Page 116 of Bound
I rear back to punch him again and Ruin steps between us. “Enough,” he snaps. His eyes narrow on Caine and the demon raises his glowing hand in placation. He turns to me. “Why would Jarrah want to give her magick?”
“Honestly?” He nods. “I think he loved her,” I admit. “It’s the one thing he could give her. The one thing her brother can’t.”
He mulls that over. “And Ralf went along with it because …”
“He wanted the power, too. Just not for the same reasons.”
His head bobs a bit. “Okay. That sounds crazy enough that it may track.” He scrubs his jaw. “I need to speak to the mayor. They need to know what was going on here. Hells, I’m sure they will send in their own people to scope things out.” He turns to us. “We keep a lid on the Brightex angle until we can verify it, true?”
We nod.
“I also want blood work done on all the lords. If they have even a hint of Brightex in their system, we need to know. But discreetly.” He runs a hand through his short dark hair and peers at me. “As for the Night Stalkers, hopefully they killed each other off.”
I snort. “Our luck doesn’t work that way.”
“True,” he mutters. “But pray this time that it does.”
Caine makes a sound of disgust and raises his hand. “Can I be excused from the praying part?”
Ruin rolls his eyes and starts back toward the tunnel, his cell phone already in his hand.
“Ruin?” Caine calls, chasing after him. “Seriously, can I be excused from the praying? It gives me this awful rash on my—”
“You okay?” Tanner asks as he steps into my side.
I shrug. “Sure.”
“Bullshit, man.”
My sigh is heavy. “I will be, how about that?”
His smirk is all white teeth in his tan face. “True.” He looks down the tunnel. “Your girl did good,” he tells me. “She held it together well for a fairy princess.”
A flush of warmth sparks inside me, and I can’t quite stop my mouth from curving. “Yeah. She did.” But as fast as the flare of happiness comes, it fades. I roll my shoulders back and start after Ruin without looking at him. “But she’s not my girl.”
The colony house is quiet and cool as I exit the tunnel. I take another long draught of coffee and consider going to bed. The grandfather clock in the corner says it’s well after 4 AM. The Fae lords have been doctored and given rooms in the main manor.
Of the three, Bran suffered the most injuries. It seemed Jarrah had some residual aggression he needed to work out when they were taken.
An aggression that I can now understand.
The way Bran looked at Amoret and myself in those trees … He knew. It wasn’t a suspicion or a hunch. He knew how close we had gotten and he didn’t like it. At all.
And if I am being honest with myself, I agree with him.
Being around the lords was like a bucket of ice water over my head. They are what Amoret should be with. Who she should be with. Her own kind. Her people.
Family.
The familiar twinge in my chest seems harsher now, grated open by the pain of Amoret moving away from me in the forest. Like there was something wrong about us being together. Something … shameful.
And maybe she’s fucking right.
I’m exiled. I’m nothing.
But when I’m with Amoret, I don’t feel like nothing.
She makes me feel like I can be good. Like I candogood. Even with us being taken, with her being in danger so much since she got to town, I want to protect her. But I also know she can protect herself.
