Page 62 of Made

“Now?”

“What else are ye doin’?”

Vidar chuckled. “Lead the way.”

Of course, one of the nicest perks of being a demigod was that Vidar could appear anywhere he wanted, anytime he wanted. But an invitation to be a guest of a member of the royal family made thingssomuch easier. It would give him the chance to poke around. Who knew? Perhaps he might even encounter a baby dragon.

CHAPTER TWELVE To the Max

I was getting my pups settled for the night when I heard deep voices coming from the kitchen. So much for getting the dogs ready for bed. They were off and away, scrabbling to gain purchase on wood floors so they could either greet or gut whoever was up and about in the wee hours of the sun’s renewed cycle toward summer. I followed, tying the sash of my robe as I went.

Keir was petting Frey while her brother tried to comfort Kagan.

“Sleep in the cottage,” Keir told him. “I’ll come for you if we hear anything.”

“Anything.” Kagan was trying to extort a promise.

“Anything,” Keir reassured him. Four pairs of eyes turned toward me when I entered the kitchen: two sephalia and two fraighound. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I wasn’t asleep.” I yawned. “But I could be. Soon.”

Kagan’s responding sigh made me feel guilty about admitting that I could sleep. I knew he wouldn’t get a wink until Esme’s place in the world was restored.

I’d never run a marathon, or so much as around the block as an adult, but I could imagine I was that tired. Bone tired. Too tired to sleep. No matter how much I wanted it.

When Keir slid into bed, I scooted into the place in his arms that had been made just for me.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“It’s crazy. I’m exhausted, but I can’t stop wondering about Esme. And Kagan made me feel guilty about sleeping.”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

I willed myself to stop talking, knowing that Keir deserved to sleep even if I couldn’t. The only encouragement he needed was my silence and, in a couple of minutes, his breathing was long and steady. The darkness seemed to be full of noise. There was Keir, the dogs’ soft snoring, but something else. Something indefinable. I tried to reach out to Esme with my mind, just to let her know I was thinking about her.

“NOOOOOO!!!”Basically, the only part of Esme that responded to mental commands was her voice. The rest of her body was useless. Paralyzed. She didn’t care who might launch accusations of vanity. The fear she felt at the prospect of having her head shaved was every bit as potent as the fear of death. “It’s my hair. You can’t take it without my permission!”

Actually, she’d learned the hard way that the Cardinals could do whatever they wanted to her. She had no cards. No leverage. Nothing of value to offer.

Except…

She steadied her tone and infused it with all the sincerity of her soul, imagining a day when she would have to face Kagan without hair. It was salon torture and not to be tolerated by any standard of how magic kind are supposed to treat one another. She was thinking about the possibility of suing, but that thought was quickly followed by a reminder of the magistrate’s exaggerated view of right and wrong. She was thinking that I would probably rule infavor of the bald sisterhood to be triply certain she wasn’t accused of bias. She was directing her body to twist and avoid the shears, but it was useless. She was caught in some kind of weird physical stasis.

So, she played the only card she had. “If you shave my head, I willneverwork for you.”

The clippers went silent, leaving Esme to wonder what, exactly, had just happened.Did that work?She almost shouted with relief at the reprieve, however short or long it might be. Her captors looked at each other, clearly uncertain as to how to proceed.

Finally, the one holding the clippers spoke. “You refuse the honor of our sisterhood?” She said it as if nothing more unthinkable might be imagined.

“I do. I do. Ireallydo. I do conclusively and absolutely, and I will not change my mind.” Esme didn’t know whether this strategy was a winning proposition, but it felt like a lifesaver had been thrown overboard as she was drowning. The two left her sitting while they strolled away. Their conversation was animated, possibly intense, but she couldn’t hear anything being said. “If you wouldn’t mind returning control of my body? I’d very much like to scratch my nose?”

Both stopped and looked her way. With her verbal refusal of anything and everything they were offering, she’d finally garnered the attention she deserved. After a brief blur and sensation of motion sickness, Esme had been left in a secure situation that might be described as an open-air cage. She was standing on a platform in the clouds. No ceiling. No walls, but the drop on all sides appeared to go on to infinity. If she had been human, she would’ve gone mad with fear.

Since she wasn’t human, she simply sat down to await the next opportunity for protest, if not escape. A touch of warmth washed over her as she imagined that I might be worrying about her. Before I arrived in Hallow Hill, she’d had no real connection with others. She’d more or less gone on living because she wasn’t brave enough to facilitate the alternative. After so many long years with no one to care for and no one to care about her, it was nice to know there were two or three people who’d miss her. Myself. Evie. And now Kagan.

Esme felt a burning sensation behind her eyes. At first, she wasn’t sure what it was because she hadn’t shed a tear since the day she’d been forced to watch her mother be burned alive. Though she hadn’t made a formal pact with herself, her young soul decided it would be better to believe that people are evil than to be caught unaware. It was a philosophy that seemed to serve her well. Until me. She’d pushed me away as she had so many before, but unlike the others I was determined to be liked and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

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