Page 38 of A Taste for the Peculiar

Pye grabs Avirin’s hands. It’s a surprising change, but not harmful — at least, not unheard of. Pye has seen other succubi with these features, but Avirin’s face grows deathly pale. There is no way to disguise this. No preserving her reputation. No proposal from Reid. No question of what she has become, all because Pye could not pull himself away from a kiss.

Damn it all.

“It’s all right.” His voice is soft. “You’re all right. Look at me.”

His words can’t reach her. In the midst of her panic, her breath comes in short bursts, eyes darting over his shoulder. The women behind them are already tearing back toward the party, and Avirin’s world is slipping from her grasp.

Pye cups her face to bring her eyes to his. “It will be all right. We’ll sort this out. I will help you, I swear it.”

A sob hitches in her throat. “You can’t —”

“I will marry you!”

It echoes through the garden, ragged with his breathing. Pye’s words hang in the air all wrong. He never wanted to say them like this. A proposal is supposed to be joyous and wonderful, but instead, it sounds as desperate as Avirin’s predicament.

It doesn’t matter. Avirin hardly hears him, gathering her skirts and running down the path like she wishes she could leave this entire evening behind her.

TWENTY

Avirin

Avirin runs.

She isn’t sure how she makes it home. Her feet are blistered, the hem of her dress stained and torn where it drags on the ground. At Ellison House, Ms. Haskett opens the front door. When she sees Avirin’s tear-stained cheeks, she reaches for her — before she catches sight of the rest of Avirin’s face and mutters a terrified prayer.

This is how everyone will look at Avirin.

She sobs at the truth of it, pushing inside and running up the stairs. There is no way to fool herself into believing she might escape this. Women do not recover from this. A sordid kiss was bad enough, but her eyes? Her horns?

There is no salvaging her reputation. She has been seen by too many people. She is ruined in every way. News of this will spread like wildfire until there is no corner of the ton that does not know her shameful secret, all because she could not bear the thought of never seeing Pye again.

What has she done?

She stumbles to her door, light glinting off the tears on her cheeks. Near the end of the hall, the door to her father’s study is ajar with a candle glowing inside.

Something pathetically naive tightens in her chest. “Daddy?” Her voice is small and fragile. She feels like she is a girl again, clutching a broken vase and praying her father will help her repair it. She moves haltingly toward the door, fighting the urge to turn away. She should not disturb him. He doesn’t like to be bothered in his study, but she has never needed him more than she does right now.

When she approaches, he is still rummaging through his desk drawers. He hasn’t heard her. He hasn’t seen her. He hasn’t noticed her at all.

She clears her throat and tries not to let her voice waver. “Father?”

He looks up in surprise. It’s dark enough in the hallway that he cannot see her fully, and she wishes she could stay in this moment forever. Before he sees what’s happened to her. Before he looks at her differently. Before he knows what she has become.

Then her father reaches for the door and opens it further, casting light into the hall and across Avirin’s face.

Even he recoils at the sight of her. She tries not to flinch, but there is no mistaking his intake of breath before his face settles back into a dispassionate mask.

Avirin’s lip trembles. “I don’t know what to do.” She should say more. She should explain herself, but she cannot think past her shaking hands. “I’m sorry.” Her voice breaks. “I’m scared.”

Her father is silent for a long time. For a moment, the light reflects differently in his eyes, and Avirin wonders if he will reach for her. If he will comfort her. If he will assure her everything will be okay.

But he averts his gaze, easing the door closed until only a sliver of light remains. “I’m busy, Avirin.” Then he shuts her out.

The world crumbles around her.

A noise comes from the stairs. Ms. Haskett holds a candle to illuminate Avirin’s mother on the landing. At the sight of Avirin, her mother’s jaw clenches with disgust. She storms back down the stairs, nearly knocking Ms. Haskett aside in her fury. At the front door, she flings a bundle of envelopes into the fireplace, sending wedding invitations and marriage papers up in smoke.

Avirin watches them burn. There is no part of her life that this fire will not touch. Her engagement to Lord Reid is null. She will marry Pye in disgrace. Her reputation will haunt both of them forever.