“You were gone!” I press my hand harder against my chest, as if I can physically encourage my heart to stop doing what it’s doing. “I woke up and you were gone and I thought...”
I stop talking. Because I was going to say something embarrassing. And I’m not going to say that. I have some dignity left. Not much, but some.
“I can’t maintain full form in daylight,” Hex says, pushing off the wall. He moves to the stove with that fluid grace that makes everything look effortless. “Not yet. It takes too much energy. I can manage it for short periods, but not all night and all morning too.”
He picks up the kettle, which has just finished its violent boiling fit, and pours the water into my mug with more elegance than anyone has any right to bring to instant coffee.
I stare at him. “Are you making me coffee?”
“I’m aware it’s the minimum requirement before you become a functional person.” He stirs it, places the mug on the table, and pulls out the chair with a pointed look. “Sit.”
I sit. Mainly because my legs are still a bit unreliable and also because being told what to do by a six-foot shadow prince before I’ve had caffeine is frankly more than my brain can process into an argument.
I wrap my hands around the mug. Hex sits opposite me, the same way he did last night over curry. Like it’s already a habit. Like we do this every morning. Like this is normal.
It’s not normal. None of this is normal.
I take a long sip of coffee and try to pull my scattered thoughts into some kind of order. Right. Okay. Let’s be sensible about this. Let’s think clearly.
Hex needs to feed. He’s been exiled from the Shadow Realm and stripped of his power. I’m his loophole. His lifeline. This is a practical arrangement, not a romantic one. He’s here because he has to be, not because Saturday morning domesticity with a Bristol barista is his idea of a good time.
A few weeks of this. Maybe a month. He’ll get his strength back, he’ll go and reclaim his throne, and I’ll be left here with my supermarket flowers and my crystals and a very good story I can never tell anyone.
That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. I am twenty-six years old and I am perfectly capable of having a situationship with a shadow prince and coming out the other side intact. People do this all the time. Well, not this specifically. But the general concept. Enjoying something for what it is without expecting it to be something else.
I am very mature and sensible.
“You’re doing that thing,” says Hex.
I look up at him. “What thing?”
“That thing where you have a very intense conversation with yourself behind your eyes.” He rests his chin in one hand and regards me with that maddening expression. Amused. Knowing. Like he can see straight through me to the conversation I’m having with myself and finds it adorable in a deeply patronising way. “What conclusions have you reached?”
“None of your business,” I say primly, and take another sip of coffee.
Hex smiles. It does terrible things to my composure.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll tell you what you’ve concluded. You’ve decided this is temporary. A situationship. A mutually beneficial arrangement with a clear endpoint. You’ve told yourself you’re fine with that and are currently trying to believe it.”
I stare at him over the rim of my mug. “Can you actually read minds?”
“No.” His smile widens. “You’re just very transparent.”
“That’s rude.”
“It’s observant.”
“Same thing.”
He laughs, and the sound rolls through the kitchen and does absolutely nothing helpful to my attempts at sensible thinking. “You’re allowed to enjoy this without catastrophising it, you know.”
“I’m not catastrophising.”
“You’re sitting there planning your emotional exit strategy before you’ve even finished your morning coffee.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. He’s not wrong and I hate that he’s not wrong. It’s extremely annoying. He’s extremely annoying. I should find him less attractive when he’s being annoying. The fact that I don’t is its own specific problem.
“What are you doing today?” he asks, shifting gears with infuriating ease.
