NocC 021 - Jessa Slade - Dark Hunter's Touch - Harlequin 2012-08 by Nocturne

fumbled landing
and launched himself inland.
    She sank to a crouch, one leg folded under her in the wet sand.
She hugged her other knee so the pendant pressed into her breastbone. The
muscles in her thighs and wings quivered from exertion. The sensation was
nowhere near as pleasant as the night before when Vaile’s touch had inspired
shivers of desire. She drew the hot memory around her to ward off the chill
since her halter dress wasn’t much protection from the settling mist.
    She needed just another moment to remember the tilt of his
smile and how it had lifted her heart like a perfect breeze angled beneath her
wings. Another moment, and then she would force herself to rise and run.
    But she didn’t rise, because more than his touch she longed for
the piercing intensity of his gaze, how he had looked past the illusions and
gave her what she so wanted: a chance to feel.
    Her throat ached from the wheezing gasps. No wonder more than
one of her sylfana sisters had kept their human
lovers entranced, never to find their way back to the world. No wonder the Queen
was stealing and binding the power of emotion. More than the endless running,
more than the strain of flight, Imogene was crippled by the truth that she would
never again feel this way.
    She stifled the sobs. Phae tears
were too dangerous to shed in the sunlit world. Any magical thing might
fall—poison, evil dreams, a river to drown a village. More reasons the phaedrealii existed under prohibitions against the
Undoing.
    Not that she would have to feel anything much longer…
    While she mourned, the mist had grown heavy and pressed too
close to be natural. She lifted her face, and the droplets beaded on her
lashes.
    Through the swirling veil, the three hounds paced. Under heavy
studded steel collars, their nine heads hung low, blunt muzzles fixed on her
scent, panting up geysers of sand. At least she had led them a merry chase—merry
for them anyway.
    She pushed herself upright, grabbing the pendant as it swung
drunkenly, and locked her wobbling knees. Mere exhaustion… She was too numb to
feel fear.
    The center hound lifted its middle head, and the red-yellow
glint of its eye pierced the mist.
    But the hounds didn’t lunge toward her as she expected. Without
a sound, they fanned out to surround her. As they prowled in shrinking circles,
their claws left tracks filling with water like fatal wounds in the sand; they
could have her in pieces in less than a heartbeat.
    Equally silent, another dark shape coalesced through the mist.
Black wings arced sharply above the figure, nothing like the languid drape of
her wings.
    It was a Hunter, a being as remorseless as the sylfana were silly. Facing him now, she wondered why
she had ever thought she had a chance, even in the good old days when she was
still lying to herself.
    This made her stolen time with Vaile even more wondrous. She
lifted her chin as she waited for the Hunter’s inevitable command to attack.
    He halted, still wreathed in the mist. One of the hounds raised
its head and whined, eager for her blood, no doubt. The Hunter snapped his
finger and pointed. The hound half closed its red-yellow eyes in appeasement,
and all three slunk back to his side.
    She locked her gaze on the Hunter’s finger. A stone gleamed in
his ring. Hunters usually armed themselves with amber in flaming colors like the
hound’s eyes. The fossilized tree resin held magics perfectly suspended, much as
it encased insects, leaves and small stones. But this amber ring was blue.
    Blue, like the pendant around her neck.
    Her fist clenched around the stone, driving the edge of the
steel bezel into her flesh. Though the iron was too refined to hurt her, still
her heart constricted painfully. “Vaile. If that is your name. I have never
heard of blue amber.”
    “Imogene. And yes, that is my name, though I give it as rarely
as one finds blue amber.” He stepped out of the fog he had woven to disguise
himself from her.
    Actually, part of that