Page 90

She raised a brow. “I don’t see you wearing any green.”

“I’m not an Imordial,” he said before taking a bite.

Lily plastered a tight smile to her face. “I don’t care for purple.”

“Of course you don’t,” he muttered after swallowing. “White’s also an option. The Wraith and its Coven often wore white,” he added, a little less confident.

Lily noted that in the back of her mind but didn’t let it show, considering he decided to be an ass first. “I’ll stick with the red for the time being. In fact, I think it’s my new favorite color.”

Draven didn’t acknowledge that. Instead, he strode toward the table, waving a hand. “Up. You’re in my spot.”

Lily met the challenge by crossing one leg over the other.

Draven shrugged, took another bite, then sat in it. The chair scraped across the floor.

She caught herself and turned to gape at him. He ignored her, leaning back and crossing his leg as if she weren’t there. Lily huffed and rapped her fingers against her knee; all the ways she could make him uncomfortable sprinted through her mind.

She settled with kindness over vitriol.

Hands clasped over her knee, she leaned back a hair and produced the sweetest voice she could muster. “All you had to do was say please, and I would’ve been happy to listen to your demand.”

Draven made no response, though his head turned toward the far wall to look at nothing in particular. Her tiny victory was interrupted by several sets of footsteps that snapped her to her feet.

Two familiar faces entered to stand beside Mia and Sterling.

Kyer Toman hadn’t aged a bit. He radiated that same, disgustingly positive energy she’d grown accustomed to living under his roof. Energy she hadn’t thought about in a long time but suddenly missed at the sight of him.

Kyer’s excitement beamed through his short peppered beard. “Lilith!” His grizzled voice had dropped another octave in the last eight years. The only sign from him that any time had passed.

He dropped a stack of papers on the table and walked toward her with open arms. Her shell cracked. She wanted nothing else in the world other than a hug from him. He scooped her into his arms, and she wrapped hers around his back, sinking into his shoulder and not his chest like she last remembered. He even smelled the same—like leather and earth.

“About time you joined us, kid.”

Not that I had much choice. She soaked in his warmth until he kindly pushed her away and hovered a hand over her head.

“Saints! I didn’t think you could get any taller!” Kyer’s eyes turned glassy, smile falling but not dissipating completely. He looked her over much the same way her father did the day she decided to come home from the cabin. “You look okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, voice trembling. She cleared her throat. “Been fine.”

His face was wrinkled and tired, but his eyes still shone like the only sapphire in a room full of coal. “Let’s get all of this unpleasantness out of the way.” He stepped back and gestured for her to sit in a chair. He didn’t sit, nor did anyone other than Draven, so she only placed her hands over the back of the closest one.

Kyer tapped a finger on his stack of papers. “Lilith, I believe you met Mia. Mayoress, soon to be mayor of Markoth.” Mia tipped her head then folded her hands in her lap. “And of course, you remember Maude.”

Oh, too well. Taller and come into a womanly figure, Kyer’s only child was striking in presence. There was a contrast of the black body suit she wore against her long flaxen hair. Aside from the gentle shimmer of her pale blue eyes over her sandy skin, all Lily could see was the betrayal in Reina’s face the last night she saw her.

Lily didn’t bother with the Terin greeting. It seemed inappropriate with all the venom in Maude’s features, so she managed a hearty, tight smile.

“With that out of the way, I’m very interested in hearing about your most recent exploits in Reatia,” Kyer grinned at her. “You’ve been in Reave this whole time?”

Lily returned and kept her eyes locked with Kyer’s. “Most of it.”

“I’d like to ask why that city in particular, but that doesn’t really matter.” Kyer pulled out a chair and relaxed in it. “Was it your profession that tipped you off to the incarnation’s arrival or some other means?”

“My profession?”

“Yes,” Kyer said, bringing a lazy palm to his cheek. “The Swarm has been very interested in a particular branch of a particular guild that seems to dominate Reave’s lower parts. I’m assuming that was the one you were a part of?”

The smuggler’s guild? That was more notorious than Xavier and Reina’s smithery. “I wasn’t involved in that, really. The people I worked for were more than me. And I wasn’t tipped off so much as I happened upon it.”