“Will it to her.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “They don’t speak or understand most of what we say.”
“Most.”
“That’s right.”
“How much do they understand?”
He flicked his fingers toward Pherin. “Let her in, and you might find out.”
The last time she’d landed on me, I’d kept every wall in my mind locked tight. I couldn’t risk the Beast Council knowing who I was. I couldn’t risk anyone knowing who I was.
But Trew had known all along. He was going to help me. Maybe she could help me too.
Even more, I felt like something had been missing since I’d made it through the Rite of Bonds, something I suspected only this little minxpip could give me.
I wanted to know her. I wanted her to know me.
I swallowed, closed my eyes, and slowly, carefully, eased my walls open.
It felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, leaning forward into the wind. A rush of sensation slammed into me, bright, warm, dizzying.
Affection, fierce and unquestioning, swamped me so completely it stole my breath and brought tears to my eyes. The scent of hedgerows after rain, wet leaves clinging to my skin. The rapid chirp of warning that meantdon’t you dare, undercut with an odd, stern patience, as if she’d been waiting for me to get myself together but was losing patience.
My throat tightened.You chose me.
She chirped, a sound that pulsed in my mind as words now.
Pherin.
The name rolled through me, not just a label but a piece of her, pressed into my magic like a seal.
The part of me that had been holding on to suspicion and guardedness so tight it had nearly strangled me cracked open.
Pherin pressed her tiny head against my jaw, her feathers tickling my skin. And I, who had sworn never to reveal all of myself here, let her all the way in.
Trew stared at me, though not in his usual smug,I told you soway. Not even with the kind of slow, knowing smile he wore when I rose to his bait.
This was something quieter and much more lethal than any other.
“About time,” he said in a low, throaty voice.
Pherin fluffed her feathers like she agreed. Gavelle let out a short, crackling note that I could’ve sworn was approval.
Trew stepped closer, his gaze lingering on the tiny creature on my shoulder. “Careful, Minx,” he said, the nickname curling warm in my chest. “That little thing might be everything you need.”
“She’s not a thing,” I said, which only made his smile deepen.
“Anyone who underestimates you, woman, is a fool.”
I should’ve dragged up a biting retort. Instead, I stood there with my pulse thundering and my throat tight, Pherin’s warm weight a promise on my shoulder. It wasn’t just the pride in his voice, it was the way it sounded like he meantme, not just my magic.
I glanced away, pretending to adjust Pherin’s perch. “Don’t look so smug.”
“I’m not smug.”
“You’re smug.”
He tilted his head, pretending to think. “Fine. I’m smug. But I’m also right.”
