Fieran grinned too. “Meant to be a queen, I suppose.”
“And, Fieran, I hate to tell you, but just because a job doesn’t pay well doesn’t mean it’s any fun. The opposite usually, actually.” I regretted the words as soon as I said them, because I could sense their pity.
“Well, your job prepared you to use a shovel with alacrity I’ve rarely seen among the shifters.” Fieran looked so relaxed and amused as he picked up one of the serving platters that I felt my bristling ebb. He didn’t seem to feel sorry for me. “So it can’t be all bad. Is this pork in plum sauce? My favorite. Do you think we should keep it to ourselves?”
“Don’t be a greedy bastard,” Maura said, leaning across the table to skewer a piece off the platter as he tipped it toward my plate.
He pushed an outrageous amount of meat onto my plate, then stabbed a piece and popped it into his mouth. He closed his eyes as if with pleasure as he chewed, and when he opened them, he half whispered, with a guilty look toward the kitchen doorway, “It’s not as good as home, but it’s decent. Try it.”
I grinned, feeling at ease with him, and began to shovel in food. He replenished my plate with complete disregard for the size of a mortal stomach. He and his friends resumed their easy banter, but I could’ve sworn his gaze kept flickering toward me, and when our gazes met, he looked almost…fond. Pleased, maybe.
I felt heat color my cheeks, and I didn’t know why.
“Ready for the sweet course?” Louise bustled in, carrying a trayful of sweets. The scent of sugar and vanilla came with her, and I inhaled deeply. Even though I was full, my mouth watered.
“We have to get on patrol,” Maura told her, pushing back from the table.
I let myself hate her for a moment as everyone else began to rise, but I pushed my chair back.
“When we return,” Fieran told her, then stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. The heat of his fingers burned through fabric into my shoulder, and I was too keenly aware of his tall, powerful body, of the broadness of his chest at my eye level. “You’ll have to come back with us after. Promise?”
“Fieran has an embarrassing sweet tooth,” Anayla teased him with a grin.
“I’m not embarrassed.” Fieran’s eyes crinkled at the corners in a way that was disarming. “I know what I like.”
His gaze met mine, and for a split second, I could barely breathe.
I’d grown up thinking the forest at night was death, and yet I felt like if I walked into that darkness with him at my side, I’d be truly alive.
It was foolish, but I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to follow him into the night.
Seven
When we stepped out of the warmth of the lodge, I blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness, but they seemed to adapt much more quickly. We moved through the village, then the fields, to the darkness of the mountain that towered over our town.
None of us went there at night. When a child had been lost in the forest a few years ago, we’d searched frantically, the sun sinking lower like an hourglass running through his last hours.
“You know, we tell all kinds of bedtime stories for children about what’s in this forest at night,” I said.
Maura gave me an amused look. “Do you think they’restories?”
I hesitated, sure that she was going to judge me whichever way I answered. Something about the judgmental cast of Maura’s eyebrows made me feel like there were no right answers with her.
“What are the stories?” Fieran asked. “I’ve been in a lot of forests that haunted other people’s nightmares. I might be able to tell you what’s true and what’s not.”
Anayla rolled her eyes. “Always bragging. Relationships being forbidden between shifters and mortals makes more and more sense to me with every passing minute.”
I felt a jolt as old gossip and stories I’d heard flooded back to me. Those relationships were forbidden in stories, but those had always felt so distant from my life that I had never thought I’d actually be walking beside a dragon shifter.
“What are you talking about?” Maura demanded airily. “Mortals benefit tremendously from those relationships. They can getallkinds of wishes granted. And Fae and shifters benefit too. In the presence of a worshipful mortal, someone can be as impressed with them as they are with themselves.”
Asrael gave them both a wry look. “We should fan out. Cover more ground.”
Gods, yes. I disliked Maura talking about mortal wishes right before I asked Fieran for a favor. I could never talk to him now within her circle of judgment.
Fieran nodded his assent with Asrael. The five of them moved quickly as they fanned out through the forest without needing to speak a word.
I could barely see Anayla and Dairen as they moved to flank us, cutting through the forest, and then they were lost to the darkness. A sudden flare of nerves brought every sense to life, making the forest feel alive around me. “Can you see them?”
