After the meeting, Niniane went to her room in the penthouse. There wasn’t any reason not to. She had left the bedroom in a mess after showering and getting ready for dinner with her new cousin and his attendants. Geril had flirted with her on the flight out from New York, which she had not exactly welcomed. They had gone out to eat at a Greek restaurant, and he had persisted over saganaki and stuffed grape leaves until she was forced to politely but firmly shut him down.
A second cousin flirting with the heir to the throne. I mean, come on. She hadn’t considered it exactly subtle, but she had slogged through the rest of the meal determined to keep an open mind and try to find something likeable about the man.
Yeah, well.
Her bedroom was the largest and most sumptuous of the six in the penthouse, and it was now immaculate. She lay down on the bed. When she closed her eyes, she saw Tiago’s tight, angry face, the sadness in his eyes as he looked at her, the muscle jumping in his jaw.
They were in fact Wyr who had attacked her?
Now, just wait a minute.
Now that she was no longer dealing with the Dark Fae delegation, the cacophony in her head had a chance to subside. The quiet opened up the way for all the memories she shared with the sentinels to come rushing back to the surface.
The hours upon hours they had spent drilling her on self-defense techniques, repeating each thing until she had mastered it. Despite her lack of aptitude, they wouldn’t quit and they wouldn’t let her quit when she got discouraged.
The outlandish rambling faerie-to-harpy heart-to-hearts she had shared with Aryal over the years.
The times when the gryphons had teased and flirted with her as they patiently put up with “babysitting duty,” when they had been pulled from their regular responsibilities to act as her bodyguard.
The gargoyle Grym’s quiet, undemanding companionship as he provided guard duty on her walks through neighborhoods during the holiday season, and the Christmas presents of handcarved wooden puzzles he had created just for her.
Dragos’s loyal support of her sometimes controversial choices on how to handle knotty PR issues, and his smiles of fierce satisfaction when she was proven right.
Tiago’s protectiveness, the gentleness with which he handled her, the way he had removed the stitches from her side and then pressed his lips to the scar.
She pushed upright as a rock-solid certainty settled back into its rightful place. The people who had attacked her and Tiago might have been Wyr, but Dragos and his sentinels had nothing to do with it. Of course they hadn’t.
Oh, Tiago.
She started to look around for her cell phone before she remembered it was still in her evening bag in the suite two floors down. Using the phone by the bed, she asked the hotel switchboard to dial the suite. She listened to it ring. Disappointment bowed her shoulders as no one picked up. When the voicemail system clicked on, she said, “Tiago, it’s me. I’m sorry I sent you away like that. It—the whole thing—just came as such a shock, that’s all. Please call me back if you get this, okay?”
She hung up slowly. He might have already gone back to the suite to collect his things and leave. It certainly wouldn’t have taken him long to get his things. He traveled light. She picked up the phone again and dialed the front desk. When a pleasantvoiced woman answered, she said, “Hello, this is Niniane Lorelle.”
“Your highness! Good afternoon, what can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to get a hold of sentinel Black Eagle and he isn’t picking up in the downstairs suite,” she said. “Have you, by any chance, seen him recently?”
“Yes, he left about fifteen minutes ago,” said the woman.
This time the disappointment was crushing. She covered her eyes. “I see.”
“Would you like to leave him a message?”
Would he even come back to the hotel or was he already on his way back to New York? “Yes,” she said, her voice leaden. “If you see him, please tell him I need to speak with him. It’s very important.”
After the woman promised to do so, Niniane hung up. And why wouldn’t he return to New York? He had seen her to safety, just as he had promised. After everything he had done for her, she had pretty much kicked him in the teeth.
She couldn’t think and didn’t want to feel, so she curled up on the bed again and closed her eyes instead. She must have slept because the next thing she heard was a soft knock. Rhoswen’s pure voice asked if Niniane would like a supper tray brought to her.