CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO #2
He drew the tip of his nose along my jawline, sending a rush of warmth through my body that eclipsed everything else around us.
There was no Riff Raff, no group of staring onlookers, no lingering omens from the mysterious old crone.
Just Yael and me, his lips brushing against mine, and the undeniable feeling that nothing about what we were doing was for show anymore.
“Liar…” His voice was so low and gravelly it reverberated through me, only adding to the tide of sensations. “Tell me what she told you last night,” he said, against my lips, “or I’m not leaving.”
“You’ll be leaving right now if you want to do it in one piece.” Ravi’s angry voice cut through whatever spell I was under like a blade through flesh. I startled away from Yael enough to see my boss scowling as he wove through the tables, headed right for us.
“Ravi!” Laney yelled as she chased after him. “What’s gotten into you? Yael’s with Myra—”
“He’s a dead man if he doesn’t get out of my bar right now.”
“I didn’t realize I was still on the naughty list,” Yael replied in a casual tone that only riled Ravi up more. “The way you’re acting, you’d think I was a threat.”
Ravi looked as though he might explode with anger at any moment. “It’s your hold over her that’s a threat,” he countered. “That’s the real danger.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t really call it a ‘hold’ over her,” Sasha said from behind the bar. “He doesn’t have her under a spell. They’re just fucking—”
“Ooooookay,” I said as I stepped in front of Ravi to intercept him, “that was super helpful, Sasha, thanks for that. I think maybe we all need to just take a breath for a second.”
Nothing about Ravi’s expression or energy said he’d be calming down anytime soon. “I’ll breathe better once he’s gone.”
“Why are you so pissed at him?” Sasha asked. “Is this because he left to return to the fae when the king took back his throne? Because that seems pretty petty, Ravi—”
“That’s not why.”
“Then why are you being so nasty?” Laney said as she came to stand next to Sasha. “Yael cares for Myra—”
“Yael cares only for himself,” Ravi snapped, cutting her off at the knees.
“Whom I care for is none of your concern,” Yael said as he shifted closer behind me.
“Anything that’s a danger to Myra is my concern.” Ravi’s tone was like ice, and I swore the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. “Or anyone.”
“But… but that makes no sense,” Laney said, hurt wrapped in confusion in her tone. “Yael isn’t a danger to her.”
“He most certainly is.”
“But why?” Sasha asked, utterly baffled by what he was suggesting. “We all know you love Myra like a father, but this seems over the top, even for you. And if I’m being honest, it’s giving jealousy vibes that are freaking me out a little because ewwww. Tell me you’re not in love with her.”
“I am not in love with her,” he snapped, his hold on his anger slipping with every passing moment.
“Ravi—”
“Then what the fuck is going on?” she shouted in frustration. “Why are you coming down so hard on him?”
“Because he trapped her in a fae deal that has brought nothing but danger into her life!” A collective gasp ripped through the room at Ravi’s outburst and the mention of a fae deal.
Regret flashed in his warm brown eyes the moment those words passed his lips, but there was no taking them back, no matter how hard he and I both wished he could.
Laney turned those sad doe eyes to the one responsible. “Yael… you wouldn’t.” When he didn’t immediately refute her observation, the light in the room began to wink out. “How… how could you?”
“I didn’t want to, Laney, but I had no other choice,” he said in his defense, which assuaged her growing rage not at all.
Bulbs overhead flickered and sizzled before popping, sending glass shards raining down on us as she walked toward him. “Myra is my friend,” she said in a threatening voice that low-key scared me, “and you will undo what you did right now.”
“I can’t do that, Laney—”
“You can and you will.” Darkness followed in her wake as she approached Yael, who stood unmoving behind me, prepared to weather her storm. “Let. Her. Go,” she demanded as she moved past me and raised her hands, a notable thrum of electricity in the air as they grew closer together.
To Yael’s credit, there was sadness in his expression as he looked down at her and said, “I can’t.”
Tears formed in Laney’s eyes as she reached for him. “I don’t want to do this, Yael. Don’t make me do this.”
“Ask Myra if she wants me to undo the bargain first,” he said softly, turning his gaze to me. “If she says yes, then do what you must to release your anger.”
Laney’s hands faltered as she looked over her shoulder at me with eyes full of lightning and confusion. “Myra…?”
I sighed hard, then shook my head slowly. “No, Laney. I don’t want it undone.”
A heavy silence fell upon the room like a net, trapping me under its weight with no way to escape, and whatever storm had been brewing inside Laney dissipated the moment her sadness eclipsed it.
“Why not?” Sasha asked, stepping in front of me. “Why in the name of everything sacred above and below would you not want him to let you out of it?”
