For his own reasons, a voice in my head points out. Obviously. He’s protecting himself from an unknown threat by staying in a warded circle with a witch who apparently fights naked and has loyal friends. That’s the only reason.
Adam sighs heavily. He turns to Hex with the expression of someone outsourcing a problem that has exceeded their processing capacity. “So what do we do?”
Hex is quiet for a moment. He’s been looking at Dis throughout this conversation with the careful, measuring attention of someone taking stock of an old opponent, and Dis has been looking back with the same quality of attention, and whatever is passing between them is complicated by history I’m only partially aware of. There’s no warmth there, not exactly. But there’s something that might be, eventually, a form of respect.
“Wraith may return,” Dis says, addressing the room but looking at Hex. His voice has the measured gravity of someone presenting tactical information. “Or others. Whatever enemy holds the amulet now, they know whereI am. They know the little witch is connected to me.” A beat. “He may be targeted again.”
Adam goes very pale.
Hex’s red eyes glow. “I’ll set a guard,” he says. “On the flat, on Felix. I’ll reach out to some people.” He looks at me.
I nod. My throat feels tight. My refusal to release Dis is causing huge problems for everyone. I’m an ass. But in my defence, Dis clearly wants to, or needs to stay. So it’s complicated. And not entirely my fault. Just mostly.
Something like relief had flickered over Dis’s face when Hex said he’d set a guard. Just a flash, there and gone, his features settling back into their composed baseline so quickly I might have imagined it. But I didn’t imagine it. I know his face well enough now to know the difference.
Adam is looking at me with those eyes, the ones that see too much. “Are you okay?” he asks, very quietly.
“I got attacked by an ancient supernatural assassin while naked and with a cold,” I say. “So. You know.”
“Felix.”
“I’m okay,” I say, and surprisingly, I mostly mean it.
Adam nods slowly. He looks at the circle. At Dis, who is standing in it with his hands still clasped behind his back, watching all of this with an expression of careful neutrality that I’ve learned, over the time he’s been here, hides multitudes.
“Right,” says Adam, with the particular tone of someone squaring their shoulders and deciding to accept a situation they don’t fully understand. “Right. Okay.” He puts down his tea. It’s stopped shaking. “I want a full explanation at some point. A proper one. But not today.”
“Not today,” I agree.
Hex stands. Adam stands. There’s a brief, quiet exchange between them as they move toward the door, something low-voiced and private, and I look away to give them the space of it.
At the doorway, Hex pauses. He looks back at Dis. Something passes between them that I don’t have context for, something in the language of old, complicated entities who have a history with each other.
“We’ll talk later,” Hex says, and it’s addressed to both of us.
Then they’re gone.
The flat settles around their absence. The plastic on the window flaps once, twice. The circle hums quietly in the way it always does, returning to that familiar frequency that I’ve stopped noticing except when I specifically listen for it.
I sit on my uncomfortable chair in the wreckage of my living room, books still all over the floor, plaster cracked, window covered in plastic, door hanging in there but slightly crooked, and I look at Dis.
He looks back at me.
“The Great British Bake Off,” I say.
“It was an accurate statement,” he says, with dignity.
I look at the ceiling. My back hurts. My head has a lingering ache from the cold. Everything is terrible and complicated and nothing is resolved and there’s an unknown enemy out there with an amulet and Wraith, and Hex is setting guards on my flat and on me and my life has become something genuinely unrecognisable, mostly because not all of it is awful.
My gaze drifts back to Dis. To his extraordinary face, composed and steady and right there. My attention lingersfor a while on his astonishing bone structure. He really is hot. Hot and with a personality that’s not entirely shitty.
Plus, right now, for whatever reason, he wants to stay. Here. With me. It’s a wonder and practically a miracle.
It’s such a shame, I think, not for the first time, that my bestie’s fiancé and my absolutely-not-a-situationship captive shadow king are mortal foes. Dinner parties would be hella awkward.
I get up to make more tea.
Chapter 22
