Page 258 of Sky’s Edge

I sucked back a cocktail I knew Mom had devised and strongarmed Dad into making, because it was high on the fruitiness and low on the alcohol.

I felt Tanyn, sitting next to me, press his shoulder into mine.

I turned to him.

“Never thought I’d have a meet-the-parents,” he said.

Oh gods.

“This is fun,” he finished.

Oh.

Well then.

I relaxed.

Dad and Manny shot the breeze while Mom and Zyra continued to go overboard to demonstrate it was all good, everyone liked each other, and this was all family.

All the while Tanyn and I kicked back and let them.

I leaned in the doorway of my room in Mom and Dad’s house, a room Mom had not touched since I left for college.

I was watching Tanyn wander through it.

There was something affecting about him being in the space where I grew up, hatched all my childhood dreams, pouted when I was having a tantrum, and eventually left to launch into my life, doing this having no idea I one day would be queen.

Sure, I was having mild fantasies of fucking him on my bed.

But mostly, after getting so much of him these last few weeks, I was simply enjoying him experiencing something that was a part of me.

He stopped at a digi-collage of old pictures of Aleksei, turned to me and raised his brows.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Every female in the Fall had a crush on him. I put that collage together when I was fifteen.”

And added to it when I was sixteen.

More when I was seventeen.

Ahem.

He shook his head, his lips twitching, and moved to a poster of a still life oil painting of flowers and fruits done by Magenna Twirlhammer back in the 1600s.

“It was rare females trained under masters of art back in those days,” I told him. “If they had families with enough influence to pay for them to have spots, the masters would find ways to cow them, bully them, break them or ruin them.” I nodded to the Twirlhammer. “Magenna right away showed signs her talent significantly eclipsed that of her teacher. Due to his jealousy, and because he’d never wanted to take her on in the first place, he did everything he could to thwart her career. She just kept painting. Unfortunately, a sign of the times, he scored more victories than she did, and there are only four of her works still existing today. But now, she’s known as the master, and no one but historians remember his name.”

“This painting is in the Meko Museum in Abyssinia,” he noted.

“I know. I’ve seen it. Five times,” I replied.

He came and stood in front of me. “Why am I not surprised the teenage you was still you? Refined, chic, tasteful. Not including the collage of Lex, I’ll add.”

“I haven’t been in here in ages. I need to bring Laura in and remind her of it. She’ll laugh until she screams,” I mumbled.

“Catla.”

I re-focused on him.

“My beings will love you.”