The Elven High Lord looked at her, and spring came to his winter-cold elegant face. “We see that Ferion did not exaggerate,” he said in a deep, musical voice. He inclined his head to her. “My lady. It is our very great pleasure to meet you. I am Calondir and this is my consort, the lady Beluviel.”
A fine trembling took up residence under her skin. The sense of exposure was back, and this time it was all but unbearable. In a whole long string of bad ideas, doing this teleconference in front of witnesses came close to topping the cake. Dragos’s fingers tightened on hers to the point of pain.
She took a deep breath. It was too late to back out now. Might as well see what she could make out of yet another screwup. “I’m honored to meet you,” she said. “Please forgive me. I don’t have any formal Court training.”
The Elven woman smiled at her. “Such things count as nothing compared to a good heart.”
Dragos said, “You wanted to see if she was all right. She is. We’re done.”
“Wait. We wish to hear that from her,” Calondir said icily. The Elven High Lord looked at Pia. “Lady, are you well?”
She glanced at Dragos’s stone-cold profile and then back at the Elves. She said on impulse, “I am being treated with extraordinary graciousness, my lord. While I did not want to, I actually did commit a crime. Dragos has heard the circumstances of what happened and what compelled me. He’s chosen to forgive me. I would respectfully ask that you consider doing the same for him. No harm has come to you from his actions. But a great deal of harm has come to him from mine, which I very much regret.”
Something stirred through the conference room, a sigh of movement. Dragos turned to look at her. The High Lord regarded her for a long, grave moment. “We will think on your words,” he said at last. “If the Great Beast is capable of grace, perhaps we can do no less.”
Feeling awkward, she bowed to the Elven High Lord. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“In the meantime, we would ask that you come and visit us,” Beluviel said. Her smiling eyes were warm. “Your presence would bring us much pleasure. We would speak with you of . . . well, of things from long ago.”
Pia translated that to mean Beluviel had known, and loved, her mother. Her eyes misted and she nodded.
Dragos stepped forward and pulled her behind him. The gesture was unmistakably possessive. Even from her limited view behind his shoulder, she could tell that the Elves had stiffened. “Stop that. What’s the matter with you!” she whispered to him. He was going to unravel all the good she tried to do for him. She shoved at his arm. It was like trying to move a boulder. He twisted to glare at her. She leaned sideways to look around him and she promised the Elves, “I’ll talk to him.”
The Elven High Lord raised his eyebrows. Ferion’s face was the picture of offense. Beluviel looked startled. The Elven woman had just begun to smile when the screen went blank.
Dragos rounded on her. He looked furious. “You are not going to visit with the Elves!”
“Did I say I was going to visit the Elves?” she snapped. “I was being polite! You might look that word up sometime in a dictionary!”
He glared around. “Out.”
The room emptied. Thistle gave Pia a gleeful ear-to-ear grin, eyes sparkling. The faerie held her hand up to her cheek, thumb and pinkie out, mimicking a phone. “We’ll talk,” she mouthed as she bounced out the door.
Pia tugged hard. Dragos refused to let go of her arm. She sighed and put a hand over her eyes as her shoulders sagged. She muttered to herself, “How did I get here and what the hell am I doing.”
Beside her, Dragos took several deep breaths. She could feel the air around him burning with Power. He was very angry with her, maybe for the first time since the beach. He dropped her arm and began to pace around her.
“The Elves know more about you than I do,” he snarled in her ear as he passed by. “Unacceptable. They know who your mother was. Also unacceptable. They want you to come live with them. They’re enemies of mine.”
The exposure, the constant stress, the uncertainties of her present situation, all became too much. “All I wanted was to try to help you!” she burst out. She threw her arms over her head and burst into tears.
He started to swear, a steady stream of vitriol. His hands came onto her shoulders. She jerked away and turned her back to him. His arms came around her from behind. He pulled her against him, curving around her, and put his head down next to hers. “Shh,” he said, still sounding angry. “Stop now. Calm down.”
She sobbed harder and hunched her shoulders, resisting his hold.
His body clenched. He said, “Pia, please don’t pull away from me.” He sounded strained.