Her word choice makes me choke on air and Killian growl. The big guy folds his arms over his chest and glares at the woman. No one offers me a pat on the back, like suddenly I don’t exist, just a mortal struggling to breathe to the side of the important people in the room.
“It’s an honest question,” she begins, inspecting her nails as she talks. “That’s how these bonds work. Any mate would be willing to do whatever it takes to please her partner. No matter what kind of person they are during the day, at night, in Pax’s arms, she should be what he needs. I would be. If Pax likes romance, romance is what I’d give him. If he likes it rough, I’d take every blow with pleasure.”
More shock rocks through me. My world feels like it’s been slapped silly and is having all kinds of trouble finding balance again.
Dying in an attempt to please a man in bed is not something on my to-do list. It shouldn’t be on any woman’s list, and I don’t actually think it’s on Jada’s.
She’s offering another opinion buried in there that I can’t put my finger on.
“That’s how this kingdom was built, on Seeds and their needs. Breaking those things is at the core of the rot destroying us all. Why would Aunt Raefiya perpetuate that?” But she doesn’t give us time to respond. “I’ve never cared for who is ruling, you know that, only that they rule with every intention of making this kingdom great again, and this feels like a problem, not a tool or weapon, and not what the prophecy was intending to do. Why would –”
“Jada,” Killian cuts in, making the woman stop pacing.
She takes a deep breath, motioning with her hands like she’s physically pushing her worries down. “Sorry, you’re the last person who wants to hear this, and they’ll be expecting me back at the Castle soon. Walk with me?”
That last request comes out of the blue, with a suggestive tilt to her head toward the front door and the kind of warm smile that someone who has been secretly in a relationship might give a lover. I’m about to grab Killian’s arm and demand the man refuse her when he points solidly at me.
“She can stay here, the building is warded – the whole damn domain is warded, and the place is crawling with Elites.”
Killian doesn’t move. Like maybe the question is so ridiculous it doesn’t warrant an answer.
No matter what, Jada will lose this one, because even if Killian does go for a walk with her – I have to come too. Whatever the woman thinks she knows doesn’t include my bubble.
Before I get the chance to see how far Jada will push things, Seth jogs into the house. His breathing is faster, like he just ran laps around the cottage, but it doesn’t slow his bounce. Bounding all the way to the counter I’m sitting on.
“Jada, are you giving Vexy a hard time again?” he asks. “And Killian, are you playing spectator?”
Killian rumbles, a noise somewhere between being upset about the suggestion and amused by it.
But Jada’s feelings are clear.
She makes an exasperated noise and puts her hands on her hips. “Giving her a hard time? Seth, the world is ending, and she is supposed to be important, but all I see is infatuation and a whole lot of slowing you down. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she’s working for Lithael.”
“Do you?” Killian demands.
“Do I what?”
“Do you know better?” Seth adds.
“I’ll be finding out, that’s for sure,” she snaps, storming from the kitchen and out the front door.
She doesn’t slam the door, though, and her version of storming barely thuds on the floor. It is formidable, though.
I groan and lower my head to my hands. “Sounds like I made things worse.”
“You didn’t, Seth did.”
Seth holds his hands up in surrender and begins backing away from the kitchen, then turns and makes a quick escape up the stairs.
“Killian?”
He grunts ‘yes’ or ‘what?’
“What if there’s a seal to break this bubble?” I ask, even though I hate the fact that that would involve trusting Jada with my life.
He shakes his head. “No. Even if there was, Jada wouldn’t use it. Sealers wear a shadow of every piece of magic they perform, and they’re inspected at the Black Castle. She would never sacrifice her stature.”
I feel like there’s something missing on the end of that sentence – for a mortal.
“Paper and ink,” Seth requests, walking into the attic workspace and looking around for his short list of items.
No, not walking, more like springing.
“You had my book,” I accuse, holding up the manual – which now features notes from not just Seth but Killian and Pax too. “And Pax – Pax can’t read this.”
Seth taps the cover as he speaks, “Not yours, technically ours, and Pax was reading it – I took it off him before he got to the part about reproduction. He’s a slow reader, and most of his notes are ordering us to destroy the thing.”
I growl. “He can’t read it.”
“I know, that’s why I took it off him. You need to keep it more secure, down your braies or something.”
“Kitten will kill us if she finds out we’re making notes about her.”
“I told you, down your braies,” he says, patting his ass and returning to pacing around the room.
I pop the book open to the last lot of hand written notes. Where the original author talked about remedies for things I never want to encounter again. Mostly things that end up causing issues in the bedroom. The bottom most is an instruction for: prolonged soaking in an acidic liquid…
Under which Seth has written, Like that time in the Crimson Castle. Remember the blonde? And she wasn’t even mortal – Seth
Followed by Killian, I remember – Darkness
Hastily I add, Not important – RCDE
“You realize this was printed thousands of years ago and this author was either drunk on Silvari wine or high on Yaganda leaves or both?”
“Yep – but some of it is true. How do we work out which is which when we know so little about mortals? Before Vexy, I had never even held a conversation with a mortal.”
I groan, the problem is some of it does make sense – some of it I’ve already removed – and Eydis’ notes at the back are important.
