Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Avery
He left her in the woods alone at night. Without his jacket! Fucking nice guy, my ass.
Who did that? Even if she rejected him, he should have at least had the decency to walk her out of the goddamn woods. She supposed she had slapped him, though.
And fucking Felix, filling her with rage enough that she did slap him.
Cat stew sounded fucking wonderful right now.
She couldn’t blame it all on him though, she still didn’t hold back.
Maybe deep down she did want to slap him.
She felt bad until he asked for his jacket back.
Rejection always showed the true color of men, even if it came in the form of a slap.
Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. After all, you can’t spell disappointment without men.
Avery swiveled on the bench, the alcohol making everything blurrier than it should be, and took stock of her surroundings.
She was in the southern woods; that much was obvious.
Towering pines crowded her rather than the grand oaks of the northern woods.
Their tall canopies swayed against the clear night sky, the moon illuminating the trawling fog in silver.
“Are you okay?” Felix asked, wrapping her in a shadow sweater. Her breath caught in her throat as the new piercing vibrated at the contact, like it was beckoning the other shadows forward.
That was the last thing she expected from him.
His grin had dropped, brows furrowing with concern.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” It was a simple sentence.
But it showed far more care than Callum did.
Even with all the pretty words from before.
They meant nothing when he left a girl alone in the woods.
Never mind that she went out there on her own volition and was perfectly fine. It was the principle, dammit.
She sighed, rubbing her arms to warm them. “It’s fine, it wasn’t the first time.”
“Give me names, baby,” he said, a lethal edge creeping into his tone.
“Did you just call me baby?”
Felix cleared his throat. “Must have been the wind.”
She was drunk. But she wasn’t that drunk.
She ignored him and most definitely ignored the fluttering in her stomach at the pet name.
Why hadn’t Callum had that effect on her?
He was everything she should want. Handsome, stable, boring.
He would give her everything her mother wanted for her in life, everything that mattered to a witch: power, stability, children.
Was it strange to want none of that? To want to experience life before it becomes predictable?
Felix crossed his arms, and her traitorous brain seemed to have migrated between her legs. The moon illuminated the defined veins popping out of his arms—thanks moon, she was definitely a girl’s girl.
She could woman up and admit she wanted him to fuck her. Maybe it was the alcohol talking, but alcohol had a way of bringing up one’s deepest desires. And drunk Avery got what sober Avery wanted. If he was poison, so be it; she was going to drown in it.
But before she could decide to make a move, something else caught her eye. Fishing out her phone from her purse, Avery turned on the flashlight and scanned the iron gate. Ivy grew around its wrought iron poles, covering most of the surface. The only thing really visible was a keyhole.
“Holy shit,” she gasped. “Felix, come here.”
In an instant, he was behind her. He could have taken a step to the side, instead the cold of her back was suddenly warm, his body not touching, but inches away.
Avery tried to ignore it, but the scent of him was overwhelming.
She really showed an amazing amount of restraint, and someone other than drunk Avery should acknowledge that.
“What is it?”
The damn rumble of his deep voice wasn’t helping. She wondered what it would feel like against her pussy.
Dammit, focus, Avery, she told herself as she eyed the gate.
This had to be the place the riddle meant. Twisted lovers surround her: ivy. Circling an aching hole that has yet to be filled: a keyhole. If you want to find what you seek, open her legs and slip inside her waiting labyrinth: a maze!
It was so stupidly simple she wanted to slap herself. She had completely forgotten this place even existed. When she was a child, they used to use it for Spirit Night, but no one could ever reach the middle. The thing was huge.
“Do you still have the key?” she asked.
“Yeah, I do.” Felix fished it from his pocket.
Where does it go when he shifts? Does he have metaphysical pockets? Because as a woman, that would be so helpful. She would never have to carry a bag again. Just fish out her lip balm from the void. Never to be lost again.
“Put it in the hole.”
“At least take me to dinner first, kitten.”
Avery waited until he finally sidestepped around her, the cold rushing in between where the heat had been. She already missed it. Putting the key into the lock, he turned it, and a click sounded.
