“Fuck no,” Arthur touched the bottom of his spine. “I’m going to be seeing a chiropractor formonthsafter humping your backpack around London.”
Kelly laughed, a sound I’d heard too little of ever since she’d arrived in London. I wrapped my arms around her. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too, but we’ve only a short train ride or flight away, and we can talk on the phone all the time. I’ll come visit you in Oxford once Jane gets sick of me.”
Jane waved at Kelly from across the field. She was sitting with Liah and a bunch of her court fae. I smiled and waved back. I could see Jane and Liah getting on. They both had that no-nonsense nature about them.Kelly’s going to drive her up a wall, but she’ll never get sick of her.
Kelly left me and ran over to join them. I watched her bend down to kiss Jane on the cheek and scoop Connor up into her arms. Kelly had a girlfriend and a little boy she was crazy about. A month ago, I never would have imagined the scene. Now, it felt like the most natural thing.
So much can change when you least expect it. I leaned against Arthur’s shoulder, letting his bulk reassure me. My hand traced the length of his cut. We still had a lot of healing to do. But we could do it together, as a family.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
EPILOGUE: MAEVE
THREE MONTHS LATER
“Just a minute!” I yelled. A heavy fist pounded on my door. I shoved my physics textbook under the pillow of my bed and grabbed a trashy science fiction novel by some new writer called S C Green. I fluffed my hair and threw open the door.
Corbin stood on the landing, wearing his leather jacket and dark jeans and a smile a mile wide.
“You were studying, weren’t you?” he teased.
“Who, me?” I raised an innocent eyebrow as I held up the novel. “No, no. I was just so immersed in this steampunk book I didn’t hear you knocking?—”
Corbin pushed past me and made for my bed. He slid his hand under the pillow and pulled out my textbook, which he waved in my face. “Maeve Moore, youpromisedme. No studying today. We’re officially on holiday.”
“Give me that.” I grabbed for the book, but Corbin held it out my window, waving it over the courtyard below. “I can’t help it that astrophysics is so interesting.”
“That novel is about dinosaurs and steam-powered robots duking it out in 19th-century London. It’s way more interesting than astrophysics.”
“Says the guy who spent our Friday night date reciting Farsi declensions under his breath. What are you doing here, anyway? We said we were meeting outside the Ashmolean?—”
“Hey, could you two lovebirds give it a rest? Some of us a weary after climbing your stupid university's seven million stairs.”
“Omigod, Flynn!” My Irish artist stood in the door of my room, wearing a long green trench coat splattered with paint and his signature wicked grin. I flung my arms around him, and he spun me in a wild circle. My leg flew out and knocked over my chair. College lodgings for undergraduates were little more than cupboards.
They also didn’t have elevators inside the medieval college buildings, so anyone who wanted to reach my room had to climb an uneven wooden spiralling staircase. I’d already lost 3 pounds just lugging my books home at the end of the day.
“Hey, I climbed the sodding stairs, too. Why does he get the first hug?” Arthur grumbled from behind him. I let go of Flynn and allowed Arthur to crush me in an enormous bear hug. I peered behind him at Rowan and Blake, both wrapped up warm in their winter clothes. Rowan’s smile was radiant and Blake’s wicked smirk made heat pool between my legs.
Flynn flopped down on my bed, peering at the NASA photographs and tutorial schedules above my desk. “Love the decor, Einstein. What happened to that painting I did for you? Do they have a rule at this posh university that you’re only allowed to put brainiac stuff on the walls?”
I pointed up to the ceiling, where Flynn’s painting hung from a low beam, along with a collage of photographs from Briarwood Castle I’d stuck up there. “I like that you guys are the last thing I see before I go to sleep. Speaking of seeing you, what are you all doing here? Corbin and I were going to meet you later. We had it all planned out, because?—”
“Because you were going shopping for pre-Christmas gifts for all of us to say you’re sorry you’ve been gone for so long?” Flynn lifted an eyebrow. “Weknow. Corbin let it slip. We thought we should come and remind you that our High Priestess is the only gift we need.”
“We couldn’t wait to see you,” Rowan explained. He stepped across the threshold of the room. I noticed that his lips didn’t move in his silent incantation. He’d been seeing a cognitive behavioural specialist about his OCD and anxiety for the last four months, and it had already done wonders for him. “We wanted to help you start your Christmas holidays right.”
“I’m glad you’re here. Maeve needs to learn a lesson about how to relax.” Corbin tossed my book to Flynn. “I caught her reading this.”
“Tut tut, Princess” Blake grinned, wrapping his arms around me and breathing his words against my ear. “You promised our friend Corbin here, no studying. Do we get to claim a reward on his behalf?”
My boys.I’d missed them so much. We normally went home to see them every week, but as our first-term exams loomed, Corbin and I needed every spare minute to study. It had been five weeks since we’d last touched or spoken in person, and even our phone calls had been cut off quickly by my need to study. No wonder they couldn’t wait half a day to see us.
Blake scraped his teeth along my ear. Flynn bolted off the bed and claimed my mouth, his tongue entwining with mine. Heat surged through me as they sandwiched me between them, their hands roaming over my body, lighting up desires I’d been suppressing for five long weeks.
“You’ve forgotten all about physics now, haven’t you Einstein?” Flynn murmured against my lips as his fingers scraped over my nipples, which stood erect through the fabric of my merino jumper.
