When at last I heard the bathroom door swish open and closed I let out a sigh of relief. I needed to get out of this place. I wrapped myself in an air glamour and slipped out of the stall.

I debated on whether or not to wait until someone opened the door to leave, but I really wanted to get out of there. I left the stall I'd been in and hurried to wash and dry my hands before opening the door to leave. A couple of giggling young women pushed the door from the opposite side at the same time and one of them stumbled into the ladies' room.

"That was weird," one of them said as I slipped past and out into the hotel.

The sense of not belonging was stronger now as I made my way out of the hotel and to where Adam had parked his SUV. Loneliness snuck up on me, tightening my muscles and making my head ache.

It was dark now. And I couldn't be a part of Adam's world.

I used my air element to unlock the door of his SUV before climbing in and shutting the door. I sat there in the cold while I waited for Adam to come and hoped he would get my coat that I'd checked in earlier.

The vehicle was cold inside but that didn't bother me as much as the length of time I sat there alone. I looked down at my dress and felt ridiculous at the way the plum color looked against my amethyst skin. My blue hair clashed with it, too, as I leaned forward and my hair fell over my shoulders.

I had the strong urge to leave. I didn't want Adam to see me like this. It didn't matter that he'd seen me plenty of times in my Drow form. Right now I felt so out of place that I might have cried if I had the ability to do so.

An hour passed before Adam made it to the SUV. He climbed in, leaned over the console, and gave me a quick kiss. "I'm sorry, Nyx." He drew away. "Pictures took longer than I thought they would and a group of old friends grabbed me and I had a hard time getting away." I'd been forcing smiles all night, so I managed to now. "I'm sorry you had to leave so soon because of me. I should have thought of that when you asked me to come."

"It was nice having you with me." Adam touched the side of my face. "I'm just sorry I didn't get a chance to introduce you to my brother. They all were asking where you were. I told them you didn't feel well."

He started the SUV and drove me back to my apartment before parking and walking me to my door.

Before I could open the door, Adam brought me to a halt, turned me to face him, and clasped both my hands. "You're going to visit your parents for the next few days?" I frowned. Lawan was missing. Should I be out looking for her? At the same time I realized that getting answers from my father might be a way to learn how I could find her.

Also, I hadn't spent much time with my parents for the past two years and I'd planned this trip for a long time. They would be disappointed if I changed my plans.

"I'll come back sometime Monday," I said. "Is your family still planning on going to your parents'

winter home in Fort Lauderdale?"

Adam nodded. "I'll return on Monday, too. I'll give you a call." He kissed me, a light brush of our lips. "See you when you get back."

I tried not to let my surprise show that he wasn't coming in with me.

"See you," I said quietly before I let myself into my apartment and closed the door behind me.

FOURTEEN.

Saturday, December 25.

"I can't breathe." The words came out my mouth in a high-pitched squeak as my father hugged me in his tight, muscular grip.

He laughed and set me back on my feet. My father had a deep voice and a laugh that echoed off the stone walls of the transference chamber.

I was still trying to catch my breath as my mother embraced me. "You need to come home more often," she said as we hugged each other.

"Nyx needs to move back home, Kathryn," my father said as I stepped back from my mother. He looked and sounded rough, displeased. "It is more and more dangerous for my princess to stay in that Earth Otherworld."

Not this again.

"New York has been my home for over two years now, Father." I looked at the tall, big, and muscular male who looked every bit the king of the Dark Elves. He would be intimidating to most, but I'd had him wrapped around my little finger since I was born. "I love it there." Mother smiled at my father. "None of this now, you big Troll. We're going to enjoy having our daughter home for the next few days."

"And convince her to stay here where she belongs." His long blue hair fell over his shoulders as he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. "It is good to have you home, my princess."

"It's good to be here," I said and added, "To visit."

"Humph." My father motioned to one of the guards stationed at the door to the transference room. In the language of the Dark Elves, he said to the guard, "Tell Locke we will be ready for dinner to be served in an hour."

The guard bowed. "Yes, my king," he said before he exited the room.

My father only spoke English with my mother and me. He spoke flawless English with only a hint of an Old World accent.

"Do you ever get tired of people bowing to you and calling you things like 'my king,' or 'my lord,'

or 'your highness'?" I looked up at Father. "After all of these years hasn't it grown a little old?" He looked surprised at my question. "I am king. Of course not." I'd sure gotten tired of being called "my princess" before I left home. But then my father had been a king for over two thousand years. It was simply how things were with him.

