“Welcome home,” she murmured to him.
The Briars echoed the sentiment, whispering a lullaby on the breeze.
The Briars were a very different place with Simon present.
Zoe slept in his arms, long and deep and unbothered by nightmares. The hungry, unbridled realm did nothing to bother them; the bright bauble sun refused even to rise until they had both awoken of their own accord.
Even after they were both awake, she spent longer than was probably polite clinging to Simon, with her face buried in his chest. But then, he did little to dissuade her, with his occasional absent kisses and his thumb rubbing circles in her back. Eventually, however, Zoe forced herself to remember that there were other people waiting on them.
She spent the morning seeing what she could discern about Jean’s lingering condition, and doing what magic she could to help him. As best she could tell, the seigneur had ingested some portion of Delirium itself; but while Blackfrost had torn the worst of it from him, there was still a sliver of something left, buried where she couldn’t reach it. “It might dissolve, given time away from Arcadia,” she told him apologetically. “But it’s not going to be a fun process.”
“I did not expect anything I stole from the Lord of Madness to do my health any good,” Jean informed her with humor. “I shall endure.”
The Lady had found Dorian in the night, and informed him of their return. Zoe discovered him not far off at all, walking the gardens with the faerie lord and speaking in quiet tones. As she hurried to join them, Dorian turned to greet her with a tired hug.
“You’ve gotten bold,” he muttered. “First a warlock, now an alliance with monseigneur… should I be worried?”
Zoe crinkled a smile at him. “Always,” she said. “But only because I learned from the best.”
“Touché.” Dorian ruffled her hair. “If you don’t mind, however… I think it might be best if I leave soon.” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “I haven’t dared to eat any of the very delightful food I’ve been offered, and I’m starting to run out of polite excuses.”
Zoe nodded. “I can take you and Jean back home,” she said. She turned to regard the Lady. “If that works for you, that is?”
The Lady of Briars inclined her head. “You will see to Simon’s affairs in the Lower World while he recovers,” she said. “When I am satisfied with his condition, I will see him back myself.” She paused, her alien eyes flickering. Zoe was surprised to see a pang of reluctance in the Lady as she regarded her. “…I am glad I did not destroy you,” the faerie lord said finally.
That is probably the nicest thing she’s ever said to me, Zoe reminded herself with a sigh. “I’m glad you didn’t destroy me too,” she replied, since she wasn’t sure what else to say.
The Lady turned away at that, and she decided to consider herself dismissed.
Epilogue
“I’m very confused now,” Simon admitted.
A week later, and things had more-or-less returned to normal… or at least, to what seemed to be the new normal.
“It is natural to be confused when one begins at season five,” Dorian informed him, with a hint of irritation. “Alain is currently proposing marriage to Pascale—”
“Slow down,” Zoe groused. She jabbed one of her chopsticks at the television screen, where a dark, well-muscled man was currently on his knees, proposing marriage to a scandalized blonde. “That’s Alain, the police lieutenant — he got promoted last season. That’s Pascale — she’s a wealthy heiress.”
“You are skipping whole swaths of story,” Dorian interjected impatiently. “Alain arrested Pascale’s last husband for murder, but he fell in love with her in the process. Now, he is trying to get Pascale to marry him, and of course she will say no. Pascale believes that her husband was framed, and she has been attempting to prove it. She will never marry another man while she is still loyal to her first husband.”
“But,” Zoe added quickly, “her bastard husband really is a murderer, and he’s been manipulating her this whole time!” She poked her other chopstick lightly into Simon’s jaw, settling herself more firmly into the crook of his arm. “Better?”
His brow knitted. “I… think so. I might need to draw a map.”
Zoe nodded sagely. “The Internet’s got you covered,” she said. “I can look you one up in a bit if you want.”
The three of them were settled into the couch in Zoe’s condo. Simon was still a bit unsteady on his feet, but he’d insisted on returning from the Briars — so, being a magnanimous sort, she’d immediately offered to let him stay with her while he got back to full health. That meant, of course, that the warlock had been dragged into her and Dorian’s irregular routine of takeout and French soaps.
