“The woman who abandoned me.”
A tint of surprise shaded the man’s emotions. “I believe she was trying to protect you.”
Yet she couldn’t have sent him anywhere more perilous.
Did they have any idea what David had been subjected to? If Blaire hadn’t told them David’s whereabouts, she sure as hell wouldn’t have told them anything else.
“She failed,” he saidflatly.
Autumn cut in before Kywyn could respond. “Why don’t you come with me? I can show you where we sleep and get you cleaned up.”
“Wherewesleep?”
She nodded. “We sleep together.”
David’s lips parted. Did she, with her fancy accent, understand what those words meant?
“The four of us,” she added.
Distasteful images splattered over the forefront of David’s mind, but he kept his face expressionless.
Her smile blossomed into something bright and joyous. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
After a quick goodbye to Kywyn, David followed her to the hallway. Her hand touched his, and he jerked away from the fire in her skin, but she gripped his retreating fingers. Merciless heat wound up his arm, like sunlight after spending years in cold, wet darkness.
This girl was coated in a layer of sunshine. Her ecstatic emotions were irresistible, and he wanted to draw closer, to revel in her joy.
That was…not normal.
They arrived at an intricately carved door, all vines and flowers and labyrinthine knots.
She swung it open. “This is the Sovereign quarters.”
The vestibule was manned by a plump creature with a mass of dark hair piled atop her head. Her eyes flew wide as they landed on him. “It’s— You?—”
“Rowilda, meet the heir of Manae,” Autumn said in that glittering language he somehow understood.
Rowilda dropped her head, tapping her temple twice.What the?—
“’Tis my honor.” She opened the entry door without looking at him again, letting them into his new digs.
A lavish foyer opened tall and wide, dominated by a round entry table. Multiple arches led further into the suite, as welcoming as the quarters he’d just left. To his right, a sitting room, and beyond that, adining space with a sideboard along one wall, currently being cleaned by another squat person who had the same build as Rowilda. A half-drunk mug of tea sat abandoned on the entry table before him. Tiny waterfalls dripped down the corners of the rooms, falling into decorative basins.
How the hell did they get waterfalls in a tree?
Autumn followed his gaze as she trod around the table. “The water system in the Tree is Luster fed.”
David sighed, annoyed at her mind reading.
She picked the archway straight ahead, bypassing the multiple common areas, guiding him down a hall to a closed door. “We’ve kept this room clean, just in case. This is where your ancestors slept.”
“Seems like I don’t want to be associated with my ancestors. Maybe I should start fresh.”
“Thisisstarting fresh.” Still smiling, she rolled her eyes and pointed toward a nearby door framing the messiest bedroom he’d ever seen. Why did any person need that many clothes? “My room is just there.”
David stared back and forth between the two adjacent bedrooms. “We sleep…together?”
“That’s what I said.”
