The heavy, glorious weight of him as he pressed Cinn into the sofa.
The way his lips would surely go straight to the love bite on Cinn’s neck. The one that was almost healed, to Cinn’s slight regret.
And then his mouth would go lower and lower—
“Cinn?”
“What?”
“You just made a weird sound.”
Oops.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Then, the question blurted out of him before he could stop it.
“What if… what if they try to send me back to London? Once Eleanor realises I’m not the asset against the umbraphages everyone hoped I’d be.”
The creak of a floorboard as Julien twisted onto his side, with Cinn mirroring his action.
Julien’s grey eyes were deadly serious when he said, “Then I’ll have to fight them for you. I could knock Eleanor out, any day.”
Cinn had doubts about that, actually. That woman wasterrifying.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Julien whispered, and held out his hand.
Cinn offered Julien his bandaged wrist, and Julien gently interlaced their fingers.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
The soft crackle of the fire, and the steady beat of Julien’s breath, lulled Cinn’s eyes into closing. He relaxed every other muscle, but he squeezed Julien’s hand firmly against his, as if he were a life raft, and Cinn was drowning all over again.
twenty-two
Cinn
When Cinn awoke, hand dangling off the sofa, he was alone in the living room. The fire had dwindled to embers overnight, leaving the room enveloped in a chilly stillness.
Tugging on his hat, then throwing the blanket around his shoulders, he wandered into the kitchen to find the others making tea. Julien smiled at him over Darcy’s shoulder. Nothing extraordinary, only a brief flash of teeth, yet a subtle warmth spread through Cinn’s chest, and he found himself busying himself with dishes before he did anything ridiculous.
Of course, Julien followed him to the sink, sipping his tea. He reached out to touch the blanket, running his thumb over Béatrice’s initials. “Still up for later?”
Cinn nodded.Béatrice, you better be ready to talk this time, now we’ve bloody dug up your grave.
The next part of the morning was taken up by Darcy, unimpressed when Julien used up all the cottage’s hot water during his shower, arguing with him over the need to let him install some sort of fancy-sounding motetech heating system in her boiler.
“If you’d just sleep at home like a normal person, then it wouldn’t be an issue,” she snapped, which concluded the discussions.
Julien, who unsurprisingly had a stash of spare clothes at Darcy’s, agreed to drive Cinn home to shower and change after he’d refused to borrow anything.
The drive quickly led into the next argument of the day: Julien persistently suggesting Cinn take pain medication for his burns, which pissed him off to no end. The salved wounds weren’t pleasant, but he’d dealt with injuries five times worse before, especially during his stint in juvie.
“Why do you care so much?” That eventually shut him up.
Julien waited in the car for him, then drove them straight back to Darcy’s. He didn’t say much on the return journey, but hedidlet Cinn choose the radio station, so that was something.
Upon their return, they set about preparing for their second attempt to reach Béatrice, with Cinn helping Darcy drag materials up from the cottage’s basement. As soon as they opened the ancient trapdoor in her pantry, Cinn’s senses were assaulted by a heady blend of exotic, aromatic herbs. The rungs of the oak ladder they descended, creaky and uneven, bore weathered marks of time. A string of giant lightbulbs ran across one wall, and when Darcy touched one, each came alive with the bright glow of dancing lumenmotes.
