Page 58 of Monsters' Manor

Ren huffs a humorless laugh. “And I didn’t want to depriveyouof an anchor, if that’s what you thought Rosie was to you.”

I swallow painfully and turn to Silas. “It’s never mattered to me that I’m not your anchor. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

“It’s never mattered to me, either,” Ren murmurs.

Silas looks back and forth between us. “I owe both of you an apology. For the way I’ve kept myself at arm’s length. For pushing you both away when I should have… when we all could have been…”

His words send a fresh round of painful emotion surging up in my chest.

“I’m sorry, too,” I say.

“Make that three,” Ren chimes in with a wry edge in his voice.

Another beat of silence, and though all our apologies are hanging in the air, there’s a question hanging there, too. One I know we need to figure out the answer to.

“So what do we…” I start, not sure how I want to ask it. “Are the two of you… and how do I… what is all of this?”

“Both of us, Rosie,” Ren says in a breathless rush. “You can have both of us, if you want. The three of us can all be together.”

Simple. So simple, when he says it like that.

Can it really be that simple?

I look to Silas for confirmation.

“It’s up to you, darling,” he says, a tendril of darkness curling around my cheek.

Just like it did outside Odelia’s office, my decision comes to me immediately. Certain and steady, the answer to a question that never needed to be asked.

“Yes,” I say, leaning into Silas’s shadow and reaching out to take Ren’s hand. “Yes. I want both of you.”

Before I can react, Ren uses the hold I have on him to tug me into his arms and against his broad chest. He plunges his other hand into my hair and cradles me close, leaning down to run his lips over the top of my head.

“Rosie,” he says in an emotion-thick whisper.

A sharply indrawn breath pulls my attention from Ren. I glance over his shoulder, and the whole world seems to come to a standstill.

Standing there, as whole and solid and real as Ren and I, is… Silas.

19

“Silas.”

Stepping out of Ren’s embrace, I brush gently past him, eyes wide at the sight in front of me.

Silas—whole, real,here.

My hands shake as I run them over his chest, his shoulders, hold his face between them and stare up at him in shocked awe.

Silas in his corporeal form is… wondrous.

With his shadows cleared away, he gleams like a star.

Golden blond hair falls in a messy tumble as he runs his fingers through it, down the side of his face and lower still to cup my hand where it rests on his jaw, like he can’t quite believe he’s real, either.

He’s otherworldly handsome with sharp, refined features, eyes such a pale blue they’re nearly silver, and a sinfully full mouth I’m aching to kiss.

I don’t know if it’s too much for him, if he needs some time to adjust, so I run my thumb over the pad of his bottom lip.

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