She frowned at the screen. “Wait, I missed that. Stop your… what?”
“Arrête ton char,” Simon repeated dutifully. “It’s a turn of phrase, not literal. As in, stop bluffing, stop pulling my leg…”
“I have literally never heard anyone use that before,” Zoe muttered, flushed.
“It might be Parisian,” Dorian observed. “I’ve only ever read it in books.”
“It might,” Simon agreed thoughtfully. He seemed ready to say more on the subject, but the conversation hushed as Pascale tearfully slapped the man proposing to her, and tried to flee the scene.
Dorian shook his head. “Foolish,” he muttered. “Overdramatic. I’m not sure why so many men keep falling in love with her.”
“It’s a mystery,” Zoe drawled. “I can’t put my finger on it, but it might have something to do with… money? Cleavage? Both?”
“I preferred the evil twin plot,” Dorian sighed.
By the time the episode had ended, Dorian declared himself fully disgusted with the series, and determined that they would never waste their time on it again. Zoe translated this to mean that they would be right back at it in a few days’ time, once he’d calmed himself.
As Dorian departed upstairs for his own condo, Zoe settled in with Simon on the couch, tugging the blanket over both of them. The temperature had dropped into the negatives, and it was doing a number on both of them. She could feel the sliver of the Briars inside her shivering sullenly away from the cold.
Simon tugged her closer, resting her cheek on his chest. She sighed, soaking in his heat.
“Better,” he murmured.
Zoe’s heart flip-flopped in her chest. “Much better,” she agreed softly.
Outside, snow had begun to fall. Zoe watched it, comfortable and sleepy-eyed. Simon’s thumb rubbed absent circles in her lower back. He probably meant it to be comforting, but each circle sent a new wave of lazy, liquid heat into her core. She nudged herself further up, and dropped her head to nibble lightly at his neck.
Simon paused his thumb. A slow, heated desire answered within him. His hand trailed down to stroke at her hip, his fingers dipping here and there just beneath the waistband of her cotton pyjama bottoms. Zoe shivered, and let out a small sound of approval. She slid her hands beneath his shirt, teasing her fingertips up toward his chest. As she scraped her nails lightly against the skin there, Simon turned his head and caught her mouth against his.
He kissed her deeply, tangling her tongue with his. His hands inched up beneath her shirt, grazing her stomach. As his fingers caught against iron, he paused, confused. Zoe had dug out one of her old anchors and added it to a chain around her neck. The magic inside it was difficult to miss, but very foreign to his own.
Zoe smiled slowly against his lips. “Birth control,” she answered, before he could ask the question. “Somehow, I thought I might need it.”
A fresh curl of desire unfolded inside him. His green eyes darkened. “You might need it,” Simon confirmed. He kissed her again — harder and more emphatic, this time. His hands continued their journey upward.
It was a very different experience, knowing that they had all the time in the world. Zoe let her hands roam over his body, searching for places she hadn’t yet touched. Simon
responded with slow, deliberate caresses, teasing her each time he discovered a particularly sensitive spot. As breath came shorter and skin heated, they shed their clothing, until the blanket was the only thing keeping the cold air at bay.
By the time Zoe slid herself fully on top of him, she was already wet and aching. She lowered herself onto his hardness, savoring the way he stretched her out, filled her up. Their moans mixed in the air. A heady relief rushed to her head as she clung to his body; it was like fitting a long-missing piece of herself back where it belonged.
Simon’s fingers dug into her hips. There was a fever in his eyes that had nothing to do with poison and everything to do with the way she slowly took him deeper and deeper. There was an awful longing in his eyes as he looked up at her, though, and she reached a hand up to his cheek. “You all right?” she asked softly.
Simon closed his eyes against her touch. “I’m all right,” he whispered hoarsely. “I just… keep expecting you to disappear.”
