Be the death of me.
You’ll be the death of me.
33
SIMON
Baz pulls away first.
He almost never pulls away first.
He sits back against the wall. “Hey,” he says, like he’s just thought of something. He has my tail twined around his arm again from wrist to elbow. He lets go, and it slithers away. (I can control the tail if I think about it, but it mostly moves of its own accord.)
I rest on my heels. We should sit like this more often—I like the way Baz looks, looking up at me.
He wipes his mouth with his butterfly-blue cuff. “Everyone at the meeting tonight will know who you are,” he says.
“Right. That’s the problem.”
“And everyone knows you’ve lost your magic.”
“Apparently they don’t believe it,” I say, thinking of Lady Salisbury.
“So we lean into that.”
“Lean into what?” My knees are killing me. Maybe weshouldn’tmake a habit of this. I try to shift onto the floor, but there’s nowhere to put my legs.
“Here.” Baz pulls my left leg over his and then does the same with my right. As soon as he has them settled, he puts his arms around my waist again. It’s fuckin’ cosy is what it is. “Lean into your whole thing,” he says. “‘I was never the Chosen One, I’ve lost my magic, I’ve heard that you can help . . .’”
“Oh,” I say. And then, “Oh.”
“Right?” Baz says, squeezing me. “Right?”
“Pretend I’m looking for a saviour.”
“Because why wouldn’t you be! You’d be such a score for this Smith-Richards. If the old Chosen One thinkshe’sthe Chosen One . . .”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding, “all right. I can do that. Lean into it. I mean, it sounds kind of humiliating . . .”
“You’re used to humiliating,” he says.
“Am I.”
“I want to go hunting first.” Baz is already moving on. “You can come,” he adds.
“I always get to come along now, remember?”
He tips his head back and cocks a thick eyebrow. “I don’t think I saidalways.”
“Yeah,” I say, “always. Every time. Every night for the rest of my life.”
“Not for the rest ofmylife?”
“Pfft.” I move closer to him, holding on to his sides. “You’re going to be young and pretty forever.”
Baz pulls me even closer, by the small of my back. “Don’t say that,” he says, soft. “You don’t know that.”
“I don’t mind.”
