Not that I’m thinking about weddings. No, not with Finn marrying Maisy and me posing as Jonathan’s wife for the weekend.
It’s a weird thing. I always figured I’d marry, and I assumed it would work out seamlessly. I went to one of our exclusive Aparian academies in Denver, graduated at eighteen, finished the next four years at Briarwood School for Young Women, and then expected the perfect apprenticeship and a marriage offer within a year. In fact, I thought I’d already be in a serious relationship by the time I graduated from Briarwood.
Instead, I have a curmudgeonly hairless cat and an overprotective knight who’s making me too crazy to picture marital bliss. Something is wrong with this picture.
“Your room is on the third floor,” Olivia says, leading us up the staircase on the left. “Breakfast is served in the sunroom from seven to nine. We set out a variety of cold cuts and salads for lunch, and then dinner is in the dining room at promptly six-thirty.”
“When do we retire for brandy?” Jonathan asks, earning a good nudge in the ribs from yours truly.
Olivia doesn’t realize he’s joking and turns back, smiling at him over her shoulder. “Father has an assortment of fine liquor in his study, and he welcomes guests to join him in the evenings.”
We reach a room at the very back of the hall, and Olivia produces a key out of thin air. She certainly doesn’t have pockets in that skintight outfit, and I’m pretty sure Eric and Jonathan would have passed out if she’d pulled it from her bra, so I have no idea where it came from. Is the girl a Fox? Have we found the culprit already? I hope not. I’m rather looking forward to my weekend in this not-so-spooky mansion.
Olivia hands me the key. “If you need anything, please let us know. You’ll recognize the staff by their green polo shirts.” Her eyes flit to Jonathan. “Or you can find me.”
My faux husband wraps an arm around my shoulder and affectionately tugs me to his side. “Thank you for making my wife and I feel so welcome.”
She gives him an airy, vacant smile, nods at Eric, and then drifts down the stairs, probably off to meet the next guest.
Without bothering with the key, I let my magic drift into the lock, feel the pins and the intricate way they work together, and then open the mechanism.
“Impressive,” Jonathan says from beside me.
“I figure I should practice every chance I get.”
If I’ve learned anything from Gray, it’s that I’m terrible at controlling the stealth magic I was born with. I need to learn to be in command of it—just to make sure it doesn’t get away from me at some point.
I have a secret fear—probably a ridiculous one—that I’m going to open the thresholds to Aparia completely by accident.
Our room is opulent, with a massive king-sized bed built of logs that have been scraped clean of their bark. Twinkle lights wrap the upper posts, and a few more fall touches dot the room—a wreath here, a candle there.
“Was the girl a Fox?” I ask Jonathan as soon as Eric closes the door behind us.
He shakes his head. “Human.”
“Are you sure?” I was certain I felt something off about her. “Maybe she wears a medallion like Trent?”
“Those are terribly rare,” Jonathan says. “I’ve never even seen one, and Trent’s the only person I’ve heard of actually possessing one. The chance of her wearing one as well is slim to none.”
Then we’ll just have to keep looking.
“I’m going down for your luggage,” Eric announces like the good chauffeur/bellboy/Bunny he is. “And then I’ll head to the staff quarters.”
That’s right—staff quarters. The people who visit this place are so ridiculously rich, they can afford to put up a portion of their employees as well. Of course, they don’t sleep in the main house—let’s not be silly. They’re in the guest house out back.
This is, of course, ideal for us. Gray will arrive later, posing as Jonathan’s personal assistant. I probably could have thought of an excuse for Rafe to come too, but let’s face it—I needed a break from my dark knight.
“Keep an eye out for women trying to seduce you,” Jonathan says to Eric.
The Bunny grins as he heads for the door. “It’s my number one priority in life.”
