by Holley Trent
Mallory made a beeline for the table where Elliott, Heath, and Keith were peering at their respective hands of cards.
“I didn’t know you were here, Heath.” She pulled out the chair beside Elliott and peeked at his hand. Without knowing the game, she couldn’t tell if it was a good one or a bad one. She gave the back of her brother’s neck a gentle “I’m here” poke.
“Hi, Sis,” he murmured, furrowing his brow and reordering his cards.
Heath grunted. “Muriel sent me over. She figured it’d be best for me to give Elliott the fairy second degree so the crew knows the score.”
“The wolf…” Elliott murmured, tossing a card. “Uh, Adam. Adam came by earlier. Did the same. Different questions, though.”
“What happened to the other chairs?” Asher asked, scanning the room. “Weren’t there two more in here? I could have sworn there were six yesterday.”
“Needed space. Put them in the bedroom,” Keith said dourly and propped his forearms atop the armrests of his wheelchair.
“Oh,” Asher said.
“You can sit here.” Mallory abandoned her chair and gestured to it. “I can eat pastry just as comfortably on the sofa, and perhaps more so.”
“Yeah!” Erin said, bouncing on her sofa cushion. “Bring them over here. Couch calories don’t count.”
“I wish.” All the same, Mallory reached for the box to take it.
Asher, already having taken her seat, pulled her atop his lap. “I think you’ll be more comfortable here. The couch is lumpy.”
At Keith’s hostile glare, heat traveled up Mallory’s neck and pooled in her cheeks. She lowered her head to hide her face, concentrating on turning the ring around on her finger. She hated how easily Keith could unsettle her, and she hadn’t even done anything wrong.
He’d been the one shutting her out.
“What game are you playing?” Asher tucked his chin atop Mallory’s left shoulder and looped his arms around her belly. Her mind may have been mired with uncertainty, but her body didn’t hesitate to relax into his embrace. Asher made being held feel like a spa treatment—too indulgent and rare to expect it’d happen again. She would stay there all day on his lap, supping on that soothing fairy magic, if her brain would let her.
“Crazy Eights,” Elliott said.
“Isn’t that game usually a little faster?”
“Usually, but I tend to overthink.” Elliott slowly nudged a card out of his fan of five and placed it on top of the pile. It was an eight. “Uh.” He looked to Heath at his left. “Clubs.”
“Shite.” Heath drew a card. “Are you in my mind, arsehole?”
Elliott shook his head. “Your thoughts are quiet.”
“And mine aren’t,” Keith said flatly. He tossed the seven of clubs onto the pile.
“Well, no.” Elliott grimaced and pinching up a card before nudging it back and taking a different one. Seven of diamonds. “Yours is…loud, but just static. Can’t understand.”
“Huh.” Asher shifted Mallory atop his lap as she began to wonder if the sofa was actually less lumpy than he was.
Damn.
Neither of them was going to be able to stand up until he got that hair trigger of his under control.
The thought of what they’d done in his bed made her face heat even more violently than before. She’d never been so brazen with any man, and the fact of the matter was that she’d actually been pondering making sex with Asher a weekly appointment—a bit of self-care in the same vein as her getting a pedicure.
After all, he lived in the mansion. There was no reason she couldn’t shuffle to his room during her lunch break to have her sex tank topped off. She’d make things easy for him. Same time every week, perhaps a bit more often by special arrangement.
“So you’re just going to flaunt it, huh? Unfuckingbelievable.” Keith slammed down his cards and gave a forceful shove back from the table. He made his way to the bedroom and shut the door.
A minute passed before anyone said anything. Furrowing his brow, Elliott turned his cards facedown and murmured, “What was that about?”
“I’ll go find out,” Asher said. He tipped Mallory off his lap, discreetly adjusted his pants, and padded to the bedroom door.
Clearing her throat, Mallory grabbed the pastry box and escaped to the sofa.
Heath followed. He nabbed a chocolate cookie from the box and tilted his head toward the apartment door. “Hey, Mal? Can I show you something in the hallway?”
“What’s in the hallway? I was just there, and I don’t recall there being anything interesting.”
Heath leaned his head toward the door and cleared his throat.
Oh.
Mallory knew that sign language. It was what she did to Marty whenever she had something to say that she didn’t want the kids to hear. She followed him outside onto the narrow landing and closed the door softly.
“My wife tells me I have a way of plowing into discussions without suitable preludes.” Heath leaned against the windowsill. “I think this is a circumstance where some degree of efficiency is called for.”
“Go on.”
“All right. How can I put this?” He swiveled his electric blue gaze to the ceiling and gave the scruff on his jaw a considering rub. “Has Asher been…behaving differently recently?”
Mallory shifted her weight. Already, she was no fan of the prince’s conversational efficiency. “Differently in what way?”
“In a more personal way.”
Mallory suppressed a grimace. There were no secrets in Norseton, apparently. Given the magical heavyweights she consorted with, she should have known she’d never be able to socialize with any semblance of discretion ever again. Still, she wasn’t about to confess any sins unnecessarily. She smoothed her expression as much as she could and occupied her hands by patting down her hair.
