Hell fae are going to clothesline my ass the moment I join them. But Nyra is my sister. I’ll do anything for her. Including walking directly into a social event when I’d rather hibernate beneath my blankets like an old bear exhausted from yelling at kids to get off his lawn all day.
The breath I push from my lungs doesn’t ease me as I stride into the vulture’s den. Several hell fae shift away from me but make sure they have me in their eyesight. The queen’s daughter doesn’t. She stays put, no longer dancing but judging entirely too hard for it to be polite. There’s a polite way to glare at someone, and she has not mastered it yet.
Nyra takes my hand and twirls me over the black cobblestone of the gardens. Cool wind catches my hair, and there’s a moment that I feel like we’re children again. It’s more than a smell or a feeling; it’s a memory etched into the beats of my heart. It’s a bittersweet sensation.
Especially when her hand releases mine, and my chest collides hard into another.
Those inky eyes are now cold and cutting when the hell fae looks down on me.
Whispers scuttle around us, and neither of us moves a single muscle.
“Vanitee, I’m so sorry. That’s my fault entirely,” Nyra says in a string of endless apologies.
She’s always apologizing. I hate it.
Not everything is her fault.
“I’m sorry, Vanitee.” I lift my chin with what I hope is respect and take a solid step back.
But the damage is done.
“She doesn’t belong here,” Vanitee says flatly. She doesn’t explain or even hold any emotion as she says it. Not even hate lines her porcelain brow.
“She—she does,” Nyra stutters. “She belongs here as much as I do, and I’ve never felt I belonged anywhere.”
My heart sinks right to my stomach at the sound of her words.
She really feels that way? She’s always been so happy in our pack. She was always the put-together mom. The good wife. The perfect daughter.
“You’re not like her, Nyra. Not at all.” The queen’s daughter all but slices right through my chest with the glare she’s giving me.
“Maybe neither of them belongs,” someone whispers like a hushed omen that shivers through the crowd.
Fuck.
Nyra’s full lips fall to a frown that I fucking hate.
“I’m going to leave you guys to it. I’m not a good dancer. As you can see.” I force a smile that hurts to even form. I despise bowing out but I won’t risk alienating my sister either. Nyra’s pity smile is better than mine. Her hand brushes my arm as I walk by, and it doesn’t really amount to much.
“Don’t go, Cersia,” she whispers desolately.
But I do go. Because she’s accepted, and I’m not, and I’m just ruining her good time by being here.
And she deserves a good time.
No one deserves happiness like this kind woman.
Within ten minutes, the group of them are right back to swaying their asses, and I’m right back on the sidelines.
As it should be, I guess.
“That was fuckin’ painful to watch, beautiful,” a rumbling tone from a salacious asshole whispers along my ear.
A real smirk twitches at the corner of my lips as his breath continues to caress the column of my neck.
“I don’t know what you mean.” My shoulders square hard, but even I can imagine what it must have looked like for me to sulk away from them with my wolfie tail between my legs.
“Really?” Big hands grip my hips slowly, fingers sinking into my flesh one by one, until he has me held intimately but roughly in his palms. “You forget rejection that quickly, huh? You’ll have to teach me your ways, because I remember every ounce of rejection you’ve ever tossed in my fuckin’ face.”
