When was the last time it was just the four of us?
I look at the men who swooped into my life, knocking me not just off my feet but right on my ass. They did that. Changed everything. Became even more.
The only sure thing in my life are these three men and it makes me want to pull my hair out.
I got them. I got everything I wanted. The men, the crown. Their obsession. Their love. It’s mine. And yet there is this gaping hole in my life that I don’t know how to fill.
And I keep waiting for the joy to show up. Keep waiting to feel like I deserve any of it. Instead there’s this hole where my family used to be, and every time one of them touches me I thinkyou don’t know what I cost the people who loved me first.
My cousins pulse at the edge of my awareness. Have since I woke up in that grove.
Their impossible love through distance and time. I still feel it humming under my skin. And when they crossed into Faerie, when their feet touched wild soil...
I knew my time was up. No more figuring things out in the safety of distance. No more pretending the reckoning wasn’t coming.
I can’t get Lucy out of my head. The way she smiled when she realized dying was her ticket to finding mates. Who smiles about that? Who looks at death and thinksfinally, the good part?
Apparently my dead friend. Who isn’t dead in one timeline. Who I could have saved if I’d just shown up. Who might still die in that timeline, too, because fate doesn’t care which version of me makes which choice. It just waits for the outcome it wanted all along.
I choke and stumble.
“Okay, we aren’t going a moment longer until you explain what’s going on.” Orion catches me, lifts me up by the waist like I weigh nothing, and sets me down on the path.
The soles of my feet sink into the dirt and I swear I feel a tickle of a small root under my foot. The Wild Court magic reaching for me. Recognizing me. Whether I want it to or not.
“I can walk.”
“You can also wander into a carnivorous plant and get digested. I’ve seen you do that, too.”
“That was ONE time.”
“Once is enough when it comes to being plant food.”
He doesn’t let go immediately. His hands linger at my waist, thumbs pressing into the space above my hips. And the way he looks at me?—
Orion doesn’t see into my soul. He doesn’t need to. He sees the thing underneath. The creature I’ve been trying to keep caged since I was old enough to know it made people uncomfortable. The hunger. The violence. The part of me that liked it when the forest tried to eat us because at least then I had something to fight.
He sees all of that and his response isfinally, someone who gets it.
When he looks at me, it’s not like he’s trying to understand me. It’s like we’re the same animal wearing different skins, and he’s just been waiting for me to stop pretending I’m domesticated.
“You gonna tell us what’s wrong, or do I have to throw you over my shoulder again?”
“You’d enjoy that too much.”
“Guilty.” But he’s not smiling. “Talk, Ash.”
“I don’t want to talk.” I huff and blow my hair out of my face.
“Unfortunately we do not have the blue goblin for the emotional soul support.” Kieran crosses his arms, staring me down. “You have us.”
Kieran sees the fractures. Every single one. The guilt, the rage, the part of me that’s convinced I ruin everything I touch.He catalogues them the way he catalogues threats. Then he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t try to fix them. Just stands there likeyes, and?
The first time someone looked at my damage and didn’t treat it like a problem to solve, I almost didn’t recognize what was happening.
He loves the fucked up fractured Fae. Not despite. Because.
“If I may?” Finnian steps forward, hands clasped behind his back like he’s about to deliver a lecture. “I do believe that most interpersonal conflicts can be resolved through direct verbal communication.”
