“She is,” he insisted, but the math wasn’t adding up for me.
“…So how old are you?”
“I’m fifty-eight,” he said casually. “I’m a phoenix, remember? We age slow. I just look…twenty-five-ish.”
My jaw dropped. “You lookmaybetwenty-three!”
He shrugged sheepishly. “I moisturize?”
“Fates.”I shook my head. “Is your mom still around?”
“Yeah. She’s a Phoenix too. She’s got brown eyes, short brown hair. She’s sweet. Real bubbly. You’d like her.”
“I’d love to meet her someday.”
“I hope you can,” he said, walking over to the music box. “Let me show you something. I think I almost got the gears fixed.”
He twisted the dial with an audible click, then a snap, before a gear exploded off the mechanism like a bullet—right into his fucking eye.
“Koa—!”
He fell back hard on the ground, his limbs twitching once before going limp.
I stood frozen. Horrified. Mouth wide open. “What the actual fuck! Did you justdie?”
I’d seen a lot of death, look at who my parents were, butneverlike that. Never a…pointless random death.
Ragnar just sighed, like this had happened before.
Koa’s body combusted. Flames erupted from his chest, licking out like a supernova. Within seconds, his form turned to ash. From the center of the ashes, a plume of fire sparked, reigniting into a phoenix before he shifted back into a very naked silhouette.
Blazingly, beautifully, and completely bare.
“Oh.Wow,” I breathed, covering my mouth, eyes locked on the very hard, very large, cock between his legs.
He turned bright red. “Oh my Fates—I—one second—I’msosorry!” He turned, showing off his toned ass. He grabbed a pillow from the bed before he launched himself behind it, collapsing onto the mattress with a groan. “I swear,” he muttered, face burning. “My sister has never resurrected once. But me? I can’t stop dying stupidly.”
Behind him, Ragnar let out a low groan like he was agreeing with him.
I blinked at the tortoise. “Did he just?—?”
Koa nodded gravely. “He’s disappointed in me.”
I turned toward the door. “I’m going to, uh…let you…get dressed.”
“Good idea.”
I scratched Ragnar’s shell on the way out. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I am,” he promised sheepishly. “This isn’t the first music box related death I’ve had.”
“It’s not?”
“No.”
I pressed my lips together to stop from laughing as I left his room and shut his door behind me.How elsecould a music box cause death?
Steam covered the bathroom entry as I stepped inside, pressing the crystal lock behind me. I stumbled to the pristine toilet, finally emptying my poor bladder.
