Sighing deeply, I take a bite of breakfast and attempt to focus on the buttery flavor rather than anything to do with Willa. Though even the thirty minute cold bath I’d wallowed in before showing my face in the dining room hadn’t been enough to cool the heat pumping in my veins. It certainly hadn’t done anything to temper my death’s anger at having been pulled away from her so abruptly.
I can feel the longing in the strands of ribbon, the wish to pull away from me—to be nearher.
I’m so deep in my thoughts, that when Marina sets tea in front of me, I startle as if the noise of the cup against the table is as loud as a gunshot. She arches a brow, her curiosity deepening as I clear my throat and motion vaguely to the cup.
“I, uh…I actually don’t think I need a dose this morning.”
Her pale brows leap up her forehead, and I don’t miss the dubious looks exchanged between her and Sam that indicate they believe I’ve lost my mind.
I grunt and stare down at my plate, refusing to engage in their silent speculations on my wellbeing. Instead, I shovel a large forkful of eggs into my mouth and begin to chew with slow deliberation.
A pervasive sense of calm settles over the table as the spears of Sam’s magic sift gently over me like grains of sand. I wave off the invisible tendrils with a harried sigh of annoyance.
“I don’t need that either.”
The table goes silent for so long, I think they’ve dropped it, when Tiernan abandons shoveling food into his mouth long enough to ask bluntly, “Is this all it took, then?”
“All it took forwhat?”
“For you not to be an asshole?”
I drop my fork mid-bite to glower at him. It clatters on the table, shooting eggs everywhere, but Tiernan only grins wider beneath my stare, a thick tendril of his auburn hair flopping over his eyes. Annoyance rankles as I finally notice it isn’t just Tiernan. Rather than tiptoeing around me as they do most mornings, catering to the pain of waking, allthreeof the Lunaedon residents are smiling at me.
I lick my lips, shifting beneath their conspiratorial stares. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning,” I maintain primly.
Marina, ever a beacon of candor, replies,He means we would have found someone to warm your bed thirty years ago if we’d known that’s all it took for you to be pleasant company.
“Am I not always the most pleasant of company?” I counter dryly.
The little pixie gives a disbelieving scoff, which Tiernan and Sam promptly echo.
“You were smiling at your scrambled eggs, and you don’t even like them,” Tiernan says, as if this settles everything.
Idon’tlike them, but I’d rather eat the entire plate than agree with him. He continues regardless, which isn’t a surprise. Even the brutal removal of the tip of his tongue by the Aeternalis hadn’t been enough to hinder the unfettered deluge of words from Tiernan’s mouth. “I might understand the smiling if it was crepes, but the house hasn’t made those in ages.”
Marina and Sam both nod along. I push my plate away mutinously.
“You all have far too much time on your hands if you know my breakfast preferences in such detail. Can a man not simply enjoy a good night’s sleep and be left alone about it?”
“A man can.Youcan’t,” Sam remarks succinctly. “Normally you’d be in bed for two weeks recovering from such a great use of magic. And yet here you are, looking chipper and healthy.”
Like death warmed over,Marina signs with such a delighted shimmy, I wonder how long she’s been holding that joke in.
I mash my lips together to keep from laughing. Instead, I do what I’m best at and kill the mood entirely. “She’s a relation of the Aeternalis,” I snap harshly. Marina goes still at the name, while all traces of humor on Sam and Tiernan’s faces evaporates instantly. “Have you not considered what that means? Whoelseshe’s related to?”
Marina watches me sadly.It doesn’t have to be like it was with Wendy.
I steel my jaw, as my ribbons wrap tighter around my wrist, squeezing and scraping. “It won’t be like last time, Rina, because that man—the hopeful captain who made decisions with his heart—isdead.”The word is a sharp gnash of teeth. “There is no more empathy, no more softness to muddle my ambition. I am only shadows and death and pain, and I will use them all to do whatever it takes to free the island.”
Sam opens his mouth to argue, but I’m spared his response by Willa’s appearance in the doorway. He shakes his head with a pointed look, indicating his decision not to press the matter is temporary.
Willa dances awkwardly in the threshold, as if she can’t quite decide whether to join us or to bolt out of the Lunaedon entirely. My death doesn’t appear to share my resolution to keep our distance, as the ribbons unwind instantly from my wrists, slithering through the air to greet her.
Tiernan’s mouth falls open in a comically wide manner at their apparent excitement, as they swirl around her feet and tickle the air in front of her face. His mouth drops even wider, if possible, when Willa doesn’t run away screaming from my tendrils of death, but instead, greets them with a shy smile and a soft wiggle of her fingers.
I shoot him a lethal look, and thankfully, Tiernan closes his mouth. His face breaks open into his most charming smile. “Morning, Willie!” And then, with an entirely too innocent look in my direction, “How did you sleep?”
I’ll kill him.
