AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nakoa, as if his ears were burning, strode over from where he and the other males had been huddled and took a seat on the other side of me. Tension knotted in my gut at being squished between the two of them.
“I apologize for earlier, Mareina… I have no excuse for my behavior. I apologized to Malekai as well. And Val.”
I had to admit, his apology took me by surprise.
I turned to look at him and saw a… startling sincerity in his eyes. Though it wouldn’t be the first time I’d been fooled by hissincerity,I wasn’t about to admonish him for good behavior, so…
“Thank you… that means something to me.”
A discomforted silence stretched between us. Only seconds passed, but I couldn’t fucking bear it.
“I’m gonna head inside and take a bath,” I announced, rising to my feet, “Do try to behave.Both of you.”
After Val showed me around and got the bath running, I sat in the tub until I pruned and the water turned tepid. Mors’ mark on my arm had been unavoidable in my nudity, and I’d been forced to come to terms withwhateverit was he intended. I clearly didn’t have any control over it. And Malekai giving me of the straightforward and obvious suggestion that if Mors did actually want me dead, he wouldn’t bother warning me about it.
By the time I reached the couch, Val had already turned it into a cozy nest for me. Laughter echoed from outside, inadvertently calling me to the window. My jaw dropped when I took a peek from around a remarkably frilly and feminine curtain. A squeal erupted from Pomona, and even Rayne was bent over, clutching his stomach, with laughter.
Roderick sat on Malekai’s shoulders, and Lokus sat on Nakoa’s as they ran around trying to catch the fae lights- nopixies -in the air above them before placing them in abag.
What in the absolute hells?
Malekai’s face was broad with a grin, mirroring Nakoa’s. Val, Rayne, Vesper, Pomona, and Famei stood off to the side, cackling. Still in shock, my bare feet carried me outside, dressed in only my pyjamas. Warmth suffused my chest as I took in their exuberance… How… Happy and familial everyone looked.
I sat beside Pomona and Famei, who gave me warm smiles as the latterwilleda bottle of fae wine into his hand.
“First one to bag 10, wins. Fancy a drink?”
I nodded and gave my thanks as the big males teetered and swayed as the lights dipped and leapt away, all the while howling with contagious laughter.
“Who’s winning?”
“Nakoa at the moment?—
“Outta the way!” Roderick cried.
We barely leapt out of the way in time as Malekai and Roderick came barrelling towards us to catch one of the fairies zipping between us. All three of them crying with laughter.
“How the hells did you get the pixies to agree to this?”
Val’s face was bright with humor, face split in a broad grin in the center of his thick beard, huffing as he caught his breath and wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. “It was their idea! Little adrenaline junkies. I’ve become friends with the local glee… They aresuspiciouslygood at poker.”
A loud grunt sounded as Lokus was run gut-first into the side of a tree branch, leaving his feet dangling and kicking, and Nakoa ran out from under him.
“You’re supposed to duck!” Nakoa wept through his laugh.
“How?!”Lokus shrieked. “I can’t fold myself in fucking half, you twat!” Lokus clutched onto the branch for dear life, holding the luminous bag of pixies in one hand. Nakoa bowled over, hands on knees. “Get back here before I fall!”
Nakoa struggled to catch his breath, still laughing through his tears. “Just fall!”
“You get back here right now, or I swear toAkash,I’ll take a shit in your fucking lute!”
My own laughter howled out of me, unrestrained and free. Alongside me, Pomona, Famei, Val, Rayne, and Vesper. As we watched Malekai juggle Roderick and Nakoa juggle Lokus, each of us met one another’s eyes in this beautiful, shared moment of tear-jerking laughter.
And for the first time since the war, of all events, I felt the unmistakable soul-warming satisfaction of unity.Family.Or at least, the closest thing to it that I had felt since being huddled around a campfire with Malekai, Seline, and the handful of soldiers we’d once fought with our lives to protect. All of the previous stress and tension wholly gone, almost forgotten, and suddenly not nearly as important as it once was becausethis…
This felt like something.
Something precious and new. For me, at least, and I knew Malekai as well. Perhaps fragile now considering all that weighed in the balance… But perhaps something worth fighting for and protecting. Something that might make all the heartache worth it.
