Page 56 of What Fools These Immortals Be
I swing my gaze back to Maurice again. He’s smoothing down the shoulders of my jacket, but when our eyes meet, he pauses.
I don’t know which one of us starts laughing first. It’s absurd, really, how panicked we are, because the worst Afsaneh will do is tell me to be more careful, and I think she would believe even that to be an overstep.
Maurice gets to his feet, offering a hand to help me up. I sway into him, dizzy from the way he touched me, from the way I know this attraction is returned.
“Do you want me to stay for this?”
“I… No,” I say. There’s no sign of offence in his expression. “We’ll be fine alone.”
“All right.” He runs his hands through my hair, fingers untangling the knots.
“Will I see you later?”
Maurice purses his lips. “See how you feel,” he says. “You might find yourself with a lot of work to do afterwards.”
It’s not a brush-off, but it is a way out, and though right now I have no intention of taking it, I know things can change. “Okay. What can I tell her about the fae?”
“Just to look out for them,” Maurice says, no hesitation, and I know that trust is hard-won. “Not what we’ve been out there doing.”
I nod again and Maurice kisses my cheek before he crosses to the door. Afsaneh smiles at him as he ushers her inside, but the smile fades when she realises he has left.
“I hope he was not leaving on my account.”
“No, I thought it might be better for just the two of us to meet.”
“Hmm.” Afsaneh looks me over with a critical eye. “You might want to tuck your shirt in a little more neatly, crai.”
I flush and attend to that as she takes a seat on the sofa. I sigh and sit back down at the other end. Afsaneh asks nothing more about Maurice, and I explain all that happened with Augustine, as well as the conversation I had with Maurice about how Quinn was manipulated.
“We do not technically owe Augustine anything,” Afsaneh says when I’m finished. “Quinn has joined a pack since the murder occurred, and his original alpha is dead, so there’s really no question that responsibility for him lies with Kieran. If Augustine is that desperate, he can take his concerns to Deacon himself.”
“He knows Deacon won’t even entertain the idea of Quinn entering into a challenge.”
“No,” Afsaneh replies, “but you said already that Kieran offered himself up in Quinn’s place. If this happened to one of us, I would not expect anything different. I mean, if it were a one-off, I would hope that the perpetrator would face somejustice within their pack too, but we all know that this was an unusual situation.”
“Unusual.” That’s one word for it, I suppose, and from Afsaneh’s grimace, she does too.
She was here the night Tamesis attacked the clan. That came before the final fight; it was when he took me, Elle, and Adam. As much as it was terrifying to be with him and those who’d followed him here—whether they’d made the choice to or not—at least there was something that madesenseabout it.
I did not have to clean up the broken bodies here. I did not have to look upon the destruction of our home.
“What is truly going on, Njáll?” Afsaneh asks. “You and Maurice… You have been spending a lot of time together.”
And there’s that. She has noticed the meetings I’ve missed, and I don’t feel the annoyance I expect to.
“I can’t talk much about it,” I reply. She frowns, but I shake my head. “It’s to do with his… work. But he told me to tell you to look out for the fae.”
To her credit, Afsaneh does nothing more than frown. Has she already noticed something? “Very well,” she says. “I will inform one of you if I notice anything.”
“Thank you.”
She inclines her head gracefully and I let out another heavy sigh. Thereisa matter I need her help with, when I think of it, and it is something I will take to all the chieftains in time.
“We need another chieftain,” I say, and Afsaneh’s lips twitch.
“I was wondering when you would come back to that.”
“No matter how much you all help her, it is too much to ask Elle to handle two districts on her own. Especially with…” I don’t know that the fae are a threat to us all. I don’t think the situation is as dire as that with Tamesis. But I still want to be prepared. “Everything,” I say finally, waving a hand.