He closes the door behind him, and I wander the room, looking everything over. It’s not like a hotel room, all sterile and impersonal. There’s character here—knickknacks, a full bookcase, and a basket of goodies on a sideboard. I browse the contents, intrigued. There are fancy hot chocolate mixes, a bakery box of fresh pumpkin scones, herbal tea in varieties that might make even a diehard coffee drinker like myself give them a try, and a dozen pods of dark roast for the Keurig that sits on a built-in marble shelf to the side of the room.
“Nice,” Jonathan says as he spots the balcony doors. He steps outside, admiring the view of the mountains.
“It’s beautiful here,” I say as I join him, my voice a touch wistful.
The Griffon glances over, his brow wrinkling. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Well, not really. I just wish I was here for pleasure instead of work.
I close my eyes for a moment, enjoying the way the cool breeze toys with my hair.
“Can I ask you something personal?” Jonathan says after a moment, turning himself so he’s leaning against the rail, looking at me.
“You normally don’t bother asking for permission.”
“Why do you put up with that overprotective thing Rafe has going? Not that I don’t understand why he’s that way, after Nicole, but still. I didn’t peg you for that kind of girl.”
Wondering if it would be easier to let Jonathan think my knight and I are together, I study him for several seconds. He’ll eventually learn the truth, and I don’t want to lie. Being a Griffon, he could see right through it anyway. “Rafe and I aren’t dating.”
Now he looks confused.
“We’re just friends,” I add.
That is true, at least I hope it is. Yes, I needed a break. Yes, Rafe’s smothering. But I’m grateful to have him. I never realized how few people I have in my life that I can really rely on until Finn and Maisy betrayed me.
Now that all my casual school acquaintances are busy with their apprenticeships, and my parents are always gone, all I really have is Lillian and Rafe.
And Jonathan, Eric, and Gray a little voice in the back of my head says. Maybe I have them too. Well, perhaps not Gray.
Probably not Gray.
“Well, that’s a relief.” He turns back to the mountains and grins. “I wondered if he was going to murder me for existing this close to you for an entire weekend.”
With anyone else, I might be nervous about sharing this grand room, might worry I’d let myself get carried away. But Jonathan feels safe. He has from the very beginning.
True, he’s the very definition of a man slut. But not with me. I’m on the team, and that’s too important to him—he said so himself after the pixie tried to kidnap me the first time. Granted, he had his hands on my bare thighs at the time, and he had just read my mind as I was thinking how hot he is…but the moment wasn’t nearly as tawdry as it sounds.
I rock to the side, nudging him in a friendly way. With my heels, he’s only a few inches taller. “I trust you.”
He turns his chocolate eyes on me, studying me so intently I almost step back. I give him a quizzical frown, wondering why he suddenly looks so serious.
I don’t like it.
“Good,” he finally says. “Then answer me something else. Why does your magic feel identical to Rafe’s? I’ve been around my share of Foxes—the ribbons of magic look gray. Wolves are silver. But you and Rafe are hard to peg—you’re something right in between. It’s why I had so much trouble the first day we met, and why it’s so interesting that the two of you have formed such a strange bond. It’s like you know something the rest of us don’t.”
Darn that Griffon intuition.
“You got me,” I say lightly. “I’m secretly queen of
the Foxes, and Rafe is my knight.” I lean closer and whisper, “We’re expected to take over the world.”
Jonathan pauses, his eyes narrowing. “Say that again.”
I watch him for several beats before I laugh, hoping to mask the terror that spikes my veins. With the way he’s looking at me, it’s almost as if…
And then it hits me—he read the truth in words that should have looked like a lie. It’s nearly impossible to straight up deceive a Griffon. I should have known better.
My whole life, I’ve hidden my magic type. This is no different, but I let down my guard. I should have been far more careful.
It might not matter though, because a dark shape grabs my attention. It lingers near the edge of the trees, staying in the shadows, waiting for nightfall.
Waiting to come to me.
If it doesn’t disappear on its own, Jonathan’s going to figure out what I am anyway.
Jonathan looks back, into the forest, following my eyes. “What is it?”
I have two seconds to figure out how to distract him. So I do something ridiculous—something really, really stupid. I grab his head, pull him back to me, and then I lean forward and press my lips to his.