Something sharp and jagged ripped through my chest, leaving a fiery ache in its wake, and I pressed my palm against it to try and abate it, to no avail.
Guilt and shame burned through me as I realized what my admission would do.
I’d chosen the coward’s way out when I stole away in the middle of the night to attempt my initial return to the Deep.
Now, standing in a room full of people who, like it or not, had become my dysfunctional family, I was drowning in the consequences of both that decision and the current one.
“Because he promised to return me to the sea.” My voice was a whisper so quiet I wondered if she’d even heard me; but from the way her warm eyes went wide with shock, I knew she had. “I want to go home, Sasha. I need to go home.”
She faltered back a step, revealing Laney’s vacant, tear-stained face. “But this is your home now,” she said, the hurt in her voice impossible to ignore.
“It is,” I said, realizing the truth of those words as I said them aloud.
“Then why would you leave?”
“I have unfinished business there,” I explained as my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Business I can’t let go.”
“And you were just going to do whatever you needed to do to fulfill your part of the bargain and then fuck off without so much as a goodbye?”
My nails dug into my palms to keep my rising emotions in check. “Yes.”
“Why?” Laney asked, her soft voice cutting through the quiet room like a dagger.
“Because she knew you’d try to stop her,” Ravi said, his words rimmed with sadness.
“I wanted to tell you,” I said, truths spilling from my lips too fast for me to filter through them first. “I wanted to tell you the first time I tried to go home, but then that got so botched, and Yael came along with his deal, and I got so sucked into his drama that—”
“The first time?” she said, interrupting my manic tale. “You’ve tried to leave without saying goodbye before?”
My throat seized the moment realization dawned in Laney’s, then Sasha’s stares. Sadness and betrayal, fierce and biting, was etched into every inch of their expressions—their very essences.
“No—I mean, yes. I did, but I didn’t mean to,” I said, trying to explain away something that couldn’t be explained away. “I just… I never thought that anyone aside from Ravi would really care if I disappeared, and as the day approached, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell—”
“No!” Sasha shouted, cutting me off as her anger welled around her.
“That’s bullshit and we both know it, because I haven't met a tougher person in my life, Myra, so don’t tell me you couldn’t bring yourself to tell us—you chose not to.
And the worst part is that, after you failed, you came back here like nothing ever happened.
” She reached back and took Laney’s hand in hers.
“We could have tried to help you, you know, if you’d ever bothered to tell us that you were so desperate to go back.
At minimum, we would have understood, but you didn’t even give us the chance—after everything we’ve been through together.
After everything Ravi has done for you. You were just going to walk away without so much as a ‘fuck you’.
” A veil of anger fell over her expression, hardening her eyes as she scoffed and shook her head.
“Maybe I was wrong about you… maybe you really are a heartless bitch after all.” She turned to walk away, pulling Laney behind her, and the quiet, too-sweet-for-the-Playground sprite just followed, too wounded and dejected to even look at me.
“That’s cold, Myra,” Curtis said as he made his way to follow them out, “even for you.”
“I… I didn’t mean…”
“Myra,” Ravi called. When I didn’t respond, he softened his tone. “Bitiya… I think maybe you should go home now. It’s for the best.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but my emotions choked me so tightly that no words could escape.
But really, what was there to say? I’d fucked up so spectacularly that there would be no coming back from it.
Nodding as I sniffled back tears, I walked through the kitchen doors and into his office to grab my stuff.
Without saying a word, I headed to the back door past the kitchen staff, who watched in silence.
Ravi shouting at Yael preceded the heavy footfalls that followed behind me as I attempted to make my exit. I turned to find Yael trailing behind me with Ravi right behind him. “Myra, wait—”
“No!” I shouted, finding my tongue once again. They both stopped dead in their tracks. “You, Yael, can stay the fuck away from me.”
To his credit, he looked pained. “You know that’s not possible—”
“Oh, it is, I promise you that. Because if you don’t, I will fucking sabotage your attempts to find your sister at every turn.
I will ruin your chances of reuniting with her and smile in the process because I am nothing if not petty—a heartless bitch, like Sasha said—and I know you set me up to admit that I wouldn’t leave our deal so that I could go back to the Deep, because that would drive away the only people close enough to give a shit about me, and my isolation better suits your purpose.
Well, fuck you, Yael!” I shouted as tears streamed down my face. “Have fun finding Jemma now.”
I crashed through the back door and was racing through the Playground in a full sprint seconds later.
I didn’t look back, didn’t bother to see if he had followed.
Whether he did or didn’t was irrelevant.
He’d be back eventually; it was only a matter of time.
And despite the sentiments I’d expressed in my rage-driven speech, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.