Page 152 of Never Kiss a Fae
A practical course, yes.
But how would that impact Claire? She already loathed me. I could sense that much in our initial bond. Oh, her water element was very attracted to mine. But the woman, well, I’d done myself no favors by kissing her.
“Fuck,” I muttered, my shoulders hunching again.
Pragmatism nagged at me, whispering the rightness of the situation, how I could use it to my advantage in locating my brother. It was only an initial bond. Temporary, at best. Once I completed the task and saved him, I would release her of our obligations to one another, and she’d be free to mate with another Water Fae.
That sounded easy enough. And she’d be so thrilled with having Exos back that she wouldn’t care. In fact, she’d be relieved to see me gone.
So how do I use this link?I wondered, exploring it further. If she felt me prodding around, she didn’t react, but I certainly felt her fury at what I’d done.
I sighed.
This was going to be painful.
The things I did for my brother.
Chapter17
Titus
Idropped the peach to the ground, stunned.
What.
The.
Fuck.
Was.
That?
“Titus?” Vox asked, hovering over another tree that Sol was struggling to get to twist just right into formation. We’d been at it for hours. When Claire came back home, she’d have a peach orchard of a paradise in the back of the Spirit Quad.
If Cyrus would give her death, then we would give her life.
“Did you guys feel that?” I asked, stumbling back into one of the finished trees. A few peaches thumped to the ground and burst a sweet scent into the air. My flames had a mind of their own and threatened to burn the precious life pressing against my spine.
Sol grabbed me by the arm, abandoning his project and making Vox curse as the boughs slapped him in the face. “Something’s wrong with you,” the giant observed.
No shit.
“It’s like… she’sdrenched.” Claire was always my burning flame, but now something had doused her with an unexpected tidal wave that had hit me just as hard.
And she was pissed off about it, fighting it as hard as she could as her flames called for me, seeking for anything to evaporate the hopeless ocean that threatened to consume her.
But there was something even I could feel that made her hate herself. She had allowed it, even if it was brief. It’d been enough.
Sol frowned, dropping me to a sandy spot of the courtyard where I’d been working to make the soil fertile with touches of fire. My flames immediately spiraled out and sank into the ground, crystalizing the fine grains. It was as if my element was trying to reach out to her, to protect her from…
Him.
“Is Claire okay?” Vox asked, sweeping his hair back into a warrior’s tail and securing the strands. “Do we need to go after her?”
It warmed my fiery heart that the Air Fae wouldn’t think twice about marching into the Spirit Kingdom. I shook my head. “Even if we could survive in that shithole, it wouldn’t be for long. And…” My eyes narrowed as my fingers curled into fists. “As pissed off as Claire is, she won’t need our help.”
“Why’s she pissed off?” Sol asked, crouching to look me in the eye.
