Page 123 of Gilded Wicked Mirrors
“Do watch out,” Emrys said, his eyes on his friend.
Giselle crossed her arms. “I am sure I'll be absolutely fine.”
“Oh, I know you will be.” His gaze touched Giselle’s for a moment. “I was warning her about you. I’ve seen the way you talk to and about gangsters. Spoiled old Teagan doesn’t stand a chance.”
Teagan scoffed but didn’t say a word.
“You’re not staying,” Quinn said with one hand on her wardrobe. She intended to get ready for bed after spending three hours helping Giselle in the ballroom, but Emrys wasn’t leaving.
“I am.” Emrys’s mouth flattened into a hard line. “Someone has to stay in your room. Seren is danger—”
“I am well aware of the situation.” Quinn crossed her arms and glared at him.
“Then you know exactly why I am staying in your room.” He gracefully fell into the armchair.
She glowered at his perfectly quaffed hair and divinely styled suit. “Stop acting like I’m some defenseless doll you can play with.”
He refused to answer. Instead, a taunting smile laced his lips, and he picked lint off his shirt.
“It’s safer for me than it is for you,” Quinn said. “Seren has your painting, but I don’t hear us discussing your safety.”
He squinted, his eyes whispering an emotion she couldn’t read. “I am an immortal. I can handle it, and you are—”
“A fragile little human?” Quinn scoffed.
“Precisely.”
A snake coiled in Quinn's stomach at his hurtful word as chills caressed her spine. “I am not as fragile as you believe.”
“Every human is as fragile as I believe.” He disappeared and reappeared at her side, leaning on her wardrobe. She tried not to flinch. She didn’t want to prove his point. “I could snap your neck in a second, and you’d never see it coming.” He reached out his arm to grasp her neck, but she swatted it away.
“Well, apparently, it doesn’t matter because I am marked, and I’m gonna become a vampire whether I like it or not.” She tilted her head up, her gaze a bloody machete.
A silence crawled between them—prickling and uncomfortable. Quinn reached out and grasped his hand and placed it around her neck. “So go ahead, snap my neck.”
His fingers curled into a gentle caress as he drew his hand away. “Stop being so . . .”
“So . . . what? Cavalier? Like you always are?” she snapped. “I am sorry if I think it is funny that you of all people are lecturing me about my life when you’re the one who stole it from me.”
That was not fair, and she knew it. She also knew that he’d asked for her permission. She was just lashing out because of everything.Seren. The murders. Her feelings. And the last thing she wanted to be was a vampire. If she were honest, she also lashed out because she felt herself getting too close to him. Feeling too much. And thatcouldn’t happen.
To love someone was to give up too much control.
Intimacy, connection, friendship . . . it was a plague to the heart. So, she choose antagonism.
She breathed in a slow, steady breath, trying to calm herself.
“At least turn around so I can get dressed,” Quinn said, pulling out the least glamorous négligé she could find, but this was the palace, so they were all glamourous.
When he’d fully turned around, she quickly undressed and threw on her sleeping attire. “What about Giselle and Jevon? Who is watching them?” she asked, closing her wardrobe.
“Teagan is staying in Giselle’s room, and my second is with Jevon. They’re safe, just like you.” He emphasized his last words, making his earlier concern abundantly clear.
“Fine.” She sighed, walked to her bed, and slid under the covers. Emrys returned to the armchair, and she felt his gaze on her like a living breathing thing.
She lay there and stared at the carved bedframe, trying to avoid the electric tension in the room.
Eventually, she said, “Are you going to sit on the chair all night?”
