“He’s my brother. Could I use your phone to call him?” I grimace, knowing the almost-drowning incident is going to be fuel to my brother’s anxious fire.
Turns out, I’m not healed after all.
It takes a decent amount of willpower not to let hopelessness crush me flat at that realization. I’d just started thinking about the future. Planning for it.
But, once again, I’m on my way to dying.
“Council Member Abadi will alert him you’re here. I called him.” He takes another long sip of the alcohol I’m starting to regret refusing.
My bodyhurts.
“How did you come by that little nick on your side?” Sev asks, minimizing my pain by a thousand.
A petulant part of me wants to ignore him, but he did just save my life.
“A hunter. Cut me with a dagger. The Council knows everything, and they’re on the lookout in case he shows up in town.” Which I really hope never happens. “Any reason we’re sitting outside?” The cool night air raises goose bumps on my arms.
“Stranger danger.” Sev bats his eyes at me, as if attempting to appear innocent. Impossible. He’s entirely too handsome for that with his waterfall of golden hair and sculpted abdomen. “This could all be a ploy to infiltrate my home.”
“Huh. You got some good stuff in there?”
He smirks, but his eyes are sharp with warning. “Of a sort.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Curious about me?”
“Just trying to pass the time.” But also, yes. I could swear the underlying note to this mythic strums with potential danger. And yet he helped me. Saved me.
Sev hums in the back of his throat. “I had this house built … hmm … time tends to elude me. Twenty years ago? That sounds right.” The monster stares up at the stars as he talks. “Sometimes, I’m here. Sometimes, I’m not.”
I frown. “I lived here nine years ago. I feel like I should have at least known about this house.” Glancing up at the mansion, I try to discern which is bigger—Sev’s home or Town Hall.
“After an attempted robbery, I adjusted the wards. My home is less noticeable unless you know to notice it.”
Sounds like a riddle.
“Tell me, Clementine, do you have any unmated mythic friends?”
I blink at him. “Are you … asking to be set up?”
He shrugs but keeps his attention fully fixated on me.
“Sorry. I don’t.” Sev frowns, and I add so he doesn’t think I’m blowing him off, “I’ve been living on my own among humans since I was eighteen. If I met any other mythics, I didn’t realize.”
He sighs and sinks further into his chair, his chin tilted up, attention back on the stars. “Was too much to hope for, I suspect.”
“There’s got to be some singles in town, right?” I’m not used to being a wingwoman, but chatting with Sev about the dating scene is something to take my mind off the pain of my reopened wound.
The next sip he takes is more like a life-sustaining swallow. He licks a stray drop of whiskey off his lips, and then, with a forsaken tone, he claims, “None of them are perfection.”
I snort. “Oh gods. Is that what you’re looking for? Perfection?”
He frowns at the sky. “What else should I expect my mate to be?”
Sev is powerful. I can tell simply from being in his presence. He has this air to him that exudes a sense that he’s seen so much of the world that none of it truly affects him anymore.
My guess is, he’s a long-lived mythic, much older than his thirty-something face appears to be.
