Kol flopped down onto the bed and covered his face with his hands. “Of course you do.”
She snorted, looking down at him, places switched since just that morning. “I can tell she loves you in her weird, alien way.”
“Yes, I know. She loves me so much that she, how would she put it? Lowers herself to the basest of human emotions to show me affection.” He let his arms fall to either side as he stared up blankly at the ceiling. He was wearing a t-shirt that fit him too well, a faded insignia on the chest of a stylized flower with fanciful script running in a circle around it. More Elvish, she had to guess, since she couldn’t read it.
Piper chewed her lip and eased herself to sit on the bed beside him. “She seemed to like human emotion, though—she’s just not very good at it yet. But she was definitely proud of you, evenIcould understand that. You’re her special little guy.” She offered him a wide, goofy grin.
“Yeah, yeah, so special and exotic.” Kol rubbed at his face, catching his hat and pulling it off. “Something everyone wants to try once or twice just to say they did.”
Piper’s hand was brushing his hair before she really knew what she was doing. She laced fingers through the strands and ran nails along his scalp because it felt right in the moment to offer what little physical affection she could. His eyes closed, and his chest sank with a sigh that was, for once, not full of disdain but relief. “I’m sorry I called her,” she said quietly, “but I really did think you were in danger.”
“Oh, I was.” The corner of Kol’s mouth quirked up. “So I should be thanking you for not letting me die.”
A jolt ran through Piper’s chest despite his flippancy. “I’m not like either of you,” she said, guiding dark strands away from one of his slightly pointed ears. “There was nothing I could do to help you.”
“It all worked out,” he said, voice sleepy as she continued to stoke his hair.
Dread sank into Piper’s belly.Nothing. She was human, a thing she’d never really pondered before, but it suddenly felt like the most helpless existence on the planet.
She looked down at Kol, overwhelmed with the need to wrap herself around him. She lay at his side and placed her hand on his chest, curling up as close as she could get. She’d gotten so used to his presence that the thought of him being gone broke through her like a stone dropped into a frozen pond, and she wrapped her other arm around his like she could somehow keep him there.
Then a flash of the night before played in her mind—kissing him, sitting atop him, coercing him, being toldno.
“Oh, uh,”—Piper cleared her throat—“I’m not trying to…do what I did last night.”
Kol snorted. “I know.”
She pat his chest and went to pull her hand back, but Kol dropped his atop it and held it there. Beneath was warm, his heart thumping.
“I hope it’s okay with you if I don’t take the tree yet,” he said carefully. “I know you offered to end our deal, but I don’t think I can.”
Because of the severing spell? Or because he didn’t want to go? “I want you to stay,” she admitted, closing her eyes.
“Good because I want to stay too.”
Piper’s lips ticked up into a smile she hid against his shoulder.
But then Eyv’s words rang in her mind.Our incongruities were not exactly a recipe for eternal happiness.Eternal happiness probably meant something else to an elf, but Piper understood the sentiment—Kol’s mother and father had come from vastly different worlds and met on vacation. As good as things seemed, they weren’t meant to last.
“Hey,” Kol said into the quiet, his voice heavy with sleepiness, “don’t forget to call your friend.”
“Hmm?” Piper lifted her head slightly. “Oh, Lacey?”
“Yeah. You want to see her, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“All right then, I’ll remind you tomorrow.” He yawned, eyes closed. “And the next day and the next day until you do.”
Piper squeezed him a little tighter, chuckling as she fell asleep.
20
Kids Get Over Stuff Quickly, Right?
Kol stood before the alcyon spruce with his thaumatix in hand. The one hundred and sixteenth severing spell on the EPA’s approved list was surprisingly simple, and his mother had even sent him the ingredients needed, he would just have to fetch them from the cabin in the Everroot Grove. It all could wait, though, as the tree was doing well enough, and of course…there was Piper.
He looked over his shoulder to see her, still in pajamas and an oversized sweatshirt. He could feel his mother’s hands clasping his again and hear her voice before she left through the tree telling him in Elvish, “I approve.” Thank the fae ancestors Piper hadn’t asked him to translate that.