“Just make more space in there for us to add our own information,” he shrugs, like the solution is obvious.
“That’s what I was doing.”
“Not your facts, Roarke. I mean, yes, your facts, but the rest of us can add our own stuff, memories and ideas and things. Just don’t get rid of the bedroom stuff, I want to use that.”
I growl, snapping the book closed. I know the pages he’s talking about, and I very specifically skipped over those so Kitten wouldn’t see the accompanying illustrations. Heat rises inside me just thinking about it.
“Paper and ink,” he repeats.
Distraction – yes. “Why?”
“Pax wants a map.”
“I’m sure your ass is in exactly the same place it has always been,” I mutter, putting the small manual in my back pocket before pulling some rolls of parchment off a shelf.
“Hehe, very funny. It’s not my ass he’s looking for. He wants a map of the domain, every rock and twig.”
“She’s almost out of ink, but she’s got plenty of chalk. What else does he want?” I ask absently, unwrapping the oversized charts and diagrams.
“I’m pretty sure cleaning house is on someone’s list. Thanks to you and Killian dragging mud through the place.”
“Uh huh,” I agree, putting the scrolls on the bench.
“And Vexy. But our fearless leader isn’t going to make her wash mud off the furniture.”
“That’s true,” I say, unraveling moon phases and plant life-cycles.
“Pax is escorting the Sabers back in. Hopefully Rose will start preparing the meat,” he says. “It’s now almost lunch time, and I’m starving – but at this rate we won’t have good food until after dark.”
I mutter a sound in agreement.
“One day I’m going to stick a frozen sausage in your ear.”
I open instructions on maintaining the plumbing system… that one seems rather unimportant, so I roll it in the reverse direction to flatten it out.
He grips the end of the scroll, pausing and making me look him in the eye.
“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?” he asks.
“All of it,” I say with a slow smile, the script replaying – all the bits I heard but wasn’t paying attention to making themselves clear.
“House getting cleaned, meat getting cooked. Is someone going to bring our clothes in too?”
He gives me a lopsided smile. “I can deal with the clothes. You just tell me that we’re close. That we almost have this solved.”
“I’m not fond of lying to family,” I deadpan.
He nods, taking the scroll from my fingers and giving it a flick. It unfurls, with a paper-on-paper swish, then springs back up a little. With his head tilted to one side, he inspects the diagram.
“We’re putting a map that could save Vexy’s life on paper that already features a septic system? That sounds like a shit idea.”
I groan, while on the inside my chest relaxes just a little. “On the back.”
Seth has that effect. Like the guy can absorb tension, sucking it right out of the room, or something similar. I gave up trying to understand his power when we were kids.
He would do things to piss Pax off, the two of them tearing through the castle in an enraged game of cat and mouse with almost deadly results. But so long as Pax’s energy was spent on Seth, and Seth’s energy was spent on Pax, both of them had an outlet. Balance.
Harmony.
It doesn’t always work out that way now that we’re not young princes with a palace to play in, but it was certainly a part of our foundations.
I hunt around the room, finding four paperweights that I’m not already using, then help him pin the paper down on the floor before stepping back to watch him work. With a piece of black chalk in each hand he moves, squats, kneels, and crawls around the paper. His eyes are a little glazed like he’s seeing something in the air and simply adding a mark to an existing – but invisible – outline.
It’s the only time Seth ever does anything that intrigues me – when he draws.
Which he now only ever does when ordered. We’re all a little broken. We all have things we don’t want to remember – or to come alive right before our eyes.
The map is almost like a three-dimensional model, drawn to scale and angle to look so much more than a flat image – but no matter which angle I stand at, there is still no spring on it, and nowhere I would suspect a spring to be hiding either. Springs don’t exist in trees, or cliffs, or underground, it’s just unheard of. Not without there being a cave or tunnel to access it – and there isn’t.
It simply doesn’t exist.
Seth stands and rolls his shoulders, cracking his neck loudly.
“I can’t make him see what isn’t there,” he mutters, dropping the chalk. “I’m going to take a shower. Showers are good for thinking.”
Five Paces
“Eat,” Killian orders, shoving more bread in my direction.
Then the man goes rummaging through the cupboards, producing a small sack of mixed nuts and seeds, several brown paper bags of dried meats, and two really big bags of popped corn.
Screw the bread. I shove it back at him and lean forward, almost to the point of falling off the bench, to grab the popcorn.
“Got any cinnamon?” I ask, pulling the cords free and shoving my hand into the fluffy kernels. “And where’d this come from?”
“The twins went into town for supplies, and I think Aria popped it while you were training with Rose. Why cinnamon?”
I don’t reply because my mouth is full.
“Cinnamon tastes awesome on popcorn,” I mumble, my mouth mostly still full, and still shoving more in.
He looks confused, so I climb off the bench and start hunting through the overhead cupboards – that’s where I’d keep my spices and seasonings anyway, and the little bunches of drying rosemary and thyme kind of hint that Eydis and I would think alike on this one. Bingo, third jar in, crushed cinnamon. A little sprinkle in the bag and a good shake, then I turn to Killian and offer him some.
