“Well, you may omit that lesson, then,” he said curtly.
Henry came to sit on the bed next to me and slid his hand into mine. “Don’t worry, Willow. We’ll help you.”
May grabbed my other hand, and the two of them tugged me up from the bed, dragging me toward the great room.
“Severn bought us a huge TV,” Mae said excitedly. “But none of the fae can figure out how to hook it up. Can you fix it?”
I glanced back over my shoulder at Severn, who I was surprised to see was watching with a ripple of amusement. But as soon as our eyes met, his face went so ice-cold that I shivered.
I couldn’t help but wonder…what happened if I drank the wine?
* * *
Despite their grief,Henry and Mae were desperate for the company of someone who knew about Xbox instead of magic potions. Their first order of business was providing me with a list of everything they needed—a gaming console, mint toothpaste, breakfast cereal—that Severn had tried to procure for them but apparently made a mess of, bringing home woven baskets full of raw grain instead of Froot Loops.
Their grief was plain to see in the way they would occasionally fall eerily quiet, though they didn’t speak of their parents. However their father had died, it was clearly sudden and unexpected. His death was a shadow hanging over them, and I worried that to mention it would be to make it real and raw all over again.
The first day we stuck around the penthouse, hooking up the TV and watching a Pixar marathon, but halfway through the second day, I opened the refrigerator and took out a pheasant breast in a glass cloche and shook my head.
“Right,” I announced. “We’re taking a grocery store trip.”
Their faces lit up.
I imagined most kids groaned when they were dragged on errands to a grocery store, but I could already see in their eyes how hungry Henry and May were for this scrap of normalcy, not to mention a chance to stock up on something other than roasted boar. When I asked at Wilde Tower’s front desk if they would call us a rideshare, the secretary looked at me blankly and then said, “Miss O’Dell, we have werewolves for that.”
Two minutes later, a werewolf—who looked like a regular twenty-year-old human except for his yellow eyes—pulled up in a limo. He drove us to a Whole Foods at my request. It had always been out of my price range, but Severn had given me a credit card for the kids, and when I’d asked what the limit was, he had only turned away like I’d asked a stupid question.
We raced up and down the aisles in the shopping cart, filling it to the brim, buying so many snacks that the werewolf limo driver had to help us carry the bags back into Wilde Tower. Laughing, we squeezed into the elevator with Azalea, whose eyes lit up.
“Henry! May! You’ve been shopping! What magic is this?” Azalea picked up a Fruit Roll-Up.
They giggled.
Azalea was just starting to close the door when a figure ordered gruffly, “Hold the elevator.” In another second, Severn stepped in.
I sucked in a breath. I’d already forgotten how staggeringly beautiful he was. In return, he looked at me as though he could barely remember who I was. He frowned down at the grocery bags overflowing with popcorn packets and Popsicles.
Worry raced up my neck. This was my boss. Would he approve of the snacks? Of spending so much on candy? I shifted anxiously from one foot to the other. “Mr. Wilde. I just thought…the kids were hungry…”
His cold eyes snapped to me. “Address me as Severn. Fae do not use human titles.”
He looked expectantly at the bags on the elevator floor, and I realized his disdain was because there was no room for him. We quickly moved the grocery bags around so he could join us in the elevator, though with all the groceries and five people, it was uncomfortably tight. I found myself standing close enough that I could see the fine stitching on his frost-gray suit. He towered over me. I didn’t dare look up. He smelledreallygood, like some herb whose name danced just out of recollection.
“It appears you took the children shopping,” he noted.
May jumped up and down excitedly. “Willow let us buy whatever we wanted! I got stuff for s’mores!”
“S’mores?” he asked frostily.
I cleared my throat. “It’s chocolate and marshmallow and graham cracker…um, never mind.” I peeked up at him. “We got healthy snacks, too.”
May slid her hand into Severn’s, which shocked me. I was even more shocked that he didn’t growl and pull his hand away. He had a patience with the children, especially with May, that he didn’t seem to have with anyone else, including myself. “Come try s’mores, Severn! We’re going to make them in the fireplace!”
He only grunted. “Hmm.”
I adjusted a bag of groceries on my hip awkwardly with a nervous laugh. “May, I’m sure Mr. Wilde…Severn…is much too busy for s’mores.”
I felt his cold gaze on the top of my head, and I squirmed, wondering how long this elevator ride was going to take. Was Azalea purposefully making it go slow?
