Curiously, though she knew she shouldn’t, she reached out and touched one of the threads. It vibrated like a plucked guitar string. Somewhere in the distance, Ava heard what might have been a laugh. Or a scream. Or both.
A battlefield. A child’s laughter. The moment someone’s heart breaks. The instant before a star dies.
She turned to face Nos and Ibin.
But they were gone.
The archway was gone.
She was alone. Standing somewhere in the woods. The Baroque estate was gone, and instead she was…standing beside a pond. A waterfall emptied into it from a rocky crest up above.
The moon was high above. It had been daytime only moments before. Now, the stars twinkled overhead in arrangements she didn’t recognize—strange nebulas filled the sky with swirls of color.
“Well, well. Hello, little one. Hello,indeed.”
Slowly, and with not a small amount of dread, she turned to face the source of the voice. Leaning up against a tree nearby, was a man, his hooves crossed in front of him.
Hooves.
He was a goat from the waist down, but with longer fur. A satyr? Or were they only satyrs if they were Greek? She didn’t know the rules. His fur was blond, almost white, as was his long hair that hung loose around his shoulders and his bare chest. He had spirals of dotted white lines tattooed along the tanned skin of his arms and twisting along his abdomen and onto his back.
The man was gorgeous, though she supposed that wasn’t terribly uncommon, now that she’d met more of the fae. It seemed they were either beautiful or terrifying—or a bit of both.He had dark eyes that creased at the corners when he smiled at her, and the smile, for what it was worth, seemed genuine.
Gracefully, he pushed from the tree and strolled toward her, still smiling at her with all the charm in the world. As though she were the only thing in the universe to him in that moment. He held his hand out to her. His nails were pointed and black. “Rig. And you must be Ava.”
“Y—yeah.” She held out her hand to him. That’s what you were supposed to do, right?
He took it, and like a true gentleman, bowed and kissed the backs of her knuckles.
Her cheeks went warm—was she actuallyblushing?Holy shit. She didn’t know shecouldblush. Huh.
When he rose, the tenderness—no, theintimacyin his gaze—made her feel warm again. He took just the smallest step closer to her. “Ibin did a poor job in describing to me your beauty, Miss Ava. May I extend my deepest apologies for your mistreatment thus far at the hands of my people? You have suffered greatly.”
“I…I suppose.”
He lifted a hand to her cheek, those sharp nails grazing over her skin, as he gently tilted her head up toward him. “Too much, for someone who has committed no crime. Done no wrong but only been wronged. Would that I could steal the tears from your eyes…” He leaned in, as if to kiss her.
Slowly, her eyes began to drift shut.
And somehow.
Someway.
Somewhere in the back of her head.
The little guy she had manning the radar station in her nuclear brain submarine finally stopped making moony eyes at the sexy satyr man and realized he should hit the big red button labeledDANGER.The red alarms flashed.
And her eyes shot open. She took a step back. “I’m sorry, I—that’s lovely—but I was really into poetry. Never quite did it for me.”
“Hm.” Rig smiled, shrugged, and snapped his fingers as if he had simply missed out on a fish on a hook. “Shame.”
“Sure. Right. Um.” She let out a breath. “I honestly—I’m getting the feeling this was probably a mistake. I should go.”
“No, please. Stay.” He lifted his hands in a show of harmlessness. “Forgive me my poor manners. It has been a great deal of time since I have had pleasant company of your persuasion, and I…let my overeagerness get the better of me.” He chuckled. “Sit. Drink some wine. Let us talk of what the future may hold.”
Translation; you’ve got a bad case of the locked up and hornies.She kept that to herself. She didn’t know this guy well enough to snark at him that hard. She also wasn’t in the position to close any doors at this point. All she had was bad options. So listening to any bids for new options was probably not a bad idea.
“All right. As long as we agree that I get to leave if I want to. When I want to. No closed doors, no clauses, no charms, no chains, no tricks.” She pointed at him. “I learned my lesson with Braega. I’m not doing that again.”