He hesitates.
“What? You don’t like it when food tastes good?”
Which would make sense why the guy keeps offering me dry bread. Even for one of Martin’s Soot-servants, that’s a little bland.
“Open your mouth,” I tell him, pulling a kernel from the bag.
He clenches his jaw, so I step closer.
“Rose taught me some awesome ball moves. Killian, open your mouth, or I’ll use them,” I threaten, taking another step.
He almost smiles, then holds his hand out. But I’m committed now, and I take the last step into his space, holding the popcorn up to his mouth.
“Open,” I order.
I can see it’s not part of his normal behavior by the tension in his shoulders and the draw of his brow, so it actually surprises me that he does open his mouth. I settle the kernel on his tongue and have no hope of smothering my smile as he rolls it around his mouth, chews, and swallows.
“Okay.”
“What do you mean okay?”
“It’s okay.”
“Killian, it’s chucking amazing. Eat more until you’re convinced and agree with me,” I growl at him, shoving the bag right up under his nose.
“What’s going on?” Seth asks, surprising the crap out of me.
He’s rubbing a towel through his wet hair, a fresh black cotton shirt on, as he joins us in the kitchen.
“Killian doesn’t like popcorn,” I say.
“Of course he does, he ordered Rynn to buy it.”
“What?! Killian, you ass,” I snap, slapping the mountain on the shoulder. “Not nice. Not nice at all.”
I snatch my bag back, ignoring the big guy’s grin, and walk over to Seth.
“I never said I didn’t like popcorn. Just cinnamon on popcorn.”
“Cinnamon?” Seth asks, pure shock in his voice.
Okay, we didn’t do popcorn very often at the Manor, but it was one of our few pleasures. The kernels are easy to store, last years, and it’s quite filling and goes a long way once popped. The cinnamon was the real treat. And I’m honestly sick of these guys being so shocked about that.
I grab a handful and throw it at Seth.
“Cinnamon,” I shout.
He catches a few in his mouth, the rest falling to the floor, and chews thoughtfully.
“More?” he asks, opening his mouth.
My sour mood dissolves. One at a time I toss popcorn at him, and he catches them, beaming at me the whole time. He takes steps forward, and it's not long before he’s right in front of me. His hands on my hips. Mouth full. Grinning like a crazy person.
And lifting me off the ground.
“Seth,” I squeal, barely saving the bag of popcorn from being squished between us.
He spins me around, finally settling me on the bench. For a few long seconds we’re close, my legs split either side of him, his hands still firm on my waist, and his brilliant blue eyes alight as he swallows and licks his lips.
“Tastes almost as good as you,” he says softly.
In the background Killian grunts, which I have no translation for.
Just as I start looking at Seth’s lips and considering if it’s bad to kiss him with his brother right there – the Darkness brother, which is somehow different to Roarke – someone knocks on the door.
The front door that no one has ever knocked on. It’s so random that we all just kind of lean out and watch to see what’s going to happen next. I’m on the arm of the bench, the bit that sticks out from the wall, and leaning back involves some serious balancing.
The knock comes again, and since neither of the other two are moving, I call out, “Come in.” My
voice betrays my confusion.
“Enter,” Killian booms.
The door opens, and Aria walks in – the FaunaSeed with big brown eyes from Rose’s triune.
She hauls a pretty damn big basket of fruit into the kitchen and puts it down in the sink.
I shove my last piece of popcorn in my mouth as she bows, then makes a quick retreat toward the door, which doesn’t trigger anything even remotely like jealousy in me.
“Report,” Killian barks, and she flinches, stopping but not turning around.
“No signs in the forest. The only tracks are deer and places we’ve been assured allies have stepped. Everyone has been called back inside the domain to search for the spring. Rose is preparing the meat, but time is limited. All of our seals have worn off.” When she says that last bit, she holds her hand up to demonstrate the unmarked skin.
“Dismissed,” Killian orders.
She doesn’t hesitate.
I wait until she’s outside before saying, “Would it kill you to use some manners?”
He makes a ‘herrm’ noise, which I translate to him thinking about it. I’m not going to hold my breath though.
Roarke thumps back down the stairs to join us, a really big piece of rolled-up parchment in his hand. He pauses by the fireplace to load in more wood, then walks up behind me, dropping the parchment onto the clean section of the narrow bench and settling into place at my back. Meanwhile, Seth picks up two pieces of fruit from the basket, rinses them under the tap, then tosses one to me.
I catch it but don’t stick it straight into my mouth because I’m not fond of eating strange fruit. There was that one time I ate berries I shouldn’t have and couldn’t walk more than two seconds from the bathroom without having to run back in. My ass hurt for weeks.
He bites into his small orange fruit, eating it skin and all, and smiling at me with his mouthful. Not convincing enough. I roll mine between my fingers, waiting for a joke to follow.
Roarke leans in next to my ear and almost whispers, “It’s a kumquat; you eat it.”
Oh, come on.
This is an elaborate joke even for Seth. Having Aria pick the fruit and deliver it and having Roarke tell me the damn thing sounds like cum-squat said quickly. Because maybe I’ll believe Roarke and fall for it.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 102