A bare-chested warrior with dark brown skin, silver hair, and silvery-gray eyes came to the transference chamber and bowed to my father. Rhain. He was built much the same as all of the other warriors, muscular and fit. But he was taller than most and to me he'd always been beautiful.

Rhain's refusal to meet my gaze could have been for a number of reasons, including the fact that my father was standing in front of him. Father didn't approve of any warriors giving me attention. The truth is most males didn't approve of me at all because I'd been allowed to train with them and females are supposed to be subservient. My father indulged me-he could never say no to me. And I think that he liked having someone to teach his warrior's skills to.

But I'd had what humans call a "crush" on Rhain since my teen years and at one time he'd been nice to me. So it stung as he pointedly ignored me as he said to my father, "Declan has returned with news."

"Have him meet me in the throne room," Father said, and Rhain gave another quick bow before leaving.

"Yestin," my father said to the guard. "Take the princess's haversack to her chamber."

"Yes, my lord." Yestin came forward and bowed to my father before he took my pack and left.

"I will see you at supper." My father hugged me again and he kissed my mother before striding out of the chamber.

It occurred to me that I was human right now, not Drow, so it would only have made me more different, separating me from all Dark Elves even more than I already was.

I wondered how Adam would like my father and then how my father would like Adam. I frowned. I didn't think he would be intimidated by my father, but I also didn't think they'd be best buddies right off. I wasn't sure my dad would approve to begin with just because Adam was human.

"Is something wrong, Nyx?" Mother put her arm around my waist and I put mine around hers as we started out of the transference chamber. She was wearing a beautiful long gown in royal purple, a gown befitting a queen, and the material was soft beneath my arm as we walked together. She added, "You look like you're thinking about something you're not happy about." Trust Mother to know when things weren't right with me. I suppose that's what mothers are for.

When we reached the hall outside the chamber, I looked at Mother and gave a half smile. "Just thinking about things."

"Guy things?" she asked while we headed arm and arm toward my personal chamber.

"Yeah." I shrugged.

Mother had always been my best friend and confidante growing up in the Drow Realm. I was more or less an outcast with females for the same reasons I was an outcast with males.

It had taken time, but the Dark Elves had eventually fallen in love with my mother even though she was human. She didn't practice the submissive lifestyle, but was beautiful, feminine, kind, caring, and obviously loved my father deeply.

She'd proven herself to those who became her people, time and time again with her acts of kindness and generosity.

"Tell me." My mother said it in a way that only best friends could. "You've fallen for someone, haven't you?"

I looked at her. She was a couple of inches shorter and her skin fairer than mine from living underground for so many years, but she looked to be about my age. Once she had come to live belowground, she had stopped aging.

"His name is Adam." Usually his name sent pleasure through me, but right now I felt confusion.

"He's an NYPD detective. We've been dating for a few months but we've known each other longer than that."

"Ah." Mother had grown up in New York City so she was familiar with the NYPD. "A human, yes?"

I nodded.

"Tell me about this Adam." She gave me one of her brilliant smiles. "Are you in love with him?"

"Very much so." I wish I could have smiled, too, but after last night and the way it had left me feeling ...

"You're having doubts," she said as her expression grew more serious.

We reached the heavy wood and iron door to my chamber and stopped. "Yes," I said as I waited for the male guarding my door to open it.

He bowed to Mother and me before we walked into my room and he shut the door behind us.

My bag was waiting in the room. Burning wood crackled in the small fireplace, the smoke carried up through air vents that were released somewhere aboveground. Fat candles had been lit throughout my room and both the candles and the fireplace cast shadows on the walls.

Mother had made sure my old room felt warm and welcoming, not cold and dreary. It didn't have the musty odor shut off places normally did. Instead, I smelled the potpourri she had simmering in the fireplace along with burning wood and the tallow candles.

The realm of the Dark Elves had been stuck in the Middle Ages like the rest of Otherworld, but my mother had made sure I had many comforts from the Earth Otherworld she'd grown up in. Like a huge mega-comfortable bed that I loved.

I flopped down on the end of the bed, lay back on it, and stared up at the stone ceiling. The bed dipped as my mother sat beside me and then I felt the warmth of her palm on my knee.

All of the nooks and crannies on my ceiling were so familiar. I'd stared up at this ceiling for the first twenty-five years of my life. The ceiling I looked at when I woke up in my apartment in the city had become normal, but this one made me feel like home. I wasn't sure I liked that because New York was my home now, not Otherworld.

"Tell me about this young man." Then I heard the smile in Mother's voice. "Around here anything under a century is young."

