Vinca Vinca Vinca. I’m fucking tired of Vinca.
“Vinca is exactly who I was thinking about when I crafted this spell,” Savi retorts, looking like I slapped her. Once again, I can see the cracks in her unbothered, smooth exterior. She even scowls at me. “Do you think I have any desire to go head-to-head with that putrescent psychopath again? I can assure you that I do not. If the wards we now wear on our bones keep her away from us, all the better.” She tilts her chin up in a manner any wolf would read as instantly belligerent. “I will tell your men this myself, not that I, a sorceress of old and mistress of the fate I choose, need to make myself palatable to males.”
Winter and I exchange a look and don’t point out that this is not a power issue for us. I don’t think I’d react well if Ty disappeared for a couple of days with no explanation. I’m more than happy for Savi to do the explaining on this one.
She is muttering again. Suddenly there’s a swirling sensation again, everything is golden and bright, and then we’re all standing in the snow some ways down the mountain from Savi’s house.
For a moment, there’s a kind of startled, intense pause.
Then the shouting kicks in.
Wolves are everywhere, baying and barking. Ty bounds toward me and knocks me down, then stands over me, all of his fur standing on end. I let him. When he’s clear there’s no threat, he starts licking me roughly, letting me know he was scared and he’s furious and he needs to make sure I’m okay.
“I am,” I tell him. I can see the indigo rings of his eyes, starker than usual today. “I’m okay.”
I say this a few more times, and then he shifts in a blur and hauls me up to my feet. His gaze moves over me, dark and assessing, and then it goes murderous when he turns it on Savi. He doesn’t let go of me while he does it.
“What the fuck were you doing in there?” he demands.
I can see that Ariel and Winter are standing pretty close together, with Ariel’s hand at her neck and a look on his face that I would not like aimed at me. Though Winter seems fine.
Savi doesn’t appear to be the vampire king’s favorite person right now either.
“I haven’t done that spell in a long time,” Savi is saying, very casually, as if she doesn’t notice the bared teeth aimed at her from two different species. “I haven’t done it likethisever, actually. I knew it would take a minute.” She smiles, fully serene, and by now I can read that smile. It means she’s actually not the least bit sorry. “I didn’t realize there would be quite so much of a time lapse.”
When there is nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees and glowering from all sides, Savi lets out an elegant sort of tinkling laugh that she must surely know can only fan the flames. Maybe she’s tired of this winter already and looking for a little fire.
“We thought you were all dead,” Ty growls at her.
Ariel looks as if he’s been turned to stone. “That can still be arranged.”
“Don’t be silly,” Savi says, as if that is something the vampire king is renowned for. His gigglysilliness. “If I was dead, all my wards would drop immediately and you could have strolled right in.” She looks at Ariel. “Surely you know that, vampire. You’ve seen enough wards in your time.”
“What I know,” Ariel says coldly, “is that sorceresses are inherently untrustworthy. As you have proven.”
“I don’t really know what happened,” Winter says then. She has her hand on Ariel’s chest, and it sounds like she’s going off on a tangent, but there’s a certain gleam in her gaze that suggests to me she knows exactly what she’s doing. “I personally feel more rested than I have since sometime in junior high school. I have to take that as a win. I didn’t know Icouldsleep that deeply.”
She looks at me then, raising her brows, and something else occurs to me, too. This valley succeeds the way that it does because these three intense and powerful beings get along. Wasn’t that what Christmas dinner was about? The vampire king has a consort now. I’m about to accept Ty’s claim to make me his queen. Savi is a wild card, but whatever spell she did just bound Winter and me to her. That makes all of us responsible for maintaining this peace.
No matter how many times Vinca tries to mess it all up.
“Look at us,” I say. Soothingly. “We’re all fine. Crisis averted.”
When Ty gets me back to the den, however, he’s clearly not convinced. He insists on examining every part of me, scenting me on such an intimate level that if he wasn’t so furious, it would be hot.
“Two days,” he thunders at me, over and over again. “I thought you were dead, Maddox.”
“I would be able to feel if you were dead,” I remind him, after repeatedly assuring him that—as he could tell—I was alive and breathing andfine. “You should have been able to feel if I was.”
“That’s how we found you at Savi’s place, asshole,” he growls. But he’s all over me, his face in mine, and this isn’t our usual flash fire. He’sraw. “We couldn’t get to you, Maddox. I can’t be in a situation where I can’t get to you.”
I want to fight with him, but I know that if the situations were reversed, I’d be as ripped up about this as he is. It was a blink of an eye to me. For him it was two interminable days when there have already been too many terrible things this fall. This happened literally within hours of his finding out that his own VP, friend, and confidant betrayed him. Everything he thinks he knows is inside out, and on top of that, I disappear?
I’d be a little bit feral myself if I were him.
I let him scent me all he likes. Until he’s satisfied that Savi didn’t plant any sorcerer’s land mines inside me, somehow.
“You don’t know what she did,” he growls at me.
