A hand rested on my back, and the bond between Darian and I hummed at the contact. “Come, Raine. You still haven’t eaten anything, and you’ll need your strength.”
Reluctantly, I sat back down, still reeling after Locke’s words and Kade’s kiss. Asher grabbed a plate and piled it with food before handing it to me. It was as if the monster thought I was incapable of grabbing my own.
“How can you stand to be around him?” I asked the pair of them.
“Who, Locke?” Asher asked. “Believe it or not, he saved all of us in one way or another. He’s had a complicated past. Don’t take it too hard.”
Darian sat beside me. “I’m sure it doesn’t seem like it, but he’s going easy on you. What you’ve been through is nothing in comparison to what Warrick put him through as a child.”
“His father?” I pictured the vampire with cruel coal-black eyes. “What did his father do?”
Asher grabbed a small roasted potato and stretched out on the settee closest to us. “Let’s just say blood relations are overrated,” he said before popping the whole thing into his mouth.
Knowing I wasn’t going to get any more than that, I began eating from my plate of food, grabbing a fork from the table and pushing a roasted carrot into my mouth. “So, are we really just going to spend the night doing nothing?” I asked incredulously.
“Doesn’t have to be nothin’,” Asher said, giving me a lazy smile, and I gave him a disgusted expression and flung a roasted potato at him. It probably wasn’t my most mature moment, but hey, he deserved it.
Unfortunately, before the potato could hit him in the chest, his tail flicked out and the vegetable was speared onto the pointed tip. He let out a hearty chuckle as he pulled off the potato and tossed it into his mouth, then he leaned back again, folding his arms behind his head with an arrogant smile. I was glad the ass had closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the flush in my cheeks.
“We’ll be resting,” Darian said pointedly. “I could certainly use it after what we went through.”
I turned to him then, remembering how he had saved me. “Thanks,” I said. “If it weren’t for you, that outlier would have eaten me.”
His lips molded into a smile that brightened his eyes. “It was my pleasure, Raine lovely.”
Therestofthenight passed slowly, with Asher, Darian, and I not doing much besides relaxing by the fire and filling ourselves with copious amounts of food and wine. I tried to prod more information out of the males, but they always gave me short answers.
As the night wore on, I became unable to sit still and ended up creating a makeshift target to practice throwing knives. Knives had always been my favorite, and I found it soothing to be able to focus on them for a while.
Planting my feet and flicking my wrist back, I released the knife in my hand. It flew through the air, landing in the center of the target I’d made out of one of the small wooden chairs.
Asher whistled loudly. “I always wondered what you humans did on that island. Now I know. The fight tomorrow night sure is goin’ to be interesting.”
I went over to the target and wrenched my blade from the wood. “Most islanders just wait for you monsters to pick us off. The others from my island probably haven’t ever held a weapon before. Not unless you include kitchen knives.”
“And why are you so different?” he asked, his violet eyes lingering on the blade in my hands.
I didn’t answer. I knew he was fishing for information about me, and I wasn’t about to spill my sad life story.Uh, because some asshole monster from Katakin took my sister before her time? Because I have to find her and make sure she’s all right?No, I ignored him and continued to throw blades at my target. It was a while later when I paused and said, “This can’t be all you guys do with your spare time.” Because seriously if it was, they needed to find some damn hobbies.
“In our spare time, Darian and I are usually in the city, but we can’t take you down there.”
Oh, right. Babysitting.
“These rooms also don’t have many of our belongings to let us amuse ourselves with our recreational activities. When Locke let us know the Taratun council had charged us with the duty of selectin’ the newbloods and makin’ them turn, we didn’t have much time to gather items before we were comin’ down here to the rooms Locke had fixed up for us. Naturally, I grabbed many of my weapons first.”
My forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Wait, so this isn’t where you normally live?”
He chuckled. “We have a few houses, but our main one is in the south of the city.”
Huh.It hadn’t occurred to me that they might have a home in the city, and I had the odd desire to see what their house looked like.
It felt as though an hour had passed when Darian came up beside me, watching silently as I threw another blade.
When the knife was firmly in the target, he said, “Kade might not be back for a while yet, and day has broken outside the mountain. You should get some sleep.”
“How do you know it’s day?” I asked, turning to him with a frown.
His lips drew down, and I wished I hadn’t asked. “I can feel the magic from the sirens’ song,” he said.