“Why are you asking me this?” she asked.
“Because there’s a marked difference in the way a fairy behaves before and after sexual maturity.” He lowered his gaze to her. “When it happens, the urges tend to escalate rather quickly. I’m guessing by the twitch in your cheek you have something you don’t want to share.”
Like hell if she was going to respond. There was no good response, and in her opinion, he was asking about things that fell into the jurisdiction of “None of your fucking business.”
“Okay,” he said gently. “You don’t have to share. I know you more human types aren’t fond of having your bedroom business be so obvious. I just wanted to counsel you on what’s normal for a fairy and what’s not.”
“And what’s normal, Heath? Not that I need to know.”
He scoffed. “Okay. Sure, you don’t, but that depends on Asher. Being touchy-feely is normal. We’re open about it. We’ll touch anyone who’ll let us touch them because it satisfies a particular urge. Usually, there’s no significant intent behind it. What I’m trying to figure out is if Asher has significant intent, whether he’s aware he has it or not.”
“What do you mean by significant intent?”
“Whether or not you’re his mate. Most fairies knew instinctively when they’ve found them, but since Asher was cloistered for so much of his life…” Heath shrugged. “He may not be correctly ascribing his impulses to what they actually are.”
Mallory scoffed, too, and said in a voice that might have been a bit too loud for discretion, “I’m not anyone’s mate, Heath.”
“But you could be. I’m talking about a true, compatible mate match and not a choice to take someone as a lover.”
“You’re talking about fated mate stuff?”
“You don’t believe in it?”
Mallory let out a breath and rubbed her tired eyes. She was too tired to be having that particular conversation. Her brain wasn’t in a clear enough space to unpack all of the implications of what being a mate to someone meant. She was still trying to give herself permission to even touch the man.
Marty had a fated match. Her partner Chris had been ha
ving dreams about Marty long before she’d arrived in Norseton. Mallory had no reason to believe that their connection wasn’t special. Erin had a similar one with her fiancé Will. Queen Tess had one with Oliver, and Harvey had one with Queen Tess, and there was probably a bit of magic between Oliver and Harvey, too.
She wasn’t so cynical that she’d think they were so rare. She’d simply never let herself think that she’d have one.
Heath pressed his hands to the sides of her face and used his thumbs to massage out the furrows from her brow.
“Asher,” she whispered. “Really?”
“Do you think it could be possible?”
She shook her head. “I…don’t know. I’m not really in the market for a relationship. With the kids, and… Well, with the way I lost my husband, I just assumed that I’d—”
“What?” Heath gave her a gentle shake by the shoulders and stooped down to look her in the eyes. “That you’d never get to connect with someone else? You think you only had one shot?”
“I loved my husband, Heath.”
“And?”
“And it just seems wrong to move on so quickly, as if he wasn’t important to me. For a long time, he was the most important person in my life. We married very young and tightly clung to each other in the years when we were still trying to figure out what being adults meant.”
“But that doesn’t mean his memory should cause you to exclude all others. He was there when he needed to be. He gave you three beautiful children, and showed you the endurance of love, right?”
Swiping a couple of stubborn tears from her cheeks, she nodded.
“If he loved you as much as you loved him, he wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life isolated and alone when affection is so easy to come by.”
“I don’t know if I can let myself believe that.”
“Try. That’s all I can tell you. Obviously, as Asher’s prince, I have a certain vested interest in his happiness, so you can safely assume I’m not completely without bias. But I do think the match makes sense, if it truly is one.”
“How?”
“Because you’re level, and stable, and warm, and he’s got boundless devotion for the people he cares about. Like you, he’s something of a caretaker by nature.”
Thinking of how he’d managed Keith for so many years, she laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. Caretaker might be an understatement. He’s got the patience of Job.”
“Good. Honestly, I think he could ease right into your family without your kids making much of a fuss because he’s probably so different from what they remember about their father.”
“He definitely is.”
“He wouldn’t seem like a substitute, then?”
“No way.” She put her shoulder against the doorway and chewed on her bottom lip as she thought. “My husband was also incredibly sweet, but…different. His passion was quiet and always at a low simmer. He was so thoughtful. So careful. The way he’d look at me and smile used to just slay me.” She put her hand against her tightening chest and rubbed. “I’d go weak in the knees. He was perfect for me. He was my everything.”
Heath nodded. “He got ripped away from you. I can’t say I know what that feels like. Simone’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. It took me a hundred and seventy years to encounter her. That doesn’t mean Asher’s fated to wait so long. I hope for the both of you that you can settle into each other and soon.”
“Say that I really am his mate.” She wasn’t entirely ready to accept that he was. Given all the chaos surrounding her father, she felt sorry for Asher if he was. A sweetheart like him deserved for some things in his life to be easy. Mallory most definitely wasn’t easy.
“Go on,” Heath urged.
“How will he figure it out?”