A pang went through her at that. Delirium still hadn’t lost its last hold on him. Maybe it never really would… but she certainly intended to do her best to break it anyway. “I’m not going anywhere,” Zoe promised softly. She leaned down to kiss the corners of his eyes, his face, his mouth, trying to dispel that lingering black feeling.
Simon wound his arms around her, turning her beneath him. Zoe let him take control, knowing that he needed it. There was a desperate love in him as he moved inside her, reassuring them both with each slow stroke that the distance between them was gone.
Gradually, the dark tension inside him unwound, replaced with hunger of a different sort. Zoe lifted her legs around his waist, leaning up into the next thrust. She brought her arms around his neck, but Simon reached up to untangle her grip on him. Before she could protest, he closed his hands around her wrists, pinning them above her head. A flare of delicious possessiveness went through him, and Zoe found she couldn’t bring herself to complain.
“No point in rushing through important things,” he murmured in her ear. He slowed again, pressing inside her inch by inch. There was no mistaking his need; he was hard inside her, stretching her out with every small movement. But she could feel him restraining himself, trying to draw out the feeling. The touch of his bare skin against hers was intoxicating, better than any drug. Zoe took a deep breath, focusing on the dizzy ecstasy that had begun to build in her blood. No hurry, she reminded herself.
She arched up to kiss him, enjoying the slow coil of tension in his body, and the answer in her own. Simon sank into her with a low groan. The sound reverberated inside her, and the pleasure building within her hit an unexpected peak. Zoe gasped his name, clenching around him. He held onto her while she climaxed, his eyes on hers as he pressed deep inside her.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you,” she mumbled back, as the shivers in her body slowly began to ebb, replaced with a warm, gentle satisfaction. “I love you so much, I don’t know what to do with it all.”
Simon smiled against her lips. He kissed her softly, moving again. Her body coiled lazily back around him, eager for more. She shifted, taking back the top, her hands on his chest. The position allowed her to take him more deeply, and his head fell back with a soft sigh of satisfaction. He closed his fingers around her thighs, urging her on. Zoe rolled her hips, and Simon went over the edge. He gasped her name. Wet heat spilled inside her, and she found herself savoring the sensation.
Zoe settled herself back onto his chest, nuzzling at his neck. As Simon gradually came back to himself, he stroked his fingers up and down her back.
“I’m not gonna get tired of this any time soon,” she mumbled. “Just warning you.”
“I will endure,” he said, bemused.
Zoe carefully extricated herself from him, tucking herself into his side. His fingers wandered downward though, sliding inside her, and she sucked in her breath.
“You said you weren’t tired,” he murmured in her ear. “I should fix that.”
And he did.
“Your mother-in-law is beginning to severely irritate me.”
Zoe snorted at Dorian. She’d settled into highlighting a bit of jurisprudence at her desk, since the day was relatively slow. No one in Montreal was fooled as to her importance to La Voûte any longer, given her status as a faerie warlock and her very public friendship with the seigneur, but that didn’t mean she did any less paperwork than before.
“She’s not my mother-in-law,” Zoe said. “God help us all, if that ever happens. She didn’t enjoy the idea very much the last time it happened.”
A few months out from their difficulties in Delirium, and life had somehow managed to turn out better than ever. Weeks of splitting time between her place and Simon’s had ended abruptly, after he kissed her awake one morning and asked her to simply stay, in that beautifully honest way of his. The novelty of going home to Simon and waking up next to him every day had yet to wear off; Zoe was slowly beginning to suspect that it never really would.
Granted, the Lady had slowly become more and more demanding of Zoe’s time, as Dorian had so bluntly observed. The faerie lord had grown a swift and startling attachment to her newest warlock — Zoe had never had a particularly green thumb, but she’d had to learn to enjoy gardening for its own sake, given her long stretches in the Briars keeping the faerie lord company. Thankfully, Simon ended up coming with her as often as not, which always made the Briars more pleasant. It all had a kind of surreal feeling to it; Zoe couldn’t remember ever having anyone compete for her attention before.
