Page 23 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

“We have to find it first,” I said.

“And we don’t even know how much of a head start they have,” she said, nestling her head against the back of the sofa. “Or who they are. Or what they want. And my team is me, my cat, and a spooky pretty-boy who acts like he’s constantly auditioning for Hamlet.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

“And Isabella. She’s pretty good at this stuff. And Marcus, but he’s sort of only useful when he feels like it. Wizards, you know?”

I stared at her, then got up and refilled her water mug. Pretty-boy? I was distracted enough that I didn’t even realize I’d stopped tamping down my natural grace until I was already back on the sofa and Evangeline pointed at me.

“You don’t have to do that around me,” she said. “Hold yourself back like that, trying to act more like a human. Not when it’s just us. No need to waste those brain cells, okay? You can be as spooky as you want.”

Evangeline had gotten looser and more relaxed with the liquor in her system, but her green eyes were still incredibly sharp. I suddenly felt excruciatingly vulnerable.

“I think I’m starting to figure you out,” she told me. “I think you’re stuck. At first, I thought you were a prissy little prince, but you aren’t, are you? You came to the library by yourself. You didn’t bring an entor—ant—entourage or anything. You didn’t send someone to go get what you needed. I think you’re going rogue. You’re not some stuffy, brooding dweeb.” She frowned, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then corrected herself. “You’re not just some stuffy brooding dweeb.”

“I don’t think I’m stuffy,” I said, trying to grab onto something in the flood of words.

“But you’re all right with being a brooding dweeb?” she asked, cracking a grin that made me feel like I was staring directly into the sunrise.

“I know myself well enough to admit that I have a tendency to brood,” I said. “And I’m not entirely sure what a dweeb is.”

Evangeline laughed loudly enough that Pothos woke up and gave her a disapproving look.

“I was going somewhere with that,” she said once she’d caught her breath. “Where was I going with that? Oh, right. The happiest I’ve seen you so far is when you were getting the hulls off of those nuts. I think you’re fed up. You’ve spent too long being stuck in a little prince-shaped box, and now you’re starting to bust out.”

“You’re drunk,” I told her.

“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” she pointed out, looking immensely pleased with herself.

I huffed out a quiet laugh and grabbed her now-empty water mug. By the time I came back from refilling it, she was dozing against the cushions. I let myself look at her peaceful expression for a moment, then shook my head and went to try to find her a blanket.

All I wanted to do when I got home was collapse into bed and possibly spend some personal time with my hand. Unfortunately, the universe seemed to have other plans. When I approached my front door, a shape detached itself from the shadows nearby and came toward me.

The woman had a pale, round face, and blue-black hair that fell in loose waves over her shoulders, blending into the collar of her fur coat. She was disarmingly beautiful, and extremely aware of it.

“Gabriel,” she said. “It’s been too long.”

I bit back a sigh. “Gwendoline. What do you want?”

“Why would you assume I want something?” she asked innocently, raising a hand to her chest. When I gave her an unimpressed look, she dropped the act. “You missed the meeting today.”

I wracked my brain, trying to remember what on earth she was talking about. “The council wasn’t scheduled to meet today,” I said, puzzled.

“Not the council,” Gwendoline said, a touch impatiently. “The heads of clans De Montclair and Ash, and their respective heirs.”

This time I was unable to stop the sigh. “Right. That.”

“That,” Gwendoline said. “You left me to deal with both our families on my own.”

I winced. “Something came up.”

“Yes, well, perhaps if we’d both been there, it would have been easier to direct them away from their favorite topic,” she said.

I bravely resisted the urge to slam my head into the front door. Our clans were both old and powerful, with strong bloodlines. Because of that, I’d been in a perpetual state of being nearly engaged to Gwendoline for at least three hundred years. It could have been worse. Gwendoline wasn’t a friend, exactly, but she was an excellent ally to have. She was far better at managing clan politics than me. When we inevitably were forced to get married, it would probably be a good match. We’d slept together a handful of times over the centuries, and it was always fun and impressively athletic.

It could have been so much worse, but that didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. A small, foolish part of me kept insisting that I could have something different, and I always did my best to ignore it. I was an heir, and that meant there were certain expectations. A political marriage was one of them. Producing my own heirs was another.

In a magically-enforced vault deep in my parents’ portion of the citadel, there was a neatly labeled row of small glass bottles. They had been strongly enchanted, at great expense, hundreds of years ago to preserve their contents. They contained… well, samples.

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