“She’s not wrong to be upset,” Amir says, and he’s just there where there was nobody, his hands clasped behind his back.
Kade rounds on him. “Are you serious right now? I know you saw all of that. You stood right here and watched the whole thing and didn’t lift one finger.”
“I did watch.” Amir starts toward us, unbothered, taking his time. “And I think Layla is out doing what the humans like to call the ‘Lord’s work.’ She doesn’t touch the innocent.” His smile widens. “So whatever she catches tonight on that island, well. Clearly they had it coming.” Kade opens her mouth, then closes it, and for once she’s got nothing. “In any case, she isn’t my concern.” His gaze leaves her and fixes on Aaron.
Kade stamps one foot, then the other, her whole body jerking with it like a cub mid-tantrum. “You know what? When this is over, I quit. I mean it. I’m done. I QUIT.”
“You say that every time,” Amir says mildly.
Kade jabs a finger at him. “I mean it this time.”
My ears twitch. There’s a sound coming up over the water from the south, faint and far off. It takes me a moment to place it. Humans screaming, a long way out. I know exactly where from—the tourist island. Kade’s head whips around. She hears it too.
“Aw, hell.” That’s all she’s got, and then the air shifts and she’s gone, off after the screaming.
Amir watches the spot where she was. He grins. I can’t read that grin. Pleased, furious—with him it might be the same thing. But Layla’s still out there in the dark, her blade in hand, that sweet rotten scent on her, hunting through all that screaming. It scares me.
“I hope you found what you were looking for.” Amir turns the full weight of that look on Aaron. “In the Witching Glen.”
“I learned a lot.” Aaron meets him and holds it, and beside me I feel my mate go rigid, his whole body squaring.
Amir’s grin doesn’t change, though his pointed ears twitch once. “You have a great deal of power in you now.” He circles us slow, his eyes on Aaron the whole time. His steps make no sound on the wet ground. “More than I have ever held in my existence.” He finishes the circle and stops square in front of Aaron, close enough to touch. “So tell me. What kind of king will you be? A just one, who makes the hard choices for the good of his people? Or a selfish one, who only ever asks what’s in it for himself?”
“I’m no king.” Aaron bites it off.
Amir chuckles, low and pleased. “Oh, but you are.” He spreads his hands. “And if this isn’t the life you wanted, you ought to have thought of that before you stepped through into that realm. You knew what you carried, Aaron. You only underestimated what it could do.”
Aaron doesn’t answer. The silence holds until Amir looks away.
“I just want to get my mate home,” Aaron says, and I feel how tired he is in the weight of him against me.
Amir glances at me, then dips his head in a small, clean bow. “Of course. We wouldn’t want to keep the future queen of Wintermoon standing in the cold.” Aaron’s lip curls, but he bites down whatever he means to say. “Rest.” Amir’s already moving off, his back to us. “It’s been a long night for the both of you.” He stops without turning. “Oh. And one more thing.”
He looks back over his shoulder, golden eyes bright with how much he’s enjoying this. “Your mother is waiting up for you. She’s got herself a very big stick, and she would dearly love to beat you with it.” He laughs at his own joke, soft and pleased. Then he’s gone. The Market sits quiet and empty, the lamps burned down low. Out over the water, the screaming still hasn’t stopped.
I look up at Aaron. “All that power. It makes you a king now.”
He looks down at me for a long moment.
“All that matters to me is settling down with you, building something, starting a family.” His thumb moves slow over my hip. “I’ll figure the rest of this out, Mara. I promise you.”
He sighs as he says it, low and heavy. He means the promise. He just doesn’t know how he’s going to keep it yet.
I look up at my mate and I don’t get it. He was born for this. Even I can see it, though I’ve never wanted a thing to do with thrones. The power chose him. It poured out of a whole dead realm into him. Now he could have anything, and he stands here in the cold wanting nothing but me and a family to build.
It isn’t only him. Amir doesn’t want it either, not really, for all his circling. Kade’s quit the work out loud a dozen times tonight. None of them reach for the crown. It’s worn them all down.
Is it really that heavy? Is ruling Wintermoon such a weight that everyone built to carry it spends their life trying to set it down?
The screaming comes again from out over the water. Out there in the dark, Kade is chasing a beautiful, unhinged vampire with a blade and a taste for glue made of blood. She’s cleaning up a mess that was never hers. That’s the work, up close. I shudder from the thought of taking on that kind of work.
40
Aaron
Iopen a portal home and we step through onto the community lands, the cabin dark ahead of us with no light on. Mara’s gone the moment her feet hit the porch, straight up the stairs and into the bathroom before I’ve even shut the portal behind us. By the time I get inside, I can hear the water running. I leave her to it and head for the kitchen, because right now I need something in my hands that isn’t magic.
I take a glass down, fill it at the sink, and stand there holding it, looking at nothing while the whole night comes down on me at once. She’d warned me, planted her feet at those doors and told me something was wrong, and I walked her in anyway. None of it had to happen, not Hella or the creatures or any of it, if I’d just listened to my own mate.