Hope jolted through her body. This had to be it. The iron squealed as it opened, one half of the vine-covered gate swinging inward.
Felix gestured toward the gate. “Ladies first.”
Avery pressed her lips together. “Coward.”
When she went to walk in front of him, he grabbed her shoulders, his claws grazing her collarbone. Her heart rate skyrocketed as he leaned close. His breath was hot against her ear, sending goose bumps skittering over her body.
“I was joking.”
After an hour or so, and with much bickering, they finally made it to the inner part of the maze.
While Avery had been correct a few times in her directions, her stubbornness had led them back to the same hedge at least three times.
At that point, she made the executive decision to surrender her directions to Felix, who led them to the center in five minutes flat. Cocky bastard.
“If I weren’t drunk, I could have done that,” Avery said, crossing her arms as he walked through the arched entrance. She was sobering up, but she neglected to mention that fact.
Felix didn’t reply; she figured he was still brooding from when she had called him a little bitch.
“Felix?”
He didn’t answer. Annoyed now, she followed his gaze to something in front of them, his eyes narrowing.
In the center of the maze stood a statue of an unknown figure, a man carved from marble, body sculpted to perfection.
Massive wings like those of a dragon sprang out from the back of him, horns curling atop his head.
In a strange way, he reminded Avery of Felix.
Or maybe it was the abs. Probably just the abs.
“What is it?” she asked, voice dropping.
“That’s the shifter god. Arawn.”
She stepped closer to the statue, running her finger along the base where moss had claimed it as its own. “Why would witches have a statue of your god on Caerwyn?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, little witch.”
The funny feeling returned to her stomach at the nickname.
She hated to admit it was growing on her.
That he was growing on her. But the gnawing question about why the witches had a hidden statue of the shifter god on their island quickly replaced it.
The plinth looked familiar, similar to the one that was cut away near where she did the ritual. “I think I’ve seen the plinth befor—”
A vine burst from the moss at the base of the statue.
Felix grabbed her collar and yanked her away from it, putting his body between them.
More vines shot up, climbing to the top as they wound their way around Arawn’s legs, his torso, and stopping at his neck.
Wolf's milk bloomed along their length, huge yellow petals peeling back to show gold stamens.
The flowers pulsed. Light gathered in their centers, spilling out in rhythmic waves like a dozen tiny hearts beating in sync. Every flower opened at once, their petals coming together and apart like mouths taking their first breath.
“When spirits writhe and reach their peak, their mouth will open, hungry and yearning for you to come inside. Only then will the final truth reveal itself.”
The voice layered over itself, a chorus that came from every flower at different pitches, the old language rolling through the clearing in an otherworldly echo. The sound crawled up Avery’s spine.
The goddess.
Felix’s shoulders dropped, but his hand remained on her arm, his grip firm.
Avery turned the riddle over in her mind, looking up at the moon as if it would whisper the answer.
Spirits writhing and reaching their peak, a crude metaphor for Spirit Night. It had to be. The veil was at its thinnest at midnight.
The mouth? It could only be one thing.
As the answer clicked, a smile formed on her face. “The midnight cave on Spirit Night.”
Despite the tides, the midnight cave always seemed to open at the strike of twelve. She had been there once or twice, but apart from the magically disappearing water, it was just a cave.
A smile tugged at Felix’s mouth as well, before he seemed to catch himself and frowned instead, trying to look like he was a fearless predator. In reality, he looked like an overgrown itty-bitty kitty, or maybe he had just grown on her more than she thought.
“Am I really so predictable?” the goddess said in her chorus of flowers.
Avery chuckled. “It was a pretty easy riddle.”
The flowers let out a witchy cackle that rang around the leafy walls, scattering birds from within the hedge. Felix’s ears flattened against his skull, his tail giving a single irritated lash. His grip on her arm tightened, then released entirely.
“Hmm, smarter than I thought,” the goddess said. “I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, though.”
Not ominous at all.
“Like what?” Felix said.
The flowers chuckled, golden pollen falling from their stamens. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out, my little kitten.”
Avery snorted at the demeaning nickname while Felix glared at the flowers. Payback was sweet.