogate big brother.

“You’re pack too,” he tells me. “We watch out for pack.”

Try as I might, I have no memory of him or any of the others. The mindwipe is flawless.

Night after night, dreaming about Pharaildis and the man she called John, I contemplate letting Chloe mindwipe me again, if only to expunge the memory of the two of them. Every dream I have is tied to her. To my mother. Underhill is—and will always be—a heinous bitch. But she was once a girl with dreams. A girl who thought herself in love with a much older man.

One who, if the dreams are accurate, took shameless advantage of her vulnerability and her loneliness.

I’d seen her imprisonment. The dreamer tethered to the fey lands by the Norns. After ordering John’s execution, she’d gone to sleep in her own bed and woken in the dark cavern in the Unseelie Catacombs. No trial, no chance to explain her actions, just imprisoned and abandoned.

She heard the fey voices, all of them, begging for magic, for power. Their voices stayed in her head, day and night, beseeching, demanding, raging when she didn’t help them. They didn’t know her name. Didn’t know she had once been a person.

The one from last night was the worst. I’d seen myself—or rather Nicneven—being born. She’d been imprisoned for months. The pains had come on her suddenly in the middle of the night, sharp enough to penetrate her depression. For hours she’d paced and cursed, the ground beneath her very feet quaking as it mirrored her pain. She’d cried out for her father, her dead lover, anyone to help her.

“I want