And maybe it’s because I haven’t been kissed in months, or maybe it’s because Jonathan is really freaking hot, but I forget the monster in the woods, and my body reacts in a way I don’t expect. My stomach flutters; my chest grows tight and warm. It’s like I’m back in high school, kissing a boy for the very first time.
However, the kiss must have the opposite effect on Jonathan because he’s gone completely still. He’s warm against me, but his hands don’t find my sides, and lips don’t move under mine.
What have I done? I think belatedly, my lips still pressed to his.
Jonathan is my friend. The last thing I want to do is ruin it, especially when I have so few people who care about me. At the same time, what does it say when the man who sleeps with anything that moves doesn’t want me?
I break the kiss, pulling back, feeling so completely ridiculous my eyes start to sting. The only good thing is that Jonathan is definitely not paying attention to the shadow at the edge of the forest.
The knight studies me, his brows drawn together, his eyes impossible to read. After a moment, he presses his lips together as if processing the kiss.
Finally, he says, “You honestly haven’t been kissed in months? What have you been doing with Rafe?”
Only now does it fully hit me that you have to touch to kiss—obviously. But that means Jonathan just had access to my thoughts. My really embarrassing, ridiculously needy thoughts.
Abruptly, I turn to go inside, feeling like an idiot. Jonathan pulls me back. He touches my arm, which is safely covered by my sleeve.
I yank against him, horrified by my rash behavior. “I told you. Rafe and I aren’t together. Now let me go.”
But he doesn’t let me go. He turns me around and tucks me against his chest, wrapping his arms around my back in a way that’s just a little too sweet.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “It’s not right I can hear your thoughts—and I swear I don’t do it on purpose. But I can even things up a bit if you want.”
My cheek is against his shoulder, and his hands are looped around my back, clasped loosely.
When I don’t answer, he continues, “My thoughts went a little something like this: Oh my gosh, Madeline’s kissing me—”
“You did not think ‘Oh my gosh,’” I mumble against his shirt.
“Shhh. I’m PG-ing it up for you. I was actually thinking something that shouldn’t be uttered in front of a lady.”
I smile against his shirt.
“Okay, where was I?” He pulls me a tiny bit closer. “Oh, right. Oh my gosh, Madeline’s kissing me. Then, Madeline has the softest lips, and she smells like an upscale lingerie store. That’s when I started thinking about you in lingerie—pink and lacy, if you must know. Very tasteful…mostly.”
“You’re getting distracted.”
He laughs, and I can hear his grin. “Anyway, that led to thinking about Rafe killing me slowly because I imagined you in lingerie. Then my thoughts got interrupted because, hello, Madeline thinks I’m hot. I mused on that for a while, and then you got to the part where you started to panic, where you were worried that you ruined our friendship. Where you admitted you’re lonely.”
He pauses long enough, I lift my head to meet his eyes. His are warm, kind, inviting. Then his smile turns wry. “And then you had to go and think that I sleep with ‘anything that moves’ and what it says about you if I won’t even kiss you back.”
I look down, unable to keep the eye contact.
“But I’ll tell you what it says,” he continues, his voice a touch softer. “It says you’re not anything. You’re Madeline—you’re special. You’re my friend. And I was so dumbfounded, I swear my brain up and short-circuited. About the time I was reviving, you stepped away.”
I peer up at him. “I’ve never thought about it, but how do you handle your magic? How can you bear to hear a person’s thoughts every time you get…close?”
A swift grin crosses his face, one that I find intriguing. There’s a secret behind it, one I very much want him to let me in on.
“I have my ways,” he says. “I’ll tell you another day.”
He unclasps his hands, letting me step back. I give him a smile that’s still a little embarrassed around the edges and then move toward the room.
“Not so fast, sweetheart.” He catches me by the wrist, gently tugging me back. “We still need to discuss this monster in the woods business and why you felt the need to kiss me so I wouldn’t notice it.”
