“It’s scaring me,” Felix muttered.
The griffin let out a low trilling sound. Avery took another step. Close enough now that Felix’s entire body tensed, ready to drag her back if the thing so much as twitched wrong.
And then Avery put her hand on its beak.Goddamit. Her and her bleeding heart. But, to his surprise, the griffin leaned into it. Letting out a soft keen, it sat on its paws and folded its wings into itself.
“It’s okay,” Avery whispered. “You can go home now.”
The griffin’s eyes fluttered shut, and its form began to shimmer. Gold light bled through its form like splintering cracks in a wall. It stood, wings spreading wide, and Avery stepped back.
The light grew brighter. Warm on Felix’s skin even from where he stood. The griffin looked at Avery one last time, something almost like gratitude in its eyes.
Then it was gone, light scattering into nothing.
Avery stood there, hand still raised. The forest settled back into silence.
“What the fuck just happened?” Felix said.
Turning, she smiled at him, not an inkling of sadness in her features. “It returned to the goddess. As all familiars do.”
“So…that was normal then?”
“Very.”
“Aren’t you sad?” Felix said, confused, considering she cried over an ant she accidentally stepped on last week.
She furrowed her brows like she didn’t understand the question.
“About Julian? No. About the familiar? Well, there’s nothing to be sad about. It’s returned to Cerituen’s plane to wait for another witch.”
He understood it now. It was kind of beautiful. Shifters believed in something similar for their own kind. Maybe everything he had been taught about the afterlife was true. Itwas hard to doubt when a literal goddess had been fucking with him for the last week. He should really stop cursing the gods so much.
Felix gently pulled her in for a hug. The gesture was as much for her as it was for him.
“What do we do with the body?” she mumbled into his chest as he stroked the outside of her hair.
“I don’t want you to worry about that,” he replied. While he held her, Felix’s shadows picked up the body and tossed it far into the lake. That was alaterproblem. By the time it washed ashore, he would be long gone.
Felix took Avery’s hand, guiding her back to the party as if nothing had happened.
Thirty-One
Avery
Felix killed someone.
He killedJulian.
But the feeling that ran through Avery wasn’t fear. Not even close. Perhaps she could blame the drunkenness, but deep below the whiskey haze, she knew that wasn’t the case. Sparks prickled her skin, racing from where Felix’s hand touched hers. It should have repulsed her, should have had her yanking away from a killer’s grip, but instead she relished it. How could she ever let him go when it felt this good?
Felix guided her out of the woods. A misting rain fell from the sky, the world around her unfocused apart from the man in front of her. The maid costume was gone—discarded in the lake with Julian. Avery’s mouth went dry as she watched water droplets cascade down Felix’s bare chest. The way they caught the firelight, sliding down his ribs and disappearing below the waistband of his shadow pants, was almost hypnotic. A shifter. A killer. It was what the witches thought of them. And what she should have too. Julian’s walloped head, or what was left of it anyway, still haunted her mind. But she didn’t feel a lick of remorse. It was strange, considering she felt bad about crushingan ant. The ants, she would feel bad for. They were innocent. A man who tried to take what he couldn’t have? He should be crushed and pummeled into the ground. Even the ground didn’t deserve that level of filth.
The Coelcerth warmed her chilled skin as they moved closer to the party. Students spun around the bonfire, some tossing their stones into the flames, others grinding and forgetting the world around them. How she wished she could. Out of all the damn witches, why had she been chosen for this life of danger? She was built for bed, not for beheading. Regardless, she wouldn’t change it for the world. Because she had met Felix. And that made it all worth it.
“We should go to the cave,” he whispered against her ear, a delicious jolt of electricity down her spine.
But she didn’t want to go to the cave. Not yet. She wanted to stay here with him. Bonded tohim.He wasn’t a shifter to her anymore. He was just Felix. The man who had taken care of her in so many ways. So instead of letting him drag her away, she fought against his hold just to pull him into her, the fire warming her back and him flush against her front, an intoxicating heat she wanted no escape from. If she was going to burn, this was the way she wanted to go up in flames.
His eyes darkened as he gripped her body tightly, as if he knew exactly where to place them to drive her crazy. Avery started to sway to the music, Felix following in her footsteps. Despite his height, his forehead found hers as they moved to the beat, her body alive next to his. She felt him everywhere. His chest against hers, his thigh pressing between her legs, breath ghosting along her lips. It was too much, and not nearly enough. The world around them didn’t matter, the riddle didn’t matter, the fact that her mortal enemy had been where she had found her sanctuary. None of it mattered.
