“Convenient for you that I should avoid touching you given how you recoil in fear when I try, songbird,” he said, an arrogant smirk tilting his lips up at the corner.
He thought I was lying, and there was a challenge in those words that I so wanted not to rise to meet.
My pride got the best of me. “I’m not afraid of you,” I snapped, dropping my book on the table without a care for the way the thud echoed through the occupied library. I was all too aware ofthe stares that turned our way, watching our interaction for what it was.
Gossip fodder.
“No?” he asked, reaching out in an attempt to touch my cheek. I flinched back, hating the visceral reaction that I couldn’t control any more than he could his pull to me. “That’s what I thought.”
He pulled his hand back as I looked down at my book on the table, opening it to the next page and getting ready to ignore him in favor of the pages about magical history. “It’s not about you. I don’t like to be touched,” I said, offering the appeasement that I wasn’t certain why I felt was needed. It felt like an attempt to be comforting, and maybe it was the play of vulnerability on his face.
Maybe being somewhere new made him feel like a monster, too.
“Why’s that?” he asked, snapping my attention back to his face. “Who made you that way?”
My own growl rumbled in my chest, making his brows rise in surprise as something monstrous welled up within me. “You don’t get to ask me that,” I snapped, baring my teeth in a grimace.
“Easy, songbird. I’m just trying to get to know you,” he said, raising his hands placatingly as if to try to convince me he was innocent. Like he hadn’t just asked me a very, very personal fucking question. I hated that he saw enough to know that there had been a who, that I wasn’t just born hating touch.
There’d been a time when I was physically affectionate as a child, constantly seeking out hugs from my family and friends.
He’d taken that from me, made me despise the very notion of another person’s scent on my skin.
“Yeah? Well, don’t,” I hissed, flipping through the pages of my book to try to find the right page. “It’s far better for both of us if we know nothing about each other.”
He paused, leaning back in his chair and getting comfortableas he watched me. He crossed his arms over his chest, not in anger but in comfort, as if to say he was planning to stay awhile. “I think I disagree with you on that one.”
“Do youwantto stay stuck under my spell forever? Is that it?” I asked, watching as his smile faded a little.
“No,” he said, barking a laugh. “But if you’re going to occupy my every fucking thought against my will, then I might as well get to know you so I have something to think about. Besides, you’re the most interesting way I’ve found to occupy my time here.”
“I’m not sure if you meant that as a compliment or an insult,” I said, leaning back in my chair.
The fucker really wasn’t going to smarten up and stay away from me, determined to condemn us both to this misery.
“Maybe it was both,” he said, his face lighting up with a playful grin that I felt everywhere as I swallowed, feeling my heart in my throat.
Shit. That Goddess-damned song was going to be the death of me.
4
MARGOT
I’d never seen the Tribunal room so full as the space was typically reserved for Tribunal members and the select few they deemed worthy of their presence when they met. Even I’d only been permitted within the space a handful of times, none of which were memories I wanted to keep.
The day the Covenant deemed me the beauty of my generation of witches. The day they shared the news of my betrothal. The day they brought me in to give me my formal invitation to attend Hollow’s Grove. There’d been maybe two other meetings where the children of Tribunal members were all present to be observed by the Covenant, studied for potential placements through our childhood. As much as I might have dreamed of being one of the few Reds with high enough marks to be chosen to work in the apothecary in town, I knew it was an unlikely occurrence. Daughters of Tribunal members were typically more active in the politics surrounding the town and its ordinances, even those who were not chosen to take over their mother’s Tribunal seat.
I wanted nothing more than to go play with potions and herbs, spelling them with the whisper of my magic so that I could give something back to those who wanted it, rather than keeping it eternally contained within me because Ididn’t.
I glanced around the room, moving to take up space beside Della. She glanced up at me, smiling softly as she reached downwith a cautious hand to take mine in hers. It was one of the first times she’d attempted to touch me, knowing how much I hated it, and I couldn’t help the subtle jolt that came with it.
Her skin was cool to the touch, the temperature of a refreshing lake on a hot summer’s night. I realized it was my skin that was overheating, my body already stressed from what might occur within these walls for it to be necessary for all of us to be present at once.
“I heard the winged bastard is giving you trouble,” she said, leaning sideways so she could whisper in my ear. Della was slightly shorter than me, making the whisper well-placed, and I hoped that no one could hear her.
I swallowed, my gaze immediately going to Beelzebub on the other side of the room. The siren song should have meant that he was pulled to me, that he was the one who sought me out; the reverse wasn’t often true. I shouldn’t have been able to pick him out in the crowd, shouldn’t have been able to sense where he was before my eyes ever found him.
I brushed it off, knowing it was likely just the power that radiated off him. When you combined that with his formidable size, his massive black wings that were so reminiscent of the bats the Vessels were able to call to their aid, he exuded a presence that most of the men I’d encountered before him simply did not have.
