2 Disheartened #2
“Oh, the normal childhood where her father died in the single most embarrassing wild-boar accident imaginable and her mother married an immortal woman with big metal teeth? That classic childhood?” Mina sighed and took Esme’s cheeks.
“Gia has a warm home and is getting an education all because of you. That’s more than I ever got, more than I ever dreamed of for her.
How you come home to us doesn’t matter, my love. Just as long as you do.”
Mina leaned up to bring them together, and Esme sighed into her kiss.
It felt impossible to hold any bad emotion with Mina close, with her mouth leaving tiny, dragging pecks on Esme’s lips.
She forgot what she was supposed to be angsting over.
Esme’s arms wrapped around Mina’s plush body as her wife’s fingers worked into her hair, tugging lightly on her curls.
Mina snuck her kisses down to Esme’s chin, and then smooched across her jaw.
Esme briefly opened her eyes only to be met with a headful of curlers, and she chuckled at the slightly powdered smell of Mina’s hair.
“You can’t laugh at my hair when you’re covered in guts.” Mina bit Esme’s earlobe. “I’ll have you know I curled my hair to look nice when you returned. This mess is for you.” Esme gasped as Mina trailed those kisses lower.
“Oh, really? I figured this was for that lady with the peach tree down the block,” Esme rumbled.
“Oh, I hardly have to do anything to have her.” Mina winked. Esme and Mina loved each other dearly, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t also love others.
“Hardly have to do anything to have anyone.” Esme sighed, eyes slipping closed as Mina put her nimble fingers to work on her buttons.
“And I swear I tried to get home before the sun, but Turiel had me all the way in the Foot stalking some guard for the world’s ugliest necklace.
” To prove it, Esme pulled said little black marble from her pocket.
Mina stopped, mid-wife-disrobing, just to cringe. “I thought Isobel was supposed to have good taste?”
Esme scoffed. “Have you seen her husband?”
Mina snorted before putting her drugging lips back on Esme’s chest. Esme damn near dropped that stupid little necklace, but just barely remembered to smuggle it back into her pocket.
Technically, her job wasn’t finished. She still had to return the necklace to Isobel, and the Bond hissed at her throat to remind her.
But she had the item in her possession and would be returning it soon enough.
That had the Bond’s throttling tamed down to a buzz.
It wouldn’t release its grip until this shitty little thing was back in Isobel’s hands, but Esme could take a magical bee sting if it meant a night or two with Mina.
“You know, I’m supposed to go to work today,” Mina said, Esme’s shirt now completely open. Esme slumped against the frame on the wall to keep herself up, trying to wrangle her lungs into breathing normally as Mina looked up at her through her lashes. “We have Wallain prep.”
“Fuck that stupid holiday,” Esme said, dazed. “Far as I can see, you’re extremely unwell and coughing blood and cannot work today lest you sneeze on a cake and give the king pertussis.”
Mina snorted as Esme’s eyes drifted closed. Just as the sting in her neck was fading against the sensation of finally being back in Mina’s arms, a rapping on the window next to them jolted the women out of their embrace.
Mina and Esme shared a look. Then they got back to their business.
Another string of raps, too sharp to be from a hand, interrupted them again. Esme rolled her eyes and threw her senses out to her porch. Urias. She could feel his magic, the prick of a thousand birds’ beaks, through the door.
“Stop bothering beautiful women!” Esme yelled through the door at the bird he was puppeteering.
The bird banged its beak on the shrouded window again, and Esme whipped the curtains open, finger already stuck up at him, only for her stomach to drop right to her boots. Not just a bird. A raven.
“Does that mean…” Mina began, grabbing Esme’s waist. That bird meant that duty would rip her wife from her. Again.
“Why don’t you go upstairs, sweetest?” Esme kept her panic leashed, kissing the crown of Mina’s head and watching her pad up the stairs.
It wasn’t that Mina wasn’t trustworthy. Magical death birds pecking against the glass at seven in the morning was where Esme’s work began and Mina’s safety ended.
Esme refused to drag her love any deeper into this wicked life.
Esme raised the window to let Urias’s raven in. “You’re ruining my vacation,” she grumbled. The bird hopped onto her hand and Esme brought them eye to beady eye. “You better have good reason.”
“The king is dead,” croaked Urias through his bird’s vocal cords, the squawking a garbled mimicry of the man’s voice. Esme’s heart, which had never stopped in all her one hundred and thirty years, did so just then for a second.
Turiel couldn’t be dead. Everything was going entirely too well for him to ruin it.
“How?” He hadn’t died naturally, she was sure. He wasn’t the fittest thing, fine, but Asterou men didn’t die naturally.
“Someone ripped his heart out of his chest.”
Esme leaned back on the windowsill and ran her fingers through her hair. Not just dead but murdered—the most problematic thing he could possibly be.
“Well, that’s a dramatic way to go. When?”
“We found him about an hour ago. I need you here.” The bird nuzzled her chest. Esme gave it as much of a hug as you could a raven. She imagined Urias needed a hug.
“Where’s Isobel?”
“Exactly where you think.”
Astride Mak’kon, then.
“Give me an hour,” Esme said with a groan, pinching her nose. The bird nodded before hopping off her arm and onto her shoulder.
Esme made her way upstairs and to her room, where she found Mina with a bag already packed for her.
The knapsack was nearly overflowing with her favorite books and clothes and even Esme’s favorite little pen.
The second she saw the purple dyed feather poking out from the top of that bag, tears swamped her eyes.
“I figured you were leaving,” Mina said, holding out the bag, her mouth pressed into a thin line. There were candles behind her shoulder on the nightstand. This was supposed to be their day.
Esme told Gia she’d be home tonight.
Another death struck her. With Turiel gone, Esme knew this way of life was over. This peace with Mina and Gia where, yes, she went around killing and stealing but still had enough time to carry on happily here, was over.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back this time,” Esme said, grabbing the knapsack but then dropping it on the bed to hold Mina’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“As long as you come back, I’ll forgive you.” Mina reached up to kiss Esme’s cheek. “Besides, you’re a Wraith. You have a job to do.”
“I wish I could quit.” And spend her time here, planting veggies with Mina and yelling at their teenage goats. “Everything here is yours. You can still access my accounts, yes?”
Mina nodded.
“Don’t come to work today.”
Mina’s face darkened. “Is it something terrible? You look like it’s something terrible.”
Esme pulled back, tucking an escaped curl of Mina’s hair behind her ear. “If I tell you, you’ll probably lose your mind.”
“I’m always losing my mind.”
“Then let’s just say there will be a royal announcement soon.
” Esme sniffled, not because she cared about Turiel—fuck Turiel—but because she wanted her wife.
“But you’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.” Esme leaned down and caught Mina’s mouth in a kiss.
She stayed there, just holding her, in a desperate bid to keep this moment forever.
And then it was over, and Esme had to go. She jogged down the steps, out the door, and into the sun. Magic stung her lungs, more than she’d ever smelled this early in the morning. Fear curled in her stomach. It was already beginning.
A mare materialized out of the shadows before her and Esme swung onto the horse’s back. Mina stood at the doorway, arms crossed, shaking her head.
Esme simpered at her. “Don’t look so upset. I’ll be back.”
“You’d better. Who else is going to traumatize me?”
“Exactly. I love you, Willimina.”
“I love you more, Esme.”