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I took a slow breath. Somehow this part was harder than laying out all the rest. “Gabriel and I reconnected later. He wasn’t there when we did the first consorting ceremony. But we’re just as much in love, just as willing to commit to each other. He’s one of us. And the Assembly’s efforts are hurting him so much more than the others because it’s so much harder for me to protect him. I want to see if I can complete the ceremony with him as well. And since they’re tracking my magic, I’d need to do that somewhere other magic can hide what I’m doing.”
“You want to conduct the consorting ceremony here,” Owen said. I couldn’t read his tone.
“We could do it tonight,” I said quickly. “I’ve conducted it on my own before—I wouldn’t need anyone to get directly involved. It’d just take some magicking to cover up what I’m doing. We’d leave in the morning if that’s all you’d want to do with us. I don’t want to bring the Assembly down on you. I just… It’s the only way I can see us surviving more than another few days. And I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.”
“This is what you want?” Ginny said to Gabriel. “You know what a commitment the consorting bond is.”
“I know,” he said steadily. “I know my life might be a lot easier if I went back to living it the way I was before. But it’d also be a whole lot emptier. I’ll take that trade, without hesitation.”
“And the rest of you don’t mind having a little more competition for my cousin’s affections?” Naomi asked with an arch of her eyebrows.
Jin laughed. “It’s not competition. It’s more hands on deck.” He grinned so slyly my blush deepened into a burn.
“It probably sounds strange,” Ky put in, leaning forward. “It would to me if I wasn’t part of it. But we spent six years together when we were growing up, being there for each other, having each other’s backs… I’ve never been as close with anyone as with the five people around me here, and that includes everyone, not just Rose.”
“It feels right,” Seth added when his twin paused. “We’re just better when we’re together.”
“Yeah,” Damon said, his voice low. “We are.”
Ginny looked to her husband. “Do we need to discuss this on our own?”
He took her hand, and even though there was still some skepticism in his expression, his affection for her shone on his face. A little of the tension in me relaxed.
“You want to say yes,” he said, an observation rather than a question.
She nodded. “There’s a small chance the Assembly will find out and accuse us of who knows what? Oh well. Weshouldhave pushed harder back when Alora first ran off with Maxim, or when she died, or… any time since then. If we had, maybe Rose wouldn’t have been backed into a corner like this to begin with. If we don’t stand up to them at all… What if some suitor tried to arrange a consorting like that for Stella?”
My younger cousin paled. “Okay. That’s it. I’m just not getting married.”
“Hey.” Naomi nudged her sister. “We’re not letting any creeps get their paws on you or your magic.” Her gaze slid back to me. “I’m in. I say we do this. Not just for tonight—I think you should be able to stay here until we figure out how to get this faction of the Assembly off your back.”
Ginny was still watching Owen’s reaction. He rubbed his square jaw. Then he nodded to her and to me.
“Let’s see how tonight goes. You do your ceremony. We can play it by ear from there.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jin
Icould hear Rose talking with her cousin before I reached the “magicking room” they’d ducked into. “I suppose this bowl would work—oh, no, wait, this one is better. You have charcoal sticks?”
“Right here,” Naomi’s amused voice said in return.
The supplies rustled. Rose laughed to herself, but the sound was a little strained. “I only need two this time. Have to remember that.”
“Yeah, I guess it must have been quite the ceremony the first time. Four all at once! Mine was intense enough with just one consort.”
A jolt of heat shot to my cock just at one flash of memory from that night. Rose’s voice dipped with a shy but also sly note that warmed me even more. “Yeah. It was pretty amazing, all right.”
I came to a stop by the doorway and leaned against the frame. The two women looked over at me, Rose’s usual welcoming smile a little tired around the edges, Naomi’s filled with mischief. The way they were standing together, you could almost believe they’d grown up together as close cousins rather than just having met earlier today.
“Anything I can help with?” I asked, peering into the room. A wide wooden cabinet filled one wall. Otherwise the place was spartan. It reminded me a little of an artist’s studio, just a very neat one with the only natural light coming from a skylight in the ceiling.
Rose swept her fingers through her hair, scattering it over her shoulders. “I don’t know. I think we’ve got just about everything for the ceremony now. What else did we— The ribbons. I don’t have them. I’ll need two lengths of rope or twine.”
“Right on it!” Naomi said brightly. She rummaged in the cupboard. “Any preference of color.”
“Blue,” I said automatically. “For one. The other one white.”
