Gross.
“I wasn’t,” I mumble against my hands, still keeping my face buried in them. It seems safer, considering the direction of the conversation.
“Hey, Judd?” Slade calls, and I peek out from between my fingers.
He perks up, looking pleased with himself. “Yeah, Commander?”
“Shut up.”
A quick nod precedes Judd’s cheerful reply. “Yep, will do.”
I laugh against my palms until Slade’s firm fingers wrap around mine and tug them away from my face. “Don’t mind Judd. He can’t help but be an unendurable prick.”
“It’s true,” Lu chirps. “He thrives on it.”
“Yeah, but I keep you lot entertained,” Judd defends.
Shaking my head, I turn back to Slade and look him over cautiously. “So…just to be clear, you don’t have a spike that comes out of your ass, right?”
Lu, Judd, and Osrik all howl in laughter.
Slade just sighs. “No ass spikes to speak of.”
Bright side.
“So, are you still glad you came out to camp?” Lu asks with a smirk on her face.
“Apart from all the ass and shit talk? Definitely,” I reply, and the others grin at me, as if that was the right thing to say.
The easygoing camaraderie between them all is visceral, filling me with a sense of comfortable friendship that I’ve never experienced before in my life. There’s no underlying bitterness or competitiveness in the way they joke with one another. There’s no sense of jealousy or resentment. Instead, there’s an intense certainty about them. As if they’re family, that they know each other inside and out, and even when they’re mocking or joking, I can feel the loyalty they have for one another.
“So, you’re Rip tonight,” I note, looking over the spikes jutting up from Slade’s uniform.
“I am.” He glances down as two of my ribbons start toying with the laces of his boot, and his lips quirk. “Little flirts.”
I shrug, because I give up on trying to hold back the cheeky things. “Do you change forms a lot?” I ask curiously.
“Sometimes it’s necessary. But other times, I do it when I don’t feel like being the king and dealing with everything that comes with it.”
“It’s like an escape for you.”
He nods. “It’s not always easy being King Rot,” he replies sardonically, but I can see the edge of bitter truth to that, and my heart aches for him. I can’t imagine what he carries on his back as not only a monarch, but a feared one. Sometimes even a despised one.
“I can understand that. I actually envy it,” I admit quietly, watching my ribbons continue to twirl around his shoes and ankles playfully. “If I could stop being the gold girl even just for a night, I’d jump at the chance to not be me.”
Slade’s finger and thumb suddenly come up to grip my chin, and he pulls my face to look at him, his intense eyes boring into me. “Never say that,” he rumbles, the timbre of his voice pitched in firm demand. “The world would be a dreary place without your light.”
My chest constricts, something warm scattering over me with the brush of his thumb.
“Shit,” Judd says in a groan. “Rip is being fucking cute, and it’s making me want to vomit.”
Another sigh passes through Slade’s lips as he drops his hold from my chin. “Hey, Lu?”
“Yeah, Commander?”
“Smack Judd for me.”
Quicker than Judd can dodge, she smacks him on the back of the head, making him grunt. “Ow! Why are you so violent?”
Lu flashes him a grin that’s all teeth. “Because it makes me happy.”
I can’t stifle the laugh that bubbles out of me.
“Come on, Mustard,” Osrik grunts as he gets to his feet, yanking up Judd by his sleeve. “Let’s go find some more wine for Lu. She’s always much nicer after she has a few pints.”
“That’s true,” she agrees.
The three of them wander off, and then it’s just Spikey Slade and me alone in the company of a wisping fire with fingers that taper up toward the icy sky.
“So…Goldfinch.” His voice has gone gravelly and decadent, his dark aura coiling around me. The look he gives me is both indulgent and sensual, and it makes my stomach spark with embers of heat. “Now that we’re alone, what should we do?”
The words may be a question, but his voice already has the answer, and it matches mine.
A coy smile appears on my face. “I have a few ideas.”