I pushed myself up so that I was sitting on the edge of the bed and smiled at my mother. "He does fit that bill. Adam is in his thirties, so Father would just consider him a babe."

"Adam," my mother said. "I always liked that name when was I was growing up in the Earth Otherworld."

"Do you miss it, Mother?" My tone became more serious. "New York?"

"Sometimes." She braced her palms on the bed to either side of her and met my eyes. "But it's been a very long time since I lived there. Over thirty years."

"You were young." I swung my legs back and forth as I talked. I was wearing a pair of Dior slacks and a cashmere sweater. Not being in a dress set me apart from other Drow women, too. "I'm surprised Father didn't think eighteen was too young."

"Your father thinks that 'too young' applies to you because you are his little princess." She smiled. "When we met it was magical. And I had always been mature for my age."

"Strange how you ended up in Otherworld," I said. "One moment you were in Manhattan, and then poof, you were here."

"Down the rabbit hole, I always thought." She started swinging her legs, too, her purple-slippered feet peeking out from beneath her dress. "I found out much later, after we were married, that your father had seen me in a vision. He had the Seer locate me and then your father used the transference to bring me here.

"One day I was walking to my first class my freshman year at NYU," she said, "and the next I found myself aboveground in Otherworld where it was night. I met him in the forest with only moonlight to see him by."

"I've never heard the whole story," I said. "Didn't you feel manipulated?"

"It was romantic, exciting, new." She smiled. "He was so handsome and strong. Intelligent, powerful. I fell for him the first night I met him."

"The blue hair and blue skin thing didn't freak you out?" I said.

Mother tilted her head to the side. "It was dark, so the first few nights I thought it was just a trick of the shadows in the forest. Each night he sent me home and then brought me to him again the next night. Night here, not in the Earth Otherworld. So it was like being in the night all of the time."

"And you just went with it?" I said.

"I was young and rebellious." She looked at me. "I'd spent my entire life as an orphan in foster care and I wasn't your average eighteen-year-old."

"You must not have been average," I said, "to have left behind everything you had and knew for a life here."

"It took some getting used to, but I was so in love with your father..." She sighed, a happy sigh. "I still am."

"What about all you left behind?" I said. "You didn't have family, but what about friends?"

"Because I was moved around so much, I never had a chance to develop many close relationships," she said. "And your father was worth everything that I did give up."

"You are amazing, Mother." I looked at her. "You came from a world where you were an independent young woman to the medieval male-dominated world of the Dark Elves."

"Nothing amazing about that," she said. "I was in love with your father." She raised her hand, only her pinky finger lifted up. "And I had him wrapped around here long before you had him wrapped around your little finger." It was almost as if she had read my thoughts earlier.

"You sure did." I shook my head. "Although I can picture the kind of reception you got as a new human queen who refused to be submissive."

"I submitted to your father, Nyx," she said, suddenly looking serious. "But it's not about doing things against my will. He honors and loves me. It's easy to want to please him. He has always treated me like a queen. And I treat him like a king. It's why we still love each other and why we are still happily married after all these years."

I thought about her and my father for a few moments. "I went to a reception with Adam and met his family yesterday," I said. "His family was nice, but it was so hard evading their questions and not being able to tell them the truth about me."

"I understand." Mother squeezed my knee with her hand. I'd forgotten it was there. "Don't let that hold you back in your relationship. Don't shy away from it and don't fight your feelings. There are no rights and no wrongs in love if it is love. It is what it is."

"No rights and no wrongs?" I said. "What about abusive males and females?" She stared at the fireplace. "Not every man is meant to be a lover, a husband, a father. Just like not every woman is meant to be a lover, a wife, a mother." She turned her gaze to me. "I believe they have some need they want fulfilled and they can't figure out what that is. The people they harm..." This time when she looked away I thought there might be a tear in her eye. "That child or adult doesn't fill the need of their abuser so the abuser's internal pain is taken out on the one they supposedly love." She still didn't look at me as she added, "A person like that doesn't know what real love is."

I felt a deep sadness for the girl my mother had been as I placed my hand over hers. "You've never talked with me about your life growing up in foster care."

"Like most abused children, it's not something we like to talk about," she said.

"I'm sorry. I leaned my head on her shoulder. "I had it so good growing up and I know that." I gripped her hand. "I love you and Father so much. Even though I don't come home often, I miss you."

"I know." Mother kissed the top of my head. "I don't have to tell you, though, to keep standing up to your father and live your life. Not the life he wants you to lead." I raised my head and smiled at my mother. "Maybe one of these days he'll 'get it.'" Mother laughed. "Not likely."