It was funny to think about, I supposed.
But doubt crept up the back of my neck like the tiny feet of sprites.
I was being silly, though. Faeries and fae and fey folk didn’t exist.
Right?
Nicolai steered me through the crowd, nodding at people but not intruding upon their conversations until we reached a group of mostly guys, who turned when Nicolai shouted, “John! Magnus!” above the wailing music.
Clementine was there, wearing a silvery dress only a few shades more platinum than her hair. As we approached, she perused me from scalp to shoes, and then her head tilted. Her pale eyebrows micro-dipped as she stared at my face without any other expression.
Had I smudged my makeup, despite my effort not to touch it after all?
Nicolai clapped one hand on a new guy’s shoulder, but his smile was metallic. “John! Solid bash.” He leaned toward me. “John Bourbon, one of my best friends since childhood.”
Right, I remembered that name.
The group of people, all of them unnaturally tall and oddly beautiful, angled themselves to peer around him as Nicolai and I integrated ourselves into the loop.
“Nico!” the guy called back over the thumping techno beat and screaming beeps. “I thought you’d never get here. Do tell me you’ve brought your newwifebecause our so-called friends do not believe you’ve fallen to the dread institution. They’re insisting the video was AI-generated.”
A guy, tall and tawny brown-skinned and sharp-featured handsome asheckwith tattooed tendrils running from under his suit’s Nehru collar up one side of his neck, said, “Even if you had, I can’t believeyouwould livestream it, not our boy who wouldn’t allow his picture in the Rosey yearbook. It must be AI. I’m right. Tell me I’m right.”
One of the women, a slim Black woman wearing a lime and brown dress, smirked. “I didn’t see it. I don’tdosocial media.”
Nicolai’s lips stayed tight even though he smiled, and he wheeled me around, tucking me under his arm as he announced to them, “It’s all true, I’m afraid. I’ve fallen in love and am unfashionably happy. I’d like you to meet my wife, the love of my life, Lexi Romanov.”
Wow, those lies rolled right off Nicolai’s tongue.
I hadn’t met anyone else in the group clustered around John Bourbon except for Clementine, who was holding a highball glass filled with clear bubbly liquid. Diamonds hung from her ears like a waterfall of flowers and matched a thin circlet of glittering butterflies at her throat.
“We were married secretly last night,” Nicolai told them. “The wedding was impromptu because I became jealous of John, here, who is marrying his true love at the end of the month.”
“My true love,”John scoffed, lifting two shot glasses of clear liquid off the tray of a roving waiter and passing one to Nicolai. “Don’t be maudlin.”
Oh, wow. I didn’t think even Jimmy would have said something so dismissive of me in front of other people, butthinking about Jimmy Johnson, my ex-fiancé, felt like an evil omen.
Nicolai’s dark eyebrows twitched downward, but he threw back the shot and held the empty glass out to his side at shoulder-height. A waitress who happened to be standing right there took it from him. “I’m so glad you allfinallyget the chance to meet Lexi.”
John rolled his head as he looked at Nico, squinting.“Finally?”
“We’ve been dating for almost two years. Didn’t I mention that part?”
John’s jaw dropped, and his eyebrows shot toward his dark hair artfully tousled over his forehead.“No.You haven’t mentioned herat all.”
“Must’ve slipped my mind.”
The people in the group began offering me hands to shake, so I shook all the hands, chanting, “Lovely to meet you, so nice to meet you, lovely to meet you,” over and over again, as instructed.
John glared at Nicolai the whole time I was meet-and-greeting. “You’ve been dating someone fortwo years,from right after you broke up with Hannelore, and you’ve never mentioned it tome?”
Nicolai’s level gaze at John looked like a challenge. “I like to keep some things private.”
If Nicolai needed support, I could jump in, but staying quiet when surrounded by his friends seemed like the best tactic for the moment.
But I was ready, just in case.
The guy with the black tattoo vining up his throat toward his earlobe, like the ink was tracing a path for a tongue, smirked. “At least I was half-right.”