Dorian arched an eyebrow. “If?” he muttered. “I suspect you should prepare yourself for the prospect of marriage sooner rather than later.”
Zoe shot him a suspicious look, but his aura, as usual, betrayed nothing. “Simon didn’t say something—”
“Why would he need to say anything?” Dorian asked, deadpan. “I have never known him to do anything by halves. Clearly, he is the marrying sort. I have an eye for this. Pascale will marry Alain by the end of this season. Simon will offer you a ring by the end of the year, if not sooner.”
Zoe smirked. “You have a terrible eye for these things,” she contradicted him. “I can’t remember the last time you got one right.”
Dorian glanced past her, toward the door of the office. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “There is a first time for everything,” he said.
The office door opened. Zoe knew well before she looked who it was that had entered. Spring and warmth and the smell of fresh rain came with him — but more importantly, she felt the rush of love the moment that Simon laid eyes on her again.
She pushed up from the desk, just as Simon rounded the corner of it, reaching out to pick her up. He spun her around with a smile, his bright green eyes sparking with the joy of the season. His white-blond hair and his glasses were damp, and his clothing soaked through from the rain, but Zoe knew just how he felt. The touch of spring in the air was just as addicting to the splinter of the Briars in her soul as the winter was miserable. She found herself smiling stupidly back at him as he set her back down.
“It’s beautiful outside!” he sighed. “Everything is finally growing again!”
Dorian shook his head at the dripping warlock, but there was a hint of a smile on his face as he turned away. Simon’s excitement was contagious, as usual.
Zoe leaned up on her toes to press a kiss to his lips, leaning into the happy glow of his aura. “You didn’t have to come meet me,” she laughed. “I know the way home.”
“Je sais,” he said with a grin. A bead of water slid down his glasses. “I felt like walking back with you.”
“I’ll lock up,” Dorian drawled. “Go on.”
Zoe shot him a grateful smile. She grabbed her bag — but Simon plucked it from her grip and slung it over his shoulder instead. They headed out into a late spring thunderstorm, fingers threaded together.
As warm rain beat against her skin, Zoe noticed that the splinte
r of the Briars that infused Simon had grown even more visible than before. The ghostly image of a tiny crown of brambles had appeared above his brow, curling into his aura. She stared for just a moment as they ran, wondering if he knew.
The Briars really do want him, she thought, thunderstruck by the revelation. Maybe forever.
The spectral crown flickered away again, banished by some distraction. As they found shelter beneath one of the overhangs on the cobblestone street, Simon turned to pull her into his arms, the smile on his face broader than ever. He brushed a wet lock of hair away from her face, leaning down to kiss her.
Zoe gave herself up to the obvious happiness in him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him back. “God damn,” she mumbled with a laugh. “You really don’t do things by halves.”
Simon laughed sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve rather kidnapped you, haven’t I?”
Zoe leaned her cheek against his shoulder, closing her eyes. “I’m happy to be kidnapped,” she told him. Their clothing had become hopelessly plastered against them by the rain, but even that was enjoyable in its own way. Part of her was already looking forward to peeling it all off later.
“In which case… I think I will take you home with me,” Simon chuckled.
Zoe looked up at him, taking in the sight. Her heart thudded in her chest. “I didn’t know it was possible to be this happy,” she admitted suddenly. The words slipped out before she could think better of them.
Simon blinked. His expression softened, and he brought his hands up to press them against her cheeks. “I didn’t know it was possible to be this happy again,” he told her quietly. “I am terribly lucky.”
Hell, she thought suddenly. I’m lucky too. What am I waiting for? It’s not like I’m gonna marry someone else.
Zoe grinned up at him. Dorian was going to have to keep up his losing track record… because she fully intended to propose to Simon before the week was up.
Faerie Lords Boxset Page 43
