When his eyes dipped to my skirt again, I just knew what he was about to say.
“It’s probably nothing,” Reagan said, already dipping his head toward me.
He was obviously lying. Barracus wouldn’t send a familiar just to wish him good night.
My hand rose to his chest as I smiled at his reaction. “Go. You can…comfort me later.”
He angled for my neck instead, a low sound rolling from him, long and rumbling against my throat, as though he were pouring all that pent-up want into the air. He pulled back, his eyes settling in resigned calm.
“Fine,” he said. “But we’ll finish this. Very soon.”
Chapter 17
Reagan
“Maybe you could say something to them,” Reagan proposed, tossing the letter across the table.
The morning after the first staff meeting with Varian, Cerridwen sat across from him in her lab, most definitely hearing the frustration in his voice.
Finnegan had returned from court with Malory’s list of time weavers and, along with it, the source of Reagan’s current vexation: an arranged schedule to meet his potential matches. And a deadline to choose one of them.
He’d always known this moment would come, that a Lord of five-and-twenty could not remain unbonded forever. Most had years to choose their partners carefully. He was given three months.
“Me? And what would I say?” Cerridwen asked, wearing that look that told him she already knew what must happen.
“Tell them I don’t plan to die anytime soon.” He sank back in the chair, pressing his fingertips to the inner corners of his eyes as though he could trap his irritation there. “Tell them progressis spectacular with just me. They can grant me one bloody year before I bond with someone.”
He was reaching, and they both knew it.
Sometimes, Reagan loathed his life. It was a blend of obligations and meetings and insufferable people. When his own stray desires crossed his mind, he had to crush them mercilessly. Desires were for people who had choices.
He should have been satisfied. The curse was broken, his access to mana increased by the day, and the tiresome question of whether his soul was virtuous enough to be spared had, mercifully, been answered. Yet satisfaction refused him.
Mountheim had become an unending chain of demands and expectations andafter nine years as their Mage Lord, he wanted a reprieve. He wanted a fucking break.
He’d chosen this role once, out of duty to the ghosts of his parents. Abandoning their legacy would have been worse than knowing their own son had burned their cursed bodies. It might have been Elinor Reagan’s last disappointment in him, but not a surprise. So he would endure and fight for it until Godric himself dragged him away.
Nine years later, he had managed to ruin and redeem the estate. It had to come first always. He’d learned that the hard way, so now he already knew he would have to attend the meetings with those women.
“Reagan, what did you expect?” Cerridwen asked quietly. “That man’s patience lasted seven years.”
“He didn’t do it for me,” Reagan muttered. The magister knew nobody would deign to be tied with a cursed man.
“Obviously not. But it’s hardly surprising they’re pushing you to fix it now.”
“Aisling is still ruling alone, and as far as—”
“Aisling bonded last week,” she interrupted tersely.
Reagan stilled, watched his best argument vanish before his eyes.
“You’re officially the last unbonded ruler in the country,” Cerridwen said.
That was it then. His options narrowed with every year. And Cerridwen, for all her proclivity to speak the hard truths, was patient now.
He leaned forward, voice dropping seven shades lower. “She won’t be ready in three months.”
Cerridwen examined her nails, exhaled, then met his gaze. “Then you fulfil your duty.”
