“Thank the gods you were strong enough to pull us through.”
He gives a roguish grin. “Just lucky I guess.”
I lay there, staring into his face for an embarrassingly long time, the smell of the clover beneath my cheek bringing back long-ago memories. The sun shimmers across half our faces, filling me with warmth and contentment. His fingers stroke my hair. My heart remembers this. My heart wants to live here again in this place of intimacy, of sweet words and casual touches.
My heart is stupid.
I climb to my feet and swing my pack onto my shoulders, checking that my bow and quiver are secured to the sides. With a sigh, he dons his own. For a moment, we simply take in our surroundings.
We stand in a field of clover that stretches for miles in every direction. Heimdall’s Priory and the symbol-etched marble wall it’s a part of stretches behind us, to the east. To the north is the lightly forested base of a rolling mountain range. To the west, a dark, twisted forest, mist curling over knobby roots of densely growing trees. To the south, a river with an ancient looking stone castle beyond. Rumor has it that King Kieran, our former monarch, moved there after Godmother rose to power following the Civil War and cast him out of Devashire, but no one has seen him in decades.
“Thistlebend Castle. Do you think Kieran actually lives there?”
“Where else would he be?”
I shrug. “Maybe she killed him and only says he lives there to keep the people from electing another—someone stronger who might threaten her power.”
He laughs. “Seems like something she would do.”
I widen my eyes at him, not because I’m surprised—I’ve heard stories about Godmother—but because he admits it. “Why do you work for her if you know how brutal she can be?”
He cuts off my train of thought with a raised hand, his luck brushing by me as it serpentines around us. “Mountains,” he says with certainty.
“What about them?”
“I have a strong feeling Yissevel lives in the valley between the two peaks.” He points toward the mountains to the north and the squiggle of green between them.
“Should I even ask how you know that?” It’s not as if there exists a celebrity map of unseelie residences. Yissevel is ancient and well known in the lore of fairies, but as far as I know, no one’s actually visited his lair.
He winks in my direction. “I don’t know for sure, but that’s where my luck is telling me to go.”
“Great. Here’s hoping your luck knows what it’s doing.”
He laughs. “It hasn’t failed me yet.”
We start for the mountains. Halfway across the field, a black horse darts out of the dark, twisting forest to the west and races across the clover toward the mountains. The animal turns its head to look at us, and its horn glints in the sunlight. I blink and blink again, but yes, I’m watching a unicorn gallop no more than a hundred yards in front of me. It races off into the trees at the base of the mountains, and I lose sight of it.
I turn toward Seven, my mouth dropping open. For once he looks as awestruck as me. “I’ve never seen one in the wild before. I mean there was that crippled one they had in the petting zoo at Sunshine Kingdom for a while, but this is entirely different.”
He shakes his head, his eyes sparkling with amazement. “I guess we’re not in Devashire anymore, Sophead.”
“Will you stop calling me that! I’m a grown woman. It sounds like a nickname for a child or a little sister. I doubt you want to think of me as either.”
He snorts. “I disagree. I think it’s the nickname earned by a woman who was formidable enough at the tender age of fourteen to punch a merman in the nose before her leprechaun boyfriend could even gather enough luck and focus to rescue her from his clutches.” His laugh seems to vibrate in the air around me. “It was the first time I realized how different you were. Indomitable.”
Warmth blooms in the general region of my heart, and I deny an urge to rub away the ache in my chest. It takes all my willpower to keep my mouth shut. If I say a word, I’m afraid he’ll see right through me, right down to that tiny sliver of hope that lingers at my gooey center. I snap my poker face into place.
“I think you should reconsider a relationship with me.” He doesn’t look at me, just keeps walking toward the mountains.
The problem is that the tiny sliver of hope I cling to when it comes to Seven is locked behind a wall and guarded by a warrior forged in the urban wilds of America where I survived by protecting my heart with a ruthlessness that wasn’t there before the Yule Ball. He doesn’t know what I resorted to in the early days. He doesn’t know the person I’ve become.
“Why? Because you ripped me a new asshole when I told Godmother I knew who the victim was? Was that meant to sweep me off my feet?”
“No.”
“Oh, then I’m supposed to swoon into your arms because you dressed me up like a doll and treated me like an accessory at the club the other night.”
“No!” He huffs in exasperation. “I didn’t even want you to go! We were on a mission.”
