Page 2

“Is the palace that way?”

“Yeah. We’ll show you soon.” Zeke tugged on the hand he still held. “Come on. I’ll show you my room.”

Ash shook his head, smiling as we stepped inside. “Let’s get her settled into her new room. We’ll give her a proper house tour tomorrow after we get some sleep.”

The interior of the house was beautiful, with gray hardwood floors, a vaulted ceiling in the living room, and massive windows offering panoramic views of the surrounding forest and setting sun.

We’d eaten dinner at sunset before returning home to teleport, so I expected it to be dark, but it seemed time was delayed here—or was it another day altogether?

“Our rooms are upstairs,” Zeke said, guiding me past a large wraparound sofa in a conversational pit at the center of the living room, facing a flat-screen TV that put mine to shame.

At the top of the stairs, a small balcony lined with doors overlooked the living room below.

“This is Cyn’s room,” Zeke said, pointing at the closed door on my left, closest to the stairs. “The one beside it is mine. We share a bathroom.”

He led me past a small table against the wall with a vase of flowers I’d never seen before.

I was about to ask about them when he stopped at the next door.

“This is my room,” Ash said. “I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

“This is Ezra’s room.” Zeke tapped on the door beside Ash’s room. “And this last room was our guest room, but it’s yours now.”

Ash pushed the door open, and Zeke pulled me inside.

The first thing that caught my attention in the large room with cream walls and carpet was the floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the entire back wall, giving me an unobstructed view of the forest behind their home. A door on the left led out onto a veranda where two chairs and a small table waited.

“We can change anything you want,” Ash said, placing his hand on the small of my back and guiding me toward a door on the left wall.

The door led to a spacious closet, big enough to hold triple my existing wardrobe.

“What do you think of the colors?” Zeke said, collapsing onto a bed big enough to fit four people. “You like purple, right?”

“How’d you know?”

He counted on his fingers. “The pillows in your living room. Your bedding. Towels. Shower cur—”

“She gets it.”

I shook my head with a smile and turned my attention to the room again.

A deep aubergine wall behind the bed contrasted with the room’s cream tones. The buttery-soft purple throw blanket across the foot of the thick cream comforter matched the accent pillows at the head of the bed. The same colors made up the small sofa and pillows in the room’s corner near the ornate ivory dresser.

“I like it,” I said around a yawn. “I don’t know how y’all keep all the light colors clean, but it’s pretty.”

Ash started moving the accent pillows to the chest at the foot of the bed. “If you want something darker, we can change it.”

I shook my head.

I didn’t know how long I’d be in their home. Cornaith told me I had to come to Elyrdin. He never said where I needed to live. I doubted the council wanted me living with their sons—even if we were mates. I wasn’t royalty.

Zeke rolled off the bed. “I’ll be right back.”

Ash turned down the thick bedding as Zeke rushed out of the room. “We should get some sleep.”

“It’s barely night.” I looked out the window at the darkened woods.

“It was night when we left Earth. It seems we’re a few hours behind here. A little extra sleep wouldn’t hurt. There’s nothing we can do anyway until Ezra returns with news from Cornaith.”