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In this strange way, his presence ended up being a motivator for me. It also made Lucia meaner.
Reese and I pretended we didn’t know that she was trying to impress Mikey when she offered to take us on simultaneously, nor when she created an insane obstacle course that had even the sprites eyeing it nervously, their little voices chattering away in disbelief.
After that, we pretended not to be impressed when she asked him to be a volunteer for a demonstration and then proceeded to drop him off five times, back-to-back.
Honestly, I thought their sparring might be a weird form of foreplay for them.
We’d been dismissed earlier than usual that night, and Commander Thorn had snorted as he left. Neo eyed the pair curiously as he healed Reese and me.
I was a little worried because I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be sticking around long enough for them to have a solid relationship, but it also really wasn’t my business if they were having a casual thing. As long as no attachments or regrets were formed between them, it was fine.
While Mikey and Lucia’s interest in each other was obvious and understandable, I couldn’t wrap my head around why I could sense the tension between Sariel and his brother.
It wasn’t the subtle kind, either—it was the suffocating kind that rubbed me the wrong way. Mikey would leave a room whenever his brother entered it or ignore him altogether, and Sariel would only clench his teeth together as opposed to calling him out on it. It was very unlike him; he was naturally confrontational.
I knew his relationship with Mikey was rocky, but they’d been fine when we’d gotten here.
“Are you and Michaelson fighting?” I asked him after he stepped out of the shower that afternoon.
No matter how many times I saw him half-naked, my body still zinged with arousal at how his exposed skin stretched taut over his deliciously carved muscles, which were flexing now as he rubbed a towel in his hair, attempting to dry the damp strands.
He heaved a sigh, tossing the towel onto the vanity's surface. “I told him about a plan I had,” he started, sinking onto the end of the bed with his back to me. Those muscles rippled hypnotically as he tilted his head back. “He wasn’t happy about it.”
“What plan? You didn’t tell me you had a plan,” I said with a frown, crawling to sit next to him to see his face.
He glanced at me briefly. “Yeah, well… ifhedidn’t approve, I doubtedyouwould.”
“Try me.”
“I got some information from Bim about the entrances and exits in this place and the patrols and other shit,” he explained. “From what he told me, it was easy to deduce that getting in or out of here on foot would be impossible, but he also told me about an emergency transport portal in the Queen’s Garden.”
I straightened at his words. “Holy shit. Was he even allowed to tell you that?”
He chuckled. “I asked myself that same question. The problem with that portal is that you need royal blood to open it….”
He trailed off briefly. “I told Mikey we’d need to use Lucia to escape, and he just exploded. I’d never seen him like that before.”
I glared at him. “When you say ‘use Lucia,’ what do you mean, exactly?”
“I mean that we’d need her blood to open the portal and get the fuck out of here,” he said, turning to stare blankly at me.
“Seriously, though?Lucia?”
He rolled his eyes. “Do you think Blossom or Tarragon could be convinced to donate a vial of their blood or something?”
I pursed my lips. “There has to be another option—”
“There is no other fucking option!” he snapped, then took a steadying breath. “Shit, sorry, I just— you’re not getting it.There is no other option. The only way we can both escapeandget enough distance between us and the fae to not get caught is through a portal. We’d be too slow on foot even if we flew, Aria. And that’d be assuming we could even make it to an exit before we’d be caught.”
I didn’t like that answer. “And you just… don’t care that you’d be using Lucia?”
“I care about very, very few things Aria,” he admitted, his eyes darkening as he stared at me. “Keeping the people I care about safe happens to be not only at the top of that list but theonlything on that list.”
I gulped. “Would you have to kill her?”
“No. Not if she came willingly.”
“I’m not killing Lucia. No way.”
