I couldn’t resist a smile. “You immediately swooped in with an interior design team?”
“I wanted to make the space my own.”
In other words, he wanted to erase all traces of his brother. Understood. “Did you leave anything that reminded you of your brother? Maybe a cuckoo clock?”
His face turned to stone. “What makes you ask that?”
“It’s obvious the two of you had issues.” I rubbed the sore spot again. “How long have I been out?”
“About two hours.”
I bolted upright. “Two hours? I need to go.”
Vale was beside me in one swift movement. “Don’t give yourself an aneurysm. Harriet said it was important to let you rest.”
“I’m fine.”
“You took down a faerie, raided someone else’s subconscious, then got hit in the head for your troubles.” Vale glanced over his shoulder at an unseen figure in the hall. “Is Harriet still here? Tell her we need her.” He turned back to faceme. “Harriet is a witch of many talents, including the healing arts. If she says you need rest, then you should rest.”
I resisted the strong urge to tear off the sheet and run.
“Where did you learn to fight?”
“Are you asking in relation to Leanne? Because that, too, was more of a scuffle.”
“I’ve been thinking about our conversation in my kitchen, and what I’ve observed.”
I plucked a thread in what was likely a two-thousand-thread-count sheet. Swanky bastard. “Years of training, followed by years of practice.”
“You’re thirty-five,” he said with a laugh. “It couldn’t have been that many years or you would’ve started as a child.” He stopped talking and stared at me as the realization settled. “You started as a child?”
“I would imagine you did as well. Demigods don’t usually get to attend school and play on the traveling soccer team.”
“Mine was an unusual upbringing.”
“So was mine.”
He gestured to side of the bed. “May I?” I nodded, and he perched on the edge next to me. “I think we might have more in common than we realized.”
Uh-oh. He wanted to go deeper. Fear crawled across my skin. Mayday. Mayday. I glanced around the bed. Where was the emergency eject button?
“We already agreed we can’t pursue this.” I swung my legs to the side and tried to maneuver past him. “I really need to go.”
“Why are you afraid to stay too long on the mainland?” Vale asked.
I positioned myself so that I was seated beside him on the edge of the bed. “I told you, because my identity’s been scrubbed from here. I can’t afford to spend time in a place I don’t exist.”
“For an unconscious person, you thrashed around quite a bit. I considered restraining you, but I thought you wouldn’t take kindly to waking up tied to my bed.”
My gaze narrowed. “You would be correct.”
He patted my arm. “Don’t grind your teeth to a stump. It would only have been out of concern for your safety.”
“From what I’ve heard, Vale’s the consent king,” Harriet said, winking at Vale as she joined him at my bedside. The witch favored soft, feminine pastels that contrasted nicely with her midnight skin, as evidenced by the ruffled paisley-print linen dress she currently wore. “Glad to see you’re awake, Maya. How do you feel?”
“Like somebody used my head for batting practice with the trunk of an oak tree.”
“Which is basically what happened,” Vale said.
