Chapter 27 #2
Seraph ignores him. "Idris is the logical choice for your next house.
Their abilities complement what you've already learned.
Their approach to sin is different from mine or Croesus's.
And—" He pauses, something complicated moving across his face.
“—They’re the one most likely to help you understand what your grandmother was really planning. "
They’re also the one most likely to drive you mad, Idris offers silently. But that's part of the charm.
"Will you stop?" I snap at him.
No.
I turn back to Seraph. "And you agreed to this? Sending me to Idris after you?"
"I agreed it was the logical choice." His voice is ice. "I did not agree to like it."
The tension in the room shifts. Thickens.
I'm suddenly very aware of the space between Seraph and Croesus, the way they're both angled toward me, the undercurrent of something that goes beyond rivalry.
The other night changed things. The memory flashes unbidden: Croesus catching Seraph's wrist, lifting those fingers to his mouth, sucking them clean while holding Seraph's gaze.
Tasting me on another man's hand. The look that passed between them, complicated and heated and full of things neither have let me in on yet.
They haven't spoken directly to each other all morning. But the awareness between them crackles like static electricity. Something broke open last night, or maybe something finally started. I'm not sure which is more dangerous.
Kael clears his throat. "So. Training?"
"Training," Seraph confirms. He rises from his chair, and the movement is sharp, clipped, barely contained energy looking for an outlet. "All of us. Together. Time to see what this binding can actually do when we stop fighting it."
"Sounds fun," I say dryly. "Getting my ass kicked by seven angels instead of one. Living the dream."
"You won't be getting your ass kicked." Seraph moves toward the door, and there's something dangerous in the set of his shoulders now. "You'll be learning to kick ours. Or trying to. We'll see if any of you can actually land a hit."
He stops at the doorway, turns to look back at us. His eyes sweep across the table, landing on each of his brothers in turn. On Croesus longest.
"Let's go," he says, and his voice is silk wrapped around a blade. "I want to break one of you."
He storms out.
The silence that follows is deafening.
"Well," Lysander says after a moment. "Someone's in a mood."
"Can you blame him?" Dorian rises, stretching. "He's been hoarding her for months. Now he has to share."
"We're not sharing anything," I say. "I'm not a toy."
"No," Croesus agrees, and there's heat in his gold gaze when it meets mine. The same heat that was there last night when he lifted Seraph's fingers to his mouth. When he tasted me and called it starlight. "You're not."
The look he gives me makes my cheeks flush. Makes me remember the expression on his face as Seraph carried me out. That peace. That strange, unexpected peace.
I shove back from the table. "Fine. Training. Let's go see which one of you I can manage to bruise."
"That's the spirit." Kael grins, all teeth and barely leashed violence. "I like her."
"Everyone likes her," Lysander sighs. "That's the problem."
They all head to the door one by one. Kael first, eager for combat. Lysander moving with lazy grace. Dorian offering me an encouraging smile as he passes. Idris drifting by without a word, though I feel their amusement brush against my mind like silk.
Croesus waits for me, and we walk out together. His hand finds mine briefly, squeezes once, then releases.
A promise. Or maybe just hope.
At the far end of the table, Caspian is still sitting. He hasn't moved through the entire conversation. His pale eyes watch us go with something that might be curiosity, might be confusion.
"What did I miss?" he asks, his voice like wind through dead leaves. "You're all looking at each other like something happened."
Lysander laughs, the sound rich and knowing. "Something did happen."
"At that dinner the other night? The one I declined to attend?" Caspian's pale gaze sweeps across the room, taking in the charged glances, the flushed cheeks, the way no one will quite look at anyone else directly. "Ah. That kind of something."
I feel my face heat. "It's not—"
"It's exactly what you're thinking," Dorian says cheerfully. "And it was spectacular."
"Wonderful." Caspian reaches for his cane, begins the slow process of standing. "I miss one dinner and apparently the entire dynamic shifts."
"You could have come," Lysander points out.
"I was tired." But there's something in Caspian's pale eyes now. A flicker of interest that wasn't there before. "Perhaps I should be less tired in the future."
I pause at the doorway. "You coming to training?"
He considers for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nods.
"Wouldn't miss it," he says. "Someone has to keep score of how many times Seraph loses his temper."
"Is that likely?"
Caspian's pale lips curve into something that's almost a smile.
"With you involved? Almost certainly.”