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Layden walks over and clasps her hands, looking deep into her eyes. “We both know I do.”
“He does,” Vlad snaps. “And so do you.”
Blinking several times, and looking back and forth between Vlad and Layden, Phoenix finally nods. “All right. I accept.”
“Excellent,” Vlad looks around at the rest of us. “Your family is welcome to stay the month while we prepare for the blessed nuptials.” He claps his hands. “Now, I’m starved. It’s feeding time. Come on, boys.” He looks around to his sons. “Let’s go see if there are any looters breaking curfew.”
I shudder and step back as several of his sons grin and rub their hands together as they follow their grandfather out of the room.
Remus squeezes me tighter and puts his body between me and them as they pass.
“I’m so sorry,” I hear Phoenix apologizing to Layden. “I had no idea he was going to do that.”
“I don’t look forward to being in-laws with him,” Abaddon says, “but nothing forges a true alliance like a marriage if you’re both willing.”
“We are,” Layden says firmly. If I’m not wrong, I think he’s actually blushing as he glances over at Phoenix, who still seems a little distressed about it all, even as she nods vehemently.
But Remus is apparently done with family time. His arms come around me. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some alone time,” he says in my ear.
“Me too,” Romulus echoes, and I struggle not to giggle, the light in my chest flaring a little in response.
“Brothers,” Abaddon calls toward Remus and Romulus as they lead me from the room. “We need to have a long chat soon.”
“Fine,” Remus growls over his shoulder. “Just don’t come knocking too soon if you value your life.”
Abaddon’s chuckle is the last thing I hear as Remus carries me out of the room.
Chapter Thirty-One
ROMULUS
Several days later
“You’re really okay with this?” I ask, facing forward and in full control of our body—everything except for our mostly regrown new tail—as I sit on the bed holding up a hand mirror. I can see Remus’s face on the back of my head in the reflection of the corresponding hand mirror he’s using our tail to hold up.
Lo-Ren’s shower spray from the bathroom provides white noise in the background.
“If you want to keep arguing it,” Remus growls, “I’m happy to switch back.”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” But then again, I’ve been surprised about a great many things since I woke up a few days ago. I don’t know exactly what happened since we don’t share memories anymore, but apparently, my brother single-handedly defeated an undefeatable interdimensional threat and absorbed its life force, which has given us a shit-ton of new power.
Which, for some equally unknown reason, he’s decided to share by willingly taking turns switching out control of our body with me. We have control over when we switch now. And he’ll actually give it up to me on a prearranged schedule.
Along with using his new power to give Lo-Ren immortality, it means we’ll never have to suffer her withering and dying in the scattered handful of years most mortals get.
It’s all so. . . unsettling. You go for thousands and thousands of years thinking you know a person, and then. . . this? Remus goes and commits multiple selfless acts?
Yes, giving Lo-Ren immortality wasn’t strictly selfless, but he did have to give up some of his new power for it, and I know all that new power meant he had the choice he always wished for. He could have destroyed me. Certainly, he could have put me to sleep for a century or two at least. Instead, he’s suddenly willing to share?
“Did you get a personality transplant out there in space?” I ask.
Our shorter, barely regrown tail comes around to slap me in the face. “Hey!” I glower, rubbing my cheek. “I’ll take that as a no,” I mutter.
This whole being conscious at the same time as him business—and not just for a few moments when we’re having sex—is a whole new thing, too. I glare at him distrustfully in the mirror, but he just looks bored. It’s so bizarre to be able to talk to him relatively face to face rather than just passive-aggressively through action and waiting to see what he does next in memory.
We’re not both awake all the time. God, that’d be a real nightmare. But Lo-Ren suggested we carve out times like this to communicate directly.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” I ask.