“It’ll click, eventually. He’ll observe others around him and connect the dots. There’s a chance you may figure it out before he does.”
“And how would I know? I’m not a fairy.”
“You don’t have to be. Simone might tell you there’s a certain protective possessiveness fairies tend to demonstrate when they’re around their partners.”
“Jealousy?”
“Nah. More like, this is mine—don’t hurt it or I’ll kill you, kind of thing. If he treats you that way to the detriment of every other eligible romantic prospect in the community, you’re probably his mate. And so, I have to ask…” He squeezed her shoulders, gently. “Do you think you could handle that?”
“I don’t know.”
Heath was throwing a lot of information at her at once, and she wasn’t awake enough to process any of it. She needed another two or three cups of coffee before she could even start.
“Okay. Fair enough. I’m dropping a lot on you all at once. How about this? Do you want to handle it?”
“Yes.” That was easy. She didn’t have to think. The opportunity was too perfect to outright reject. “I adore Asher, but I don’t know if I can give him what he needs right now.”
“Fairy partnering isn’t about right now, it’s a long view. He’ll be patient as long as you don’t prematurely refuse him.”
Sounded too good to be true. She furrowed her brow. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
She wanted to believe him.
Needed to believe him. Asher provided a kind of comfort she hadn’t realized she’d been craving, and she actually gave a damn about his happiness. He deserved every good thing the world had to offer.
Including me?
Was she a good thing?
Perhaps she was long overdue to start considering herself in those terms. Perhaps she could simply pretend until she could believe it.
She nodded and turned the doorknob. “Okay. I’ll try to go along with this and see what happens.” Then she turned back and pointed to the very familiar leather cuff on Heath’s wrist. “What is that, by the way? The silver on the underside?”
He turned it over, giving her a better look at the engravings on each coin-shaped insertion. “Whole crew has them. They state allegiances. They’re important because we’re defectors from the realm, and we have to make certain other creatures aware that we roll deep as a crew.”
“Oh. So, Asher has it because he’s aligned with you?”
“Aye.”
“Such a memorable color, that dark bluish silver.”
Heath grunted and shoved his hands into his pockets. “It should be. It was specifically smelted for my crew and me. You’ve seen that color elsewhere?”
“Only in a dream or vision or…” She shrugged. “Whatever.”
She tried to sound ambivalent but didn’t feel that way.
That vision of silver had been telling her something. She may not have had the intuition skills of people like Queen Tess, but she knew when not to ignore her gut.
Her gut was saying that silver was a sign.
But of what?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Keith
“Do me a favor and get out of my face,” Keith said to Asher.
“I’m on the other side of the room,” Asher said drolly. “I couldn’t be farther from your face if I tried. Also, your back is turned to me, so…”
“It’s a figure of speech. After all this time, you should be able to figure out when I’m not using plain language.”
“To be perfectly honest, you’re hard enough to figure out even when you’re not being exaggerative. How am I supposed to be able to tell the difference?”
Keith jerked his shoulders up and let them fall. He didn’t really care if Asher could tell the difference. He didn’t really want to be having a conversation with the man, the thief.
He tightened his fingers around the rests of his wheelchair and watched his knuckles turn white.
There were probably healthier ways of handling his frustration, but he was too much like his father. He bottled shit up and never talked about what was bothering him because he’d never been taught how.
His mother had tried to show
him how to get his anger out in productive ways. She’d been patient, but so fucking young. She couldn’t effectively deal with him on her own. He’d talked to his father about things, but he was dead, too. Dead before he could do anything good with his life besides making a few kids who were doomed to be orphans.
“Go back outside,” he told Asher.
“No.”
“Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?”
“Because you were offended, and I’m trying to figure out why.”
“Maybe I’m just out of my head again. I spent half my damn life talking gibberish, so what’s a little more time?”
“I don’t think you were…out of your head, as you put it.” The floorboards creaked beneath Asher’s weight. Closer. Closer. Sighing, he stopped just behind the chair. “You’re as sane as anyone. There’s nothing wrong with your mind, although I can’t say the same for your behavior.”
“Go. Away.”
“No. If you’re mad, tell me why. Tell me if the particular combination of people in this apartment right now is upsetting you for some reason, and whatever that reason is, we’ll find a solution.”
“You can leave. That’d be a good solution.”
“You tell me that without telling me what the problem even is.”
“You’re the problem.”
“How?”
Keith scoffed and turned his wheelchair away from the window, not caring where Asher’s feet were or if he got them out of the way in time.
The fairy took a step back, though. No harm done.
“You’re with Mallory now?”
Asher canted his head in the curious way he always did when questions seemed too out of the blue. He was so easy to read. Always was, even when Keith had been borderline deranged from straddling two different physical realms for too long—half in the land of fae, half in the human realm. Asher had always been the one certain thing.
Suddenly, he wasn’t.
Suddenly, he was an encroacher who was taking something Keith was entitled to. Keith was the one who’d endured the shame. The infantilization. The demoralization.
He was the one who’d been just an assignment. Just someone to clean up and clean up after.