CHAPTER SIX
Oh peachy. Guess he heard that too.
The way I look at it, I have three options. I can try to lie to Jonathan, which won’t work. I can use my magic on him, which is wrong. Or I can tell him the truth.
Of course, there’s always the fourth option: kiss him again. Since that probably won’t work either, I just stare at him for a ridiculously long time, trying to figure out what to do.
“Come on,” I end up saying, turning back to the room and pulling him with me. “I’ll just show you.”
He follows without question, though he pauses before the door. “Just a minute.”
At some point, Eric must have returned with our luggage because it’s neatly stacked by the bed, and Jonathan heads to it now. Hopefully Eric didn’t see me basically attack Jonathan on the balcony—I’ll never hear the end of it. Just the thought makes my cheeks go hot.
As I wait, Jonathan goes to his suitcase, rifles through it, and produces a dagger much like Rafe’s. He belts on a sheath, slides the blade into it, and then pulls a jacket on to hide it. When he walks back, he offers me my sparkly stun gun.
“Thank you,” I murmur, somehow touched that he remembered. Then I give the slight bulge under his jacket a pointed look. “You carry a dagger too? I thought that was Rafe’s thing.”
Grinning, Jonathan pulls out the blade and offers it to me. “No, it’s a Knights’ Guild thing. We don’t carry swords anymore, but we all receive a dagger when we graduate from the academy and are sworn into the guild. You’d be surprised how often they come in useful.”
Maybe not as surprised as he might think since I’ve seen Rafe kill a man with one.
Jonathan’s dagger is heavier than it looks. His position in the guild, knight marshal, is engraved in the shiny, silver blade, along with his full name.
As I hand it back to him, I ask, “Do you think Aparia has progressed like we have here? Do you think they have technology like ours?”
Jonathan returns the dagger to its sheath. “I have no idea, honestly. It’s been a thousand years. It’s impossible to know how different things are.”
Especially since most of the darkness was closed on that side. I think about that now, wonder about the people there. We protected the humans when we closed the thresholds, and our families here as well, but what
about the rest of the Aparians? What became of them?
We walk through the opulent house, greeting a few guests as we go. Hoping we’re free to explore the grounds, I lead Jonathan outside, toward the back property, to the spot where I saw the shadow.
I’m not sure what kind of monster it is this time. It was too large to be a winged cat, too small to be a gargoyle. Hopefully it’s gone, and I can laugh it off as a figment of my imagination.
But as we draw closer, I see the brush move. I can almost feel the beast’s eagerness.
“Stay back,” I say to Jonathan. “Keep behind me.”
“You’re leading me into the dark woods, looking for some sort of monster, and you think I’m going to hide behind you?”
I shake my head, knowing he won’t, and continue into the safety of the trees. I’m hoping to get far enough in that no one from the house will be able to see what we’re up to. Once I find a spot that should be safe, I set my hands on my hips and turn toward the thick brush. “Show yourself,” I command, using my persuasion.
Immediately, the bush rustles.
Jonathan tenses. “What the—”
“Shhh,” I whisper, accidentally throwing magic into it, rendering Jonathan speechless.
First, one gnarled foot emerges and then another. Long toenails curl over fat, wrinkled toes, scraping the leaf-littered ground.
The goblin’s hairless, much like Charles, but he’s gray instead of pink, and there are rough, calloused patches of white, flaking skin on his joints. He stands three-foot tall, hunched over, and his knuckles nearly drag the ground.
Drool drips from his open lips, and his teeth are yellowed and decaying. He also emits a particularly unpleasant fragrance…something like old meat, left in a dumpster, rotting in the sun for a week or two.
When he sees Jonathan, he lets out a loud, phlegmy roar. The knight’s already drawing his dagger, trying to force me back, but I hold my ground.
“Leave us,” I say to the goblin, not the slightest bit worried. I’ve dealt with his kind before. “Go back to the dark depths where you make your home. Harm no one on your way.”
Princess of Shadows (Obsidian Queen Book 2) Page 5
