She rolled further into the bed. It was way too large. Necessity always forced her to share and usually in beds half this size. This much space for just herself bordered on excessive.
A decorated, porcelain water basin with crystal clear water was next to a large dresser marked by intricate fae carvings. The wood that made up the walls and floor was smooth and polished, an ashen brown color with the barest gossamer threads of glittery silver. It was a perfect contrast to the deep, cooler tones of hunter green and navy in the bed canopy and curtains.
Sera slithered under the covers and warmth settled into her bones. Her body eased into rest like she had never known comfort until this moment. The fire had worked wonders for the room and, since she wasn’t a Summer Fae, had tempered the cold enough for her. Her eyes drifted closed as bliss soothed her muscles into rest and the scent from North’s coat drifted into her fantasies. It was the most restful sleep she’d ever had, plagued by dreams of gray eyes.
—
Their room was set up promptly that first day. The sound of workers woke Sera around noon—damn morning person Seth must have let them in—and pressing a pillow over her head didn’t muffle the noise. Over-tired and deprived of basiccomforts for so long, she was tempted to take up permanent residence in this warm nest of the most luxurious sheets to ever grace her skin. She was so comfortable that even the noise couldn’t pry her from the covers. Then Seth’s frantic babbling drowned out everything else and Sera knew her rest had come to an end.
“Shit.”
Sera opened an eye as clothes were launched about the room.
“Shit.”
The entire case went up, landing with cacophonous thuds.
“What’s wrong?” Sera groaned, pulling the blankets with her as she sat up. Sleep burned her eyes and forced her to squint, which did help ease the disorientation of waking up in a bedchamber that even sparsely decorated couldn’t obscure the superior quality.
“I can’t believe I didn’t grab it.” Seth put his head in his hands and Sera rolled from the warmth of the bed to set her feet on the ground. Which, in her experience, was an unpleasant and often jarring transition. Here, however, she sank into billowy carpet and a dreamy sigh escaped her, despite Seth’s distress.
“Are you sure you looked everywhere?” she offered. There was only one thing they could have forgotten that would make him this upset, the box holding the letters his father had sent to his mother during the war. Seth was only three when the war ended nearly sixteen years ago, and his father never returned. He lost his mother a few years later. The letters had become his only comfort while passed around between homes for boys and workhouses until he was of age, only to be immediately caught in Cole’s seductive web.
Sera did a cursory look over his body now that he wasn’t wrapped in miles of blanket. The more recent bruises on his arm had reached the healing point where they looked worse before getting better. The bruises to his soul would take muchlonger to heal, though. Shehadto get Seth out of Cole’s reach. Initially, she thought stealing the charm was her way toward their freedom, but she'd failed. North's offer got Seth out of immediate danger for now. All she had to do was make sure she didn’t grow complacent and be ready to run when the current arrangement turned for the worse.
“We have to go back,” he said, lifting his head and breaking her heart with large, pleading eyes.
Sera sat next to him on his bed, absently rubbing his back when he seemed to detect the answer in her hesitance and threw his face back into his hands. “We can’t, Seth. According to North, I’m still marked by Death.”
“Youare, but maybe I’m not. I could go back at night, sneak—”
“Honey, no. I obviously can’t say for sure if you’re marked as well, but even if you’re not, Cole knows we’re close. He’d use you without a thought.”
“I wanted to be happy. Even stuckhere, at least we were free of him.” He tucked his knees to his chest as he cried. “But I’ve always had those letters. Reading them was the only thing to get me through the worst when Cole first… before you found me.” She couldn’t fully appreciate why he was so attached to the letters. She had never loved her own mother enough to want memories of her, and her father was rarely around to create even those. But she was still sorry, even if she couldn’t relate.
“Maybe… maybe we can go back eventually. You kept them hidden, right? There’s a chance they won’t be discovered by any new occupants.”
He was too overcome to respond with more than choked sobs.
Sera held him, watching the movers work with increasing curiosity. They heaved in a giant pot of some jungle-y heart leaf-ed thing and set it on Seth’s side of the room. A slight, but noticeable warmth emanated from its corner.
“Look, Seth, your plant’s here,” she offered.
Seth lifted his head and the glitter of tears in his eyes grew a touch brighter. With the plant and the fire, the room was now a perfectly acceptable temperature. She could stay here quite comfortably for—
The movers hauled in a large stone with glowing veins of molten red woven through the rough, cratered surface.
“A lava stone?” The tears had all but stopped as Seth walked around the bed to bask in the corner of the room now generating enough heat to melt her flesh off. “These are technically Day Fae elements, but I don’t think that Sun Fern would have been enough on its own.”
“Okay, but there was already a fire going.” She moved to her side of the room, the heat causing sweat to bead on her skin.
Seth hugged himself, rubbing his bare arms and wiggling in pleasure.
“That wasn’t enough. Sera, my gods, I have not felt comfortably warm in so long.”
She supposed if North was comfortable in the arctic outside, it made sense Seth wouldn’t be comfortable in any less than a sauna. But as the poor human in this duo of extremes, she was left with the choice to freeze or boil.
“Could we lose one of them? The Fern thing doesn’t seem to do much, maybe we can—”
