“What about the twins?”
“What about them?” There’s a disinterested edge to his voice, which is an immediate contrast to the sharp tang of worry I feel echoing through the shadow.
I smile at him. “You’re worried about losing them too.”
“They’re little royal shits,” he says. “I don’t care what they do.”
I prod at his hard stomach with my other foot. “Liar.”
He grumbles. “Fine. But if you tell them I said this I’ll fuck you just to the edge of coming and then I’ll leave you to squirm. I’ll do that day after day until you can’t see straight.”
“I’ll just make myself come.”
His tongue pokes inside his bottom lip, watching me.
I huff. “Okay, yes, that would be fucking torture. Your secret is safe with me for the sake of your dick and your mind-blowing orgasms.”
He massages at the arch of my foot as he relents. “The twins pretend to be indifferent to their family and the connection they’ve lost. But they yearn for it. Every day. It’s not just about their wings. Or maybe they don’t even realize there’s something more, something harder to quantify, harder to name.
“We may be their found family, and I think we always will be with you at the center, holding us all together. But they need that connection to their people too. Not just the court, but the whole of the fae. The way through for the twins is to feel like they have a place among the fae.
“They would have been great leaders,” he finishes.
I nod, trying not to break the spell. I like listening to him speak about the others when he’s not trying to hide his love for us. Vane gives so little away, but in this moment, I realize that in his stillness, he gets to know us, maybe even better than we know ourselves.
He switches to my other foot, the muscles in his forearms twining as he massages my heel.
“So now what? What do we do about Tink?”
“Let us worry about her,” Vane says.
I lower my voice several octaves, mimicking him. “’Sit down, silly girl, and let the men do the work.’”
“That’s not what I mean.” He doesn’t sound offended. Instead, he sounds wary, like he knows I’m just being petulant.
“I can help.”
“I know you can.”
“So why not let me? I have the shadow and I can—”
He sits up and the water sloshes around him. His abs come out of the water and it stops me mid-sentence, the bareness of his body, the intensity in his gaze, the fact that not long ago he was spitting in my mouth and driving me away. And now we’re in a bath together and can barely stand to be apart.
“She will destroy you, given the chance.” His violet eye turns black and I feel the tug at the center of me, the shadow wanting vengeance and violence for something that hasn’t even happened.
But I can also feel Vane’s fear.
“We can’t let her,” he says.
I nod, and the darkness leaves his good eye. He leans back again and takes my foot in hand, but this time he moves up my calf and a shiver races across my shoulders even though I’m surrounded by heat and steam.
He’s trying to distract me. And I’m sad to say, it’s working.
“When we get to the palace,” he goes on, “you stay by my side. You don’t leave my side for any reason or any excuse. Do you understand?”
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
He presses harder on my calf muscle and my eyes pop open. “Too hard.”
“Do you understand, Win?”
“Fine. Yes. I understand.”
He continues up the curve of my leg, massaging at the back of my thigh, and I breathe out in an excited little gasp as he gets closer to my center.
“You got enough for one day,” he says.
“How dare you,” I say.
He chuckles, and it’s the single greatest sound in the world.
“Needy little whore.”
“Always.”
My eyes are closed again but I know he’s smiling.
11
BASH
When we return to the house, Pan is still missing, but Vane and Darling are in the loft, hair wet and disheveled. I try like hell to hide the heaviness in my bones.
The encounter with my sister is plaguing me like a fucking fat house fly that I can’t catch.
I see my sister’s face every time I turn inward, and worse, I see her fear.
She had no idea what she was signing us all up for when she made an offering of the throne to the lagoon. And now she doesn’t know how to get out of it, even if she won’t admit it.
And do I even want to help her?
She made her bed; now she can lie in it.
But even as I think the words, they feel hollow.
I’m frightened for her too.
“Hey,” Darling says when she sees us come in through the balcony. “How are you?”
Kas pours us drinks and I drop onto the couch beside Darling. She’s wearing a fuzzy robe that I think used to belong to Cherry. Her feet are bare, her legs curled beneath her body. Vane is close beside her, sharpening a knife, because of course he is.
“We saw Tilly,” I confess.
The blade stops scraping against the whetstone and Vane looks up from beneath a lock of his dark hair. “She still alive?”
I grunt. “Barely. Kas tried strangling her.”
“You did?” Darling asks him.
He’s at the bar, stoppering the rum and his back tenses at her question. He doesn’t like Darling seeing his dark side.
“She deserved it,” Vane says.
Darling frowns.
Kas comes over, two glasses nestled into the palm of one hand. His hair is tied up again in a messy twist at the back of his head. He gives me a glass and then sits across from me in one of the club chairs. “Tilly gave the fae throne to the lagoon as a sacrifice. She didn’t ask for our mother to be resurrected. But it’s what she got.”
Darling unfolds her legs and I can’t help but drag my eyes over her milky skin. Without thinking, I reach over, fingers on her bare thigh.
Immediately I feel better, if not exactly satiated.
I wish I was feeding her wet, ripe berries so I could watch the way her mouth parted for me, the way her eyes widened at the sweetness.
Why does everyone have to constantly be fighting on this island? Can we not just indulge in sweets and sex for longer than a day? For fuck’s sake.
The long, sharp claws of a wolf sound on the hardwood floor and a second later, Balder comes into the room, his dark fur still covered in snow.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I ask him.
His tongue hangs out, panting.
“Chasing tail?” I lift a suggestive brow.
He closes his mouth and sits back on his haunches, clearly having none of my bullshit.
Vane spits on the whetstone again and continues sharpening the knife. “A throne is a symbol of power, sure, and it has its worth, but it’s odd the lagoon would resurrect a dead fairy in exchange for it.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say. Darling nestles into my side, her head on my shoulder as Balder comes over and drops onto the floor in front of her. Darling hangs her foot so her toes can nestle into Balder’s thick ruff.
Everything happens with purpose.
We all look down at the wolf.