Page 69 of Silk and Sirens

For the past hour I’d watched her help a little girl fix a crooked party hat, play hide and seek, and pretend she didn’t know she had a smear of green icing on her cheek. Teasing the kids with wiping the wrong area. She’d even attempted to blow up balloons and then let them go for the squealing kids to chase.

She looked soft.

Happy.

Real.

Aeris always pushed the need for her freedom, but I think this was what she was truly protecting. I still didn’t trust her, but I understood.

Some time passed, though how much I didn’t know, before she finally came over to me. Before she could run away, I hooked my hand around her waist and pulled her tight to my chest. I placed my hands on her hips, pinning her in place.

She stiffened.

“Where’s your father?” I asked casually. From the outside we looked like a couple, her back to my chest and my head dipped down to have a private conversation. But this was the perfect opportunity to interrogate her, unless she was willing to make a scene.

She turned a little to look up at me, a storm building in those eyes of the raging sea. “Probably work. That’s his one true love.”

“Your sister said you were emancipated at sixteen and went no contact. Changed your name.”

Her lips pursed, but she finally began to relax under my touch. As if she knew my hands weren’t there to cause harm. She never stiffened when I grabbed her roughly or pinned her down, only when I brushed my thumb gently over her skin. Like softness was more dangerous to her than violence.

“My sister has a big mouth.”

What the fuck had happened to her? to make her believe that pain was safer than tenderness?

“Why?” I asked, keeping my tone civil.

“Careful—almost sounds like you care.”

I let out a deep chuckle, welcoming the flush across her breasts at the sound.

“He did something I can’t forgive,” she finally said, voice flat. “Even now, I can’t stand being in the same room as him.”

“Your sister wants you to forgive him.”

“Brooke doesn’t understand.” Aeris’s tone hardened. “She’s not from our world.”

Our world.

The words settled hot in my chest.

“Is this about Mira?” I asked.

She stilled once more at the name, so I pulled her tighter against me and basked in her warmth.

“There are some things you just can’t forgive,” she whispered, that mask she wore so convincingly slipping back on.

Except I’d already seen beneath, and I wanted more.

“You could ask me anything right now,” she said, voice laced with disbelief as she twisted in my arms so she could look up at me directly, “and you’re asking about my family?”

My right hand stroked up her waist, a delicate touch that had her breath hitching and her body going rigid. “I have other ways to make you talk, Tempest. You’ll tell me all your secrets eventually, one way or another.”

“My family isn’t a secret.”

Which confirmed Selene knew of their existence, and she was likely using them to keep Aeris on a leash.

“No, but you are.” My lips brushed her ear, intimate even as anger hardened my words. “Do they know about Atlantis?”