“You’re beautiful.” Orion’s voice is rough at the edges.
When he looks at me I can feel it in my toes. Zipping up, and up to send tingles all through my body.
Kieran appears from the direction of the treehouses.
He’s been talking to Jadeve’s people—I’ve been tracking him without meaning to, the silver-blue bond doing its quiet work at my wrist. He stops at the edge of the firelight. Takes in the scene. Me between Orion and Finnian, glowing faintly, the cup in my hand, the village alive around us.
I can’t tell if there’s longing in that look or peace. He doesn’t let me look at it too long anyway.
He sits. Not close. Not across the fire either. Somewhere in between. Somewhere that is its own kind of answer to a question neither of us has asked yet.
He accepts a cup from a passing elder without looking at it. Takes a long drink.
The music builds. The dancing expands. Whispen has now apparently organized some kind of competition involving the large terrified-delighted man, two children, and rules that seem to shift every thirty seconds.
“What are the rules?” the large man asks.
“There are no rules,” Whispen says serenely. “That is the first rule.”
“That doesn’t?—”
“Second rule: the queen of the Wild Court must participate.”
Every head turns to me.
I look at Orion.
He’s already grinning. The full one. The one that takes up his whole face and has absolutely no dignity in it whatsoever.
“Don’t you dare,” I say.
He dares.
He stands, takes my cup from my hand, pulls me to my feet in one motion. The village cheers—actually cheers, like they’ve been waiting for exactly this—and the little girl who stared at my feet appears from nowhere and grabs my other hand, and I am outnumbered on all sides.
The soil pulses under my feet.
The magic trickling in becomes a current.
I let it.
It feels like something I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath for.
27
Orion
The devious minx cries, “Mercy.”Again. But there’s laughter in her voice.
And by the gods, I want to hear it again and again and again.
So the game, the one without rules, is called Catch the Queen.
I toss Ash over my shoulder and race toward the other side of the clearing. Little Unseelie bite-sized children snap at my ankles, their giggles sharp as teeth. Ash pounds her fists against my back—not hard, not like she means it—and her laughter shakes through my spine like something I could get addicted to.
This. This is what I missed.
Not the sex. Not the wanting. This. Her weight against me. Her trust that I won’t drop her. The way she fights back just enough to make me work for it but not enough to actually get away.
