“I know I’m a terrible person,” I confess, happily, “but I really can’t wait to watch Ty Ceridwen contend with a vegan meal. I don’t actually know what he’ll do. Combust?”
Winter grins at that and leans back against the counter. She folds her arms and nods toward the rooms on the other side of the steel-reinforced kitchen door.
“I don’t think Briar wanted to come.”
“But she did.” I saw her when Ty and I came in, all of us using the front door now, according to the scents I picked up on the way in. Not because Winter is any less wary of the Kind being in her space but because she has a terrifying lover to keep that space safe for her.
Briar is out there now, having made a nod toward the festivities in the form of a red flannel shirt thrown over her usual black. She is standing ramrod straight at one end of the dining room table, her hand at her neck. Or slightly below it, as if she’s testing her own heartbeat. Or maybe the necklace she was wearing that time.
I assume she’s standing on her own because she’s dying of awkwardness, standing out there with Ariel and Savi. A chilly convention if ever there was one—though Savi still looks ... not quite like her smooth, pulled-together self.
“She’s here now, but she was reluctant.” Winter sighs. “I had to pound on her cottage door for a long time before she opened it. She looked horrified at the invitation, but then she just ... smiled like it hurt her a little and said she would love nothing more than to join us.”
“I mean, that sounds a lot like Ty’s reaction, really.”
But Winter doesn’t laugh. “I had a pretty epically disgusting dream last night,” she continues, and I frown when she reaches up to rub at her temple. “It was ... blood. So much blood, and wolves in the night.” Her voice takes on that singsong quality it often does when she’s translating the things she sees in her head. “A moon, not full. A trail in the dark. I was running and I was terrified, and then it was on me—” She swallows, making a face. “I think Iwasa sacrifice. I could feel the knives. I could smell my own ...” Winter laughs, and her hand is shaky as she drops it from her face. “Then she was there.”
I don’t need to name her, but I do. “Vinca.”
“It was very gross,” Winter assures me. “There was a worm situation, but in me, and I was choking and she was laughing—” She blows out a breath. “Ariel said I was screaming in my sleep. He was not happy.”
“Did you see who was stabbing you?” I ask her quietly.
She sighs. “I couldn’t see. What’s the point of seeing all that and not getting to see the thing that matters?”
We stand there with that. Then I straighten my shoulders, thinking about the traitor in our pack and how they clearly got the packs to fightall the way up to the solstice. “Maybe it’s so you’ll suspecteveryone. Like ... all of us.”
“That’s what Savi thinks,” Winter says. “She said I should assume I’m being deliberately led astray.”
“Have you noticed that she’s ...?” I don’t really want to say it, but Winter nods.
“I’ve noticed.”
I tell myself that’s something.
I go back out into the dining room then, with a couple of beers in my hand and a smile on my face. Ariel and Ty are deep in conversation when I walk up to them.
“There’s no way that a goblin could beat a vampire,” Ariel is saying.
“Anyone can beat a vampire if they stand close enough to a window and can raise the shade,” Ty argues.
“Are we talking about actual combat or cheap tricks?”
“It’s all combat,” Ty says with a laugh. “You’re either fighting to survive or you’re playing a game. Me? I don’t play a lot of games.”
I hand him a beer. “Wow,” I drawl. “Apparently Reddit survived the Reveal after all.”
They both frown at me—neither one of them big on social media back in the day, I’m sure—then get back to their critical debate.
I look over at Savi, who is sitting in a wing chair that’s been shoved back against the wall, giving an excellent impression of a grand empress who appears to have wandered into the wrong empire. Not exactly in social mode, I see. When I move past her, thinking I might explore the house, she shakes her head.
“I wouldn’t,” she murmurs. “Everything except this area is fiercely and aggressively warded.” She cuts her gaze to the vampire king, who somehow looks deeply relaxed. For him, anyway. He’s standing in a wide stance with his hands behind his back that suggests leashed violence to me but I know is chilled out for him.
“He oversaw the warding,” Savi tells me. “With some intensity.”
I like it, and I can’t pretend I don’t. “You can’t blame the man for taking his consort seriously.”
“Indeed not. Yet I do have to wonder why it is that we are taking these measures rather than the more reasonable approach.” She glares in the general direction of the woods outside, beyond the boarded-up windows. “Which would be setting a trap for our favorite ritualistic fox rather than waiting to see what it does next.”
