“That’s the idea.”
“Being spoiled rotten by a king while watching sunsets.”
“Among other things.”
She tilted her head back against my shoulder, looking up at me with an angle that made her nose scrunch. “What other things?”
I kissed her forehead. “Patience.”
“Coming from the man who threatened to eat a raven.”
Behind us, the back door opened. Percy’s head appeared.
“Dinner’s ready.” His grin was audible even before I saw it. “Solomon made a delicious smelling dish and if you two don’t come inside in the next thirty seconds, I’m eating your portions. This is not a bluff.”
Mira laughed against my chest. The sound vibrated through the bond, through my ribs, through the ancient and stubborn organ in my chest that had spent five centuries beating for no one and now couldn’t remember how to exist without her.
“Coming,” she called.
She pulled away and my arms let her go, even though every instinct demanded otherwise.
The pendant swung at her throat as she turned, catching the last of the sunset, and for a moment, she stood framed in the doorway with the golden light behind her and the obsidian at her collarbone with the marks on her neck that declared her ours.
A queen who didn’t know she was one yet.
I followed her inside.
There was still danger lurking in the shadows for us. And I thought they were getting closer.
But tonight, we’ll have our usual dinner.
And the world outside these walls could wait until morning.
25
— • —
Mira
Solomon brought boxes.
Three of them, cardboard, taped shut, carried into the cabin’s study. He was quiet which I deduced meant that he’d spent the morning doing things he didn’t want to talk about. He set them on the desk and stepped back.
“Found where Hudson was staying,” he said. “A weekly rental paid in cash. The landlord hadn’t been inside since the lease started.”
I stood in the doorway and stared at the boxes.
My name wasn’t on them, but they might as well have been addressed to me. Everything inside those containers belonged to the man who destroyed my life.
The fact that I was about to sift through his belongings while standing in a cabin full of my mates was a narrative twist even my scandalous romance novels wouldn’t have attempted.
“You cleared the whole place?” Lucian asked from the armchair. He’d been reading, or pretending to, with the focus of a man who’d been waiting since Solomon left at dawn.
“Every room. The landlord cooperated.” Solomon paused. “With encouragement.”
“Did you threaten the landlord?” I asked.
“I used a firm tone.”
