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“Does it?” I tease.
“Are you okay?”
I shrug. “I don’t know him. It feels…strange…I suppose, knowing he’s out there somewhere. But nothing more than that.”
“And what happened with Fin downstairs?”
This time, an unpleasant feeling punctures my chest. I shake my head. “It’s nothing different from how it always is between us.”
“I hate to see him…” Asha tenses up, searching for the right word.
“Hate me like he does?”
She nods, sadness filling her eye.
“Yes, well, I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it. I deserve his hatred, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. Nothing I can do that will keep him from looking at me and seeing Ophelia’s blood on my hands.”
Asha nods, biting her cheek and tucking her face into my chest. I’m always so conflicted when she does that. Part of me worries she does it to hide her scars. The other part of me revels in how she comes to me for protection, comfort.
“Still. I wish he’d forgive you.”
“It would be nice if all it took was a punch to the jaw, wouldn’t it?” I say.
Asha looks up at me. “Do you think that would help?”
“Why? Are you planning on giving Fin any ideas?”
CHAPTER 14
ELLIE
I lie in Evander’s arms, burying myself into my husband’s warm and familiar chest. Clinging to him feels critical, like if I let him go, this might turn out to be a dream.
Our reunion had been an emotional one.
After quite a few tears, most of them shed by me, and plenty of exchanged hugs (except for Kiran, who hugged only Asha), Asha and I had finally gotten our explanations for what had happened over the past months.
We were right. The snowstorm that had blown through Mystral had made the roads back to Dwellen impassable, leaving Kiran, Evander, and Blaise trapped in Ermengarde.
As it turned out, they’d been too late to intercept the queen. They also explained that Blaise’s friend had been punished by the queen, cast into an indefinite slumber that Evander was sure Peck could somehow figure out a way to solve.
He reassured her as much, and though Blaise smiled appreciatively, I could see in her sallow eyes that she wouldn’t place her hope in Peck.
The change that had overcome Blaise in the past few months was startling, though I’d encountered as much the night we found her drunk on her awful stepmother’s blood.
I’d hugged her just as tightly as Evander, though I sensed she was holding back. Whether it was her newfound strength and she was afraid of crushing me, or she was trying not to sink her fangs into my neck, I wasn’t sure, but the rigidness in her posture dampened my heart a bit.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” I’d told her. Something flickered in her brown eyes, but then she flashed me a grin, one that was all too familiar, and said, “Well, I couldn’t let Collins forget how to bake pecan pastries, could I?”
I’d laughed, hugging her again, squeezing her extra tightly, and whispering, “We’ll do whatever we can to help you get your friend back.”
She’d given me a smile that was more knowing than reassured, then stepped backward. “Well, I’ll be getting out of your way,” she said, gesturing with her head between me and Evander and Asha and Kiran. “I’m guessing there’s some lost time you’ll be wanting to make up for in the bedroom.”
The room instantly heated around us—a sign of Kiran’s embarrassment, I’d come to realize in the time he’d spent in Othian—but Evander just laughed and swatted Blaise away before picking me up in his arms and carrying me to our rooms, where making up for lost time was exactly what we’d done.
“So you think she loves him, this male the Queen of Mystral punished?” I ask, tucking my head into Evander’s warm chest, relishing the feel of him as we lie under the warmth of the blankets.
“I’ve never seen her like this, El,” says Evander, placing a kiss on my forehead. “She just seems distracted, distant, all the time. I know whatever happened to her in Mystral, whatever changed her into what she is now, had an effect on her, but I think it’s more than that.”
