“What do you think it is?” Reyna asks, breaking the silence.
Malice looks at Aerin. At first, she looks nervous, then resolve washes over her features. She nods and Malice breaks the carefully placed seal. The cardstock inside screams luxury, off white with gold plated text. Malice reads over it and his stomach churns.
He locks eyes with Aerin again.
“Well?” Theo asks, impatient.
“It’s an invitation,” Malice says, looking between Khortland and Aerin. Finally landing on Aerin again he says, “A dinner in celebration of the Tolvare-Hale Paramyrs and their impending bonding.”
67
AERIN
Aerin should have known her father would pull something like this. She tries to school her features as she sips the mixed drink Kallan gave her. Apparently, the nondescript house on the river is owned by her brother. News to her.
The cookout isn’t intimate, but of the fifty or so creatures who mill about, not a single one is a Fae noble. The only Royal Guards in attendance are Kallan and Bryer, both of whom are off duty in their casual clothes, passing out drinks and laughing. The majority of the attendees aren’t even Fae, but rather Shifters.
Bruin, his golden hair tied back in a bun, stands over the grill, chatting with an Eagle Shifter. Theo has amassed a group of friendly faces. Perched on the arm of an outdoor couch he animatedly tells a joke that has the whole group laughing around him.
Emrys stands back with Reyna and Khortland, near the edge of the river that lazily flows by. Malice is up near the house, a vantage point, as he called it.
Malice has been even more standoffish since the arrival of the invitation. As if Aerin somehow planned it, as if she’d agreed to this. She finishes her drink, not in the mood to enjoy herself.
For an achingly long moment Aerin lets herself miss her brother. She watches him chat easily with creatures as he pulls food on and off the grill in front of him. The male who betrayed her, who sold her out to her father, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Aerin sees the boy she ran through the Royal Village halls with. Who she climbed trees with, learned how to spar with. The boy who was her best friend for the better part of thirty-eight years.
Aerin closes the space between them. The Eagle Shifter sees her coming and excuses herself. Bruin turns and meets Aerin’s eyes as she approaches. She plants herself on the stool closest to him.
“He’s mad at me,” is what Aerin says to her brother.
Bruin looks at her. Really looks at her.
They are so alike, her and Bruin. They could be twins, their appearance almost as similar as Kallan and Bryer. But Bruin isgood. He is resolute in his identity, in what is needed of him.
Those are things Aerin has never been. And now that she knows the truth, she thinks maybe that’s why.
Bruin looks back to the grill with a smile on his face, “Which one?” he teases.
Aerin casts him a playful glare, so different from the ones full of wrath she laid on him these last few months.
“The moody one of course,” Aerin says, letting her eyes flick in the direction of Malice.
“Ah,” Bruin replies, passing off a tray full of food to Bryer. The Fae does little to hide his glee at the sight of the Tolvare siblings talking.
“What did you do?” Bruin asks her, shutting off the grill.
“What makes you think I did something?” Aerin fires back. To this Bruin only laughs. He grabs two drinks from the cooler to his left. Opening both he passes one to Aerin. She sets aside her empty bottle and takes a long drink from the new one.
“Okay, I did do something, but he should have forgiven me by now. I even apologized,” Aerin whines. It feels good, to let go of all the pieces of herself she holds together, allowing herself to once again be the petulant little sister.
“Sometimes, you have to show them you’re sorry too, Rin,” Bruin says, taking his own swig. “And sometimes, it takes them a long time to forgive,” he adds.
Aerin swallows before shrugging and looking away from her brother. The dual meaning of the words bouncing around in the air between them.
“What was I going to do? Hate you forever? And miss out on all this?” Aerin gestures to the cookout. Bruin laughs.
Looking around with her, Bruin’s gaze snags on the red-headed Mer surrounded by creatures and looking completely at ease.
“So… the blood contract is broken,” he comments, taking another swig of his drink.
