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“Maybe you’re fated, like your brother and I,“ I blabbed because that was exactly what this was sounding like. “Does it feel like a compulsion? Like if you don’t talk to or touch her, you’ll die? Do you look at her sometimes, and you’re so overwhelmed, you can’t breathe?”
He stared at me for a long moment before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, like how I often saw his brother doing.
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
He blinked. “What? The slow breath?”
I nodded.
“It was a technique our father taught us to control our tempers. Imagine a big, nasty ball of air in your lungs; inhale the fresh air, exhale the foul air, and repeat it until you feel like your lungs are cleared. Sometimes, it’s not foul air, though. It’s just emotion.”
“Got it.” I was just going to brush past my suggestion that he might be soulmates with the Queen’s sister, considering what we’d just heard from Sariel. “What are you going to do if push comes to shove?”
He took another breath. “It won’t come to that,” he said confidently. “It can’t. I don’t want to choose.”
My heart sank. “That sounds serious,” I whispered.
He looked down to where his hands were clasped between his thighs, then sighed. “We, uh… we had sex, Aria,” he confessed, making me jolt. “She gave me her body to take care of in the most intimate way possible, and—... honestly, we shouldn’t be talking about this, but I cried. We both did. It was… I can’t describe it.”
Fear clawed its way up my throat at the reminder of Blossom’s powers. “She might be pregnant,” I anxiously exclaimed.
I winced when Mikey’s head whipped in my direction, his eyes wide. “I used a condom,” he said bashfully. “She said she didn’t think it could work if we used a condom, and I trust her. She knows more about the way her sister’s powers work than I do.”
For one insane second, I considered asking him if he had any more condoms. Instead, I settled on, “Did you really sneak condoms in here?”
He scoffed. “It wasn’t ‘sneaking.’ No one really searched our bags.”
That was true.
I opened my mouth to grill him on Lucia some more when the door to our room burst open. Reese and Neo came in, each carrying a tray of food, with Sariel and the other two trailing after them.
“I just reminded them that we’re on a ‘wanted, dead-or-alive’ list floating around the dark web,” Neo smirked. “I completely forgot.”
Mikey frowned. “What?”
“Oh, shit, you’re probably on it too,” Johnny chuckled. “It’s a long story, but essentially, the Upper Council is using the dark web and bounty hunters to get to us.”
“That’s pretty smart,” Mikey acquiesced. “Why have one set of eyes scouring for you when you can have thousands?”
“I don’t think you’re on the list unless they very recently added you,” Sariel said.
Mikey and I made eye contact. I narrowed my eyes, letting him know this conversation wasn’t over.
Marilyn perked up. “We can ask Grel or someone about that. He’d know, right?”
Sariel swallowed. “I already told Mikey and Aria this, but Grel is my half-sibling,” he announced. The room fell silent under the weight of his admission. “My mother is here, in the Free Kingdom. In the castle.”
Reese’s lips parted, then closed. Marilyn sat heavily on the nearest surface, which happened to be the table in the corner. Johnny’s eyes widened, his fist coming to rest on his heart.
Neo looked entirely unfazed. “Penelope is your mother?” he asked.
Sariel’s eyes narrowed. “You know her?”
“I knowofher. She was an incredible angel before she vanished from the face of the Earth. Or into the Free Kingdom, I guess.”
Sariel shook his head with a rough laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure she was.”
Neo pursed his lips, and Reese glared at him, keeping him quiet.
