Her eyes softened and filled with tears again. She leaned her forehead against his.
“I’m scared,” she breathed, and he knew she was afraid to feel strongly for someone who wasn’t family. Someone who could let you down and leave you, hurt you. A sentiment, until right this moment, he’d shared.
“I know,” he replied. “Think nothing more of it. Say your goodbyes and then I’ll fly you home.”
She let out a shaky breath, nodded, and gingerly stepped away.
Ulric held out his hands, his drink on the table in front of him. “Brah. Where have you been? Jasper fell on his head.”
She blinked at him stupidly for a moment, then at Jasper still laughing on the floor, and started laughing herself. Just like that, her sunshine rushed back in. This time, it wasn’t feigned.
John sat down next to Tristan and clasped his fingers together.
“I don’t have to tell you that whatever you heard doesn’t need to be repeated,” Tristan growled. He might not win, but to protect her truth, he’d take on the beast next to him.
“I certainly know something about darkness and killing those who are trying to hurt your family,” John murmured. “I came to it young, too. It scars you, and those scars never go away. I’ve got no interest in meddling with anyone else’s affairs. I got plenty of shit on my own plate.”
Didn’t they all.
“You’ve gotten used to this situation, then?” John asked, gesturing at the Ivy House crew. Hopefully, they’d been cut off by the bartender.
Tristan took a deep breath. “No. I’m still reeling half the time, even tonight, when I thought I’d known everything. That’s the thing about this cair--convocation. I’ve got cairn on the brain, sorry. But that’s the thing about it—you think it can only go one way, or two ways, or five, and it ends up going in a completely different direction. When you roll with it, and trust your team, and work with them, then it works out. And only then.”
“I don’t want a job.”
“I don’t care. Doesn’t change the situation as you sit here now, waiting for the next random thing to happen.”
John studied him quietly. This guy was taking it all in, moment by moment. It must’ve been the way he was programmed.
Tristan let him. A woman separated from a cluster within the crowd and walked straight toward him wearing a smile that said she had devious things on her mind. Her hips swayed suggestively, and her slinky blue dress rode high on her thighs and low on her bust.
He looked away with a distasteful expression. Maybe she’d get the hint?—
“Hello, Tristan,” he heard. “I heard that?—“
Light glittered along a blade, and energy coiled and churned around him as Nessa lurched forward. She grabbed the woman by the back of the neck, yanked her closer, and pressed a pocketknife against the woman’s throat.
“Approach my man again,” Nessa ground out, “and I will press this blade as deep as it can go. He ismine,do you hear me? I do not share. I have no problem with torture and less problem with unmarked graves.” She grinned at the wide-eyed woman. “Hell, all I’d have to do is throw you and all your friends off the side of this mountain. Unlike my boss, the ladies here don’t have wings.Splat!” She shoved the woman away. “Get gone while I still have my temper.”
The woman didn’t spare Tristan another glance. She and her companions hurried out of the bar.
“That last line didn’t make any sense.” Ulric scratched his head. “Right? Or am I missing something?”
“Oh, crap, Ulric, is that your mom?” Jasper pointed down the bar.
“Oh no! Tell her I went home. Call me when she’s gone.” Ulric ran for the back of the bar, knocking chairs out of the way.
Jasper bent forward in a wheeze. “Got him!”
Phil had turned from the bar to face Tristan. “I thought you were going to stop her from doing that! We’re here to keep the peace.”
“Nah.You’rehere to keep the peace. And you’re not doing a great job of it from what I just saw.I’mhere for a cognac. Niamh?”
Niamh shook with laughter. She put up her hand for the bartender.
“I will take that.” Phil tsked as he grabbed Natasha’s wrist and, with the other large hand, wrestled the blade away. “You are very sneaky, Miss Nessa. Where do you keep finding these weapons?”
“I’m seeing a completely different side to the basajaunak,” John murmured. “Completelydifferent.”
