Page 155 of The Rogue's Curse

“I should be happy that we dealt with Shea, shouldn’t I? Perhaps I’m selfish,” he said.

Paris eased into the chair across from him. With Julian bound to him as a Maker and as the anchor of their court’s Covenant, he felt the turmoil boiling off him like wind in his face. “You are certainly not selfish, my friend,” he said.

Being close to Julian always filled him with sadness. His Maker was a somber, serious man, and had always been to some extent. He was the type to take in a peaceful moment and worry that it was too quiet, sure that the next crisis waited just around the corner. In his defense, he was often right.

But before the Midnight War, he’d had his moments of levity, when he could roar with laughter like the best of them. And in those painfully short years with Brigitte, he’d been so full of joy that Paris hardly recognized him. Quiet and serious, yes, but with a glowing warmth and contentment the man hadn’t shown since. She had brought Julian to life, like an unfurling bloom kissed by the sun.

Each loss, each dreadful cycle, had shattered that joy, ground the pieces into dust, and buried them so deep in the ground that the light could never find them again. It was a miracle that Julian still lived; they had feared for many years that he would take his own life. Early on, he had tried, and Paris and Alistair had fought tooth and nail to stop him, nearly losing their own limbs in the process. He still sometimes feared he’d wake up to find that Julian had finally lost hope. Sometimes he wondered in the silent shadows of his mind if it wouldn’t be kinder in the end to let him die.

And who could blame him? They hadn’t known the language for it back then, but Paris now knew that Julian and Brigitte had been soulmates. And if what he felt for her was a fraction of what Paris felt for Misha, it was no wonder that losing her had driven him into near-madness.

“Perhaps,” Julian said. He forced a smile and said, “You should go enjoy your night off. You’ve certainly earned it.”

“You could join us. Alistair would be glad to see you,” Paris said.

Julian chuckled. “I will be unpleasant company tonight, I’m afraid.”

“Never,” Paris said. He cleared his throat. “Normally, I am the last person to offer false hope.”

“Then don’t start now,” Julian said.

“Shoshanna has changed everything. If there was ever reason to have hope, it is her,” Paris said. He rose and leaned across the desk to take Julian’s hand, folding it between his. The connection between them surged to life. “I believe in her.”

“You can have your beliefs, but I cannot lie and say that I share them,” Julian said. His tight expression made Paris unspeakably sad. “Enjoy your evening, Paris. Tell Misha I said hello, and thank him for the blade.”

He slowly released Julian’s hand and nodded. The man’s stubbornness was tempered by his dubious wisdom; pressing Julian on this would only make him angry. And Paris had to admit that it was far easier to be hopeful now that his curse was broken. He’d been far more cynical a mere month ago, before Misha.

But if there was some powerful weaver of fate tugging at their threads, smoothing them out before binding them together in her grand design, he prayed that she had a better end for Julian. He had suffered long enough. In some ways, his curse had been the cruelest of all. He suffered no physical pain like Dominic nor nightmarish hallucinations like Paris, but he lived under a constant, heavy shroud of dread. He had expressed many times over the years that he would have gladly taken on suffering, any torture Armina could conjure, if she would only leave Brigitte alone and let her rest in peace. He had even tried once, hunting down the witch and offering himself. She’d let one of her apprentices toy with him before leaving him drugged, but unscathed, in a London alley with a letter marked with a date that they knew would be the next day Brigitte would die.

He didn’t know how Armina’s power worked, how she always ensured that Brigitte found her way to Julian. But Shoshanna’s studies had showed her that Armina was working against the whims of fate; she twisted the threads and bound the spirits to work against the flow. If anyone could untangle it, it was Shoshanna York.

Paris’s fretting over Julian came to an abrupt halt when he strolled out of the main building to find his handsome soulmate fussing with his sleeves under the moonlight. Now that the curse was broken, Misha was healthy and whole again, skin glowing with a fresh feeding and hair perfectly styled. He’d had an assistant from the Crown pack up his flat and ship over his clothes, and he wore a dark blue sweater that clung to his broad shoulders so intimately it made Paris jealous.

He’s mine, he marveled. A rich warmth pulsed up his arm and settled in his chest like a soft heartbeat, and Misha turned to smile at him— a gift better and brighter than sunlight.

“Hello, handsome,” Misha said, kissing his cheek and patting his ass as a greeting.

Paris grinned and fingered the sleeve of his sweater. “I like this. Good color on you.”

“Everything is a good color on me,” Misha teased.

“Everything is a good color on your floor, too,” he replied. “Ready?”

Misha laughed and joined him in the car. He spent part of the drive to Midnight Springs answering messages and making a call to Ophelia Klein, his liaison at the Sanguine Crown. Thus far, his transition to this side of the Atlantic had gone smoothly. He’d traveled up to New York last week to check on the Vasilieva court, who had been decimated when Shea splintered their court and tempted a solid third of their following to his side.

But Misha had told him firmly that this was home now. Eventually, they would find a place together, but for now, simply being together was good enough. Sometimes, Paris still woke in a panic, certain that Misha was just a dream. And sometimes, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever woken up at all; what if was he still buried deep in his broken mind?

Those thoughts were better handled with a belly full of blood and bourbon, and if he couldn’t be sure, then he was going to enjoy the insanity while he could. If he was living in an endless dream, there were worse fates than eating well and falling into bed each night with his soulmate, complete with all the sensual delights that accompanied it.

Tonight, Shoshanna and Alistair were celebrating their return to normalcy with a party for the court back at their lovely home in Midnight Springs. He and Misha were arriving early for drinks before the rest of the family arrived.

The wrought iron gates already stood open at the end of the winding driveway. Warm, glowing lights peeked through the trees as he drove past the brick fence.

Misha gasped, and his eyes glinted. “She’s gotten much stronger,” he remarked. He turned to Paris, stroking his arm. “You’re lit up like fireworks with her magic.”

“Is that your way of telling me I’m incredibly hot?”

“If I want to tell you that you’re incredibly hot, I’ll just say so,” Misha said. “In case I haven’t told you today, you are, in fact, incredibly hot.”

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