“Including you?”
“Oh.” Her cheeks turn pink again. “No. I didn’t run.”
I notice, for the second time, how extraordinarily attractive she is. My body—our body—is still responding to her in ways I’ve never experienced. My trousers are uncomfortably tight, and I force myself to focus on her words instead of her curves beneath that thin nightgown.
“Wait.” I blink. “You didn’t run. You...” The realization hits me like a battering ram. “Are you telling me youvolunteeredfor my brother’s madness?”
She’ll laugh now. She’ll tell me he chased her down and kidnapped her. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.
Instead, she nods. “Exactly. I volunteered. I’m Lauren, by the way.”
She extends her hand like we’re at a gods-damned garden party.
“Why would you volunteer?” My voice sounds strangled even to my own ears. “Couldn’t you see what he was?”
“Well, I couldn’t see you on the back of his head at first—he was wearing a hood. But yeah, I saw the wings and tail.” She shrugs. “I was intrigued.”
“Intrigued?” My voice cracks upward. “A terrifying, half-mad creature drops from the sky?—”
“He said he was a god,” she interjects cheerfully.
“Even worse! And you volunteered to be his consort?” I’m pacing now, unable to contain the rising panic. “Did he even wait to get you back to the castle before ripping your clothes off?”
I gesture at the carnage of rumpled sheets and her thoroughly disheveled appearance. Have they been in this bed for three solid days? Is that what kept me unconscious?
Her hands return to her hips, and she straightens to her full height. “You make a lot of assumptions. And you know what they say about people who assume.”
I stare at her. “No. What?”
She narrows her eyes. “You make an ass out of u—” she jabs a finger at me, “—and me.”
Despite everything, my lips twitch. Clever. She’s clever, or thinks she is. She has no idea what she’s volunteered herself into the middle of.
“My brother broke approximately one hundred rules. We don’t reveal ourselves to mortals. Ever.”
“Why not? If you’re actually gods?”
“We value our peace. We’re retired.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t our world. It never was. We have no business affecting mortals or interfering in their affairs.”
She huffs. “Wow. How noble. Because the way Remus tells it, you used to be all up in human affairs. Running wars and secretly guiding empires for thousands of years.”
Reckless. He’s been completely reckless, sharing our history with a human.
If there were a way to carve his face off the back of my head without killing myself in the process, I would have done it millennia ago.
He actually thinks he can just steal himself a consort. Even if she volunteered—and I still can’t fathom why—I share half this body. A consort is an absolute impossibility for a creature like us. Something my brother knows perfectly well.
“What else happened at this fountain?” I need to understand the full scope of the disaster. “You volunteered, and then he brought you here?”
“It was amazing.” Her face transforms with a smile that hits me somewhere in my chest. “I’m actually surprised I was the only volunteer. Especially after he said the part about being a god. I don’t think people took him seriously at first. I mean, I didn’t, not really. But then the cops came, and everyone started running, and I figured I must be half-crazy to stay there, but?—”
I hold up a hand, the other going to my temple. How much damage has my brother caused? And how has the rest of my family not returned home to put him back in check?
Remus clearly needs to be locked in the basement again. Immediately.
