Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
He wiped it away instantly with a smile. “My little songbird.”
She wrinkled her nose at him and found her friends facing down their enemy. Kierse’s body tightened with tension. “What fresh hell have you brought upon the Druids?”
Graves looked back at her with an expression full of utter devotion. “Wren?”
“I’m not your wren, and you should leave,” she told him. “You’re breaking the truce. Unless you want us to show up on the Upper West Side…”
His face turned immediately to her smug, invincible, and utterly detached enemy. He brought his gaze upon Lorcan. “Are you happy?”
Lorcan stepped to her side. “This is how it always should have been, Brannon.”
“She’s going to hate you when I figure out how to break this Faerie curse.”
“There’s only one way to break it,” Lorcan said with a shrug. “But you’re welcome to try.”
“Fuck you,” Graves snarled.
“Whatever this conversation is,” Kierse argued, “it’s over. Get out of our headquarters or you’ll regret it.”
“Go on now, Holly King,” Niamh said, putting herself beside Kierse. “You don’t belong here.”
Gen and Ethan came to either side. A silent defense against his immense power.
Kierse was right where she had always belonged. With her friends and family at her side. And the Holly King was only ever trying to ruin their happiness. He wouldn’t do it this time.
Graves’s gaze swept between the assembled group against him. “This isn’t over,” he told Lorcan.
Lorcan nodded. “I’ll see you at the solstice.”
Graves bared his teeth at him but managed to get composed once more before he stepped forward and took Kierse’s hand. She tried to jerk it back. How dare he touch her!
Then he bent over it, pressing his lips to her skin. The Holly King bending to her. The whole thing was absurd.
“My queen,” he said. His two men jumped to attention when he snapped at them. And then they pushed their way past the cadre of Druids and out into Brooklyn beyond.
“That was…weird,” Kierse grumbled, still gazing after his retreat. She flexed the hand he’d kissed. “Even for him.”
“Mmm,” Lorcan muttered. “Well, he’s gone now.”
“Good riddance,” Ethan said.
“I don’t know why he was here in the first place,” Gen said.
“Stirring up trouble like normal,” Niamh said.
But Kierse still watched Graves’s back. The itch in her mind ached to be scratched. There was something she was missing. Something important. But it slipped past her again. Gone.
“He’ll be back,” she said slowly.
“We’ll be ready,” Lorcan said.
Then he gestured for her, her friends, and his robin to move back into their Brooklyn headquarters. Where they always belonged in the first place.
Interlude
Graves
The worst part was that she looked so…happy.
Happier than Graves had ever made her. She laughed more freely. She teased so much more genially. She walked without the weight of his lies on her shoulders.
It didn’t matter that this world was the lie. That he had every intention of spending his days destroying Lorcan’s court until he found an answer on how to get her back. But a part of him wondered if he should leave her.
Leave her to this life.
Her hair was down in soft waves. Her makeup was light and neutral with a berry lip. She’d chosen another little black dress that came down around her knees and fluttered with every step. Knee-high black boots and a peacoat cinched at the waist to avoid the unseasonably snowy weather.
The worst winter on record. His sinking depression rocking the eastern seaboard.
From his vantage point, he could see the cold puff of her breath and the pink on her cheeks and nose. The wren necklaces that still graced her throat. He wondered what the curse’s godforsaken explanation was for the little wren he’d given her before Amberdash’s party. The curse seemed to have a reasonable explanation for everything.
For this, at least, he was thankful. He’d turned the tracker back on, and it made it much easier to be her shadow around the city.
Lorcan reached for her arm, and Kierse slipped out of his way with a laugh at whatever asinine thing he’d said. She’d been doing more of that, too. Kierse and Lorcan were together more, but she didn’t let him touch her. As if he were looking at the little thief who had first stolen from him, who refused to allow anyone to touch her rather than who she had grown into.
It made his heart sink even if it was a small fucking miracle. It was hard enough to stomach them together all the time, let alone if they were always touching.
Still, Lorcan masked his frustration at her rebuff well, and his smile was vibrant. The glow of her affection lit him up. As if he deserved it. As if he’d earned any of it.
Graves blew out a harsh breath, flexing his hands in his gloves. At least she was happy.
What he’d figured out over the last three weeks was this: the geas had warped their story to fit a version of existence where Kierse didn’t remember Graves as anything more than an enemy of the Druids—the Holly King.