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Fair enough. I nodded begrudgingly, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
My shower was fast, but he had already fallen asleep by the time I was finished. I mourned the lost opportunity, weighing the pros and cons of hiding in the bathroom and working out some of the tension before ultimately deciding against it and slipping into bed beside him.
“He’s being weird,” Auren told me later, and I laughed.
“He’s happy to have reconciled with his brother—that’s not weird.”
His look of disbelief sent me into another fit of giggles. “Seriously, though, I can’t imagine how he feels. One brother’s got a baby on the way that he might never get to meet, and the other is back from the dead. It’s a lot for anyone to handle.”
The reluctant agreement I got from him was expected.
Auren was just as emotionally constipated as Sariel and Mikey, which shouldn’t have surprised me; their formative years had all been in the same environment, after all.
The man cringed when Sariel slapped him on the back, then looked at me with a twist of his lips that I had come to understand was his equivalent of, ‘See?’
It made me choke on more giggles, even amidst the plotting that his circle went into.
Auren was desperate to remove Mikey from the Free Kingdom, but Grel had advised that they wouldn’t be able to help. Lucia’s little rebellion was still hellbent on being peaceful, no matter the personal cost. Kiran had already offered to take Michaelson and the Princess by force, considering the circumstances, but Auren had vetoed the idea immediately.
They couldn’t afford to have the King and Queen focusing directly on the Resistance. The Upper Council was doing a shitty job of fighting them off, which meant they were winning the war. Even though our plan was still to go after whoever was left, the fact that they were all but annihilating the Council had made even Auren hesitant to poke the bear. That didn’t make it any easier to accept that we had to leave them there for the time being, though.
I’m sorry,I said to Sariel.
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, lips pursed.It is what it is. We can’t put everyone at risk just because I want to rescue my little brother.
I kissed his knuckles, and he squeezed my hand.
The maturity with which he was handling this was a relief, honestly. He’d been so moody lately that our bond had felt like riding a rollercoaster. This was a welcome change, even if I hated leaving Mikey there.
“The Upper Council, at least, is adequately distracted,” Kiyomasa tried to brighten our solemn mood. “We’ve been able to have several pro-hybrid protests without their intervention.”
“Which means they’re stretched crazy thin if they can’t even be bothered to send Paras in to shut people up,” Marilyn commented, leaning her head on Johnny’s shoulder.
“Exactly. And with so many of our members being returned to us from the attacks on the prisons, I don’t know how they expect to recover, even if they did turn the war around.”
It’s worth celebrating, I guess. The Council’s hold on our society was loosening, slowly but surely; unless they pulled out some kind of nuclear option, we were almost home free.
Sariel’s thumb traced back and forth over my knuckles. I leaned into him, pouring contentment down the bond, and it bounced back at me. I took a moment to just bask in how nice it was to just be together without something dark or chaotic clawing its way through our bond.
After that, we all walked together to get dinner, which seemed to alarm most of the people we passed, no matter how much Zuzanna smiled. It was only then that I realized we glass-half-full people were vastly outnumbered by the half-empties, and the thought made me giggle.
“What?”
Sariel sounded suspicious when I swung our arms between us, feigning innocence.
“What, what?”
“What are you giggling about, Aria?” he purred my name, and I felt it low in my tummy, nearly tripping over my own feet at the burst of arousal.
“I just think it’s funny that the only people who are consistently happy are me, Reese, Kiyomasa, and Zuzanna. Everyone else is chronically crabby,” I tried to whisper, but Sariel chuckled when his best friend spun around with narrowed eyes.
“Hey!” Johnny called, faux-offended, and I laughed again.
“You look like the angry type, though, so you can’treallycount as a happy person.”
When he drooped theatrically, Marilyn gave him a patronizing ‘there, there’ and patted his back.
“What about me?” Kiran demanded.
