Page 56 of House of Lilith

My eyebrows pull down. Then I let out a scoff. “Yeah, right,” I tell her, finally making her look at me. “Last night, you wouldn’t even accompany a common criminal’s friend to Grimm Tower, but today, you’re willing to save said common criminal by throwing your esteemed uncle in jail instead.”

You couldn’t expect that from anyone, I think to myself.

She just looks at me for a second. “Maybe you can’t judge a person by a single thing she does.” She takes a step closer to me, making all my muscles tense up. “And maybe, just maybe,” she drawls as she keeps her eyes on me, “I was right, yesterday, when I told you you don’t know the first thing about me.”

And she tears her eyes away from me and turns her focus back onto Ricky, leaving me too dumbfounded to say anything in response.

“I’ll go now, but you can expect to be released soon,” she tells him. “I only need to tell the officer upstairs I know exactly which one of their own regulations they broke in handling this case.”

“Thank you, Miss Romanov,” I hear Ricky say.

“Nyx, you can call me Nyx,” she replies, throws him a tense but soft smile and turns to walk away.

I sit straighter, my fox poking his nose out to see if she’ll say bye to me as well.

She only throws me a glance over her shoulder.

*

My mind buzzing, I try to focus on putting one foot in front of the other so we can get the fuck out of the castle and back at the camp as soon as possible. So it’s only once the Elevator spits us out into the garden that I register Ricky throwing me glances.

“What is it?” I growl at him, immediately regretting the harsh tone. “Tell me,” I say, more softly, as I give him the side-eye.

My friend is still pale and obviously worn-out, but now, there’s a smile dancing on his lips. “I didn’t know you knew Nyx so intimately.”

“Intimately?” I echo, stopping to frown at him. He slows to a stop as well and tilts his head at me. “And who areyouto talk, calling her Nyx like you’re fucking besties.” Tome, she introduced herself as Anastasya. “I mean, I do understand she helped get you out, but it was probably her uncle who put you there in the first place.”

He gives me another funny smile. “You apparently already had time to have a fight about who you are or aren’t as people,” he says, completely ignoring everything I just said.

“That was just bullshit,” I protest.

And I go back to putting one foot in front of the other, headed straight for the slope leading down to the lake and wondering if it’ll be worth it, trying to save this day.

“I don’t know,” I hear Ricky say. “To be honest, when you two were talking in there, there was this vibe—”

“You’re in shock, Ricky,” I cut him off. Then I pause to ruffle his hair a little. “Maybe we should get your head checked out,” I say with a smile.

He rolls his eyes at me. “It just surprised me, is all. She’s nothing like the girls I normally see you with.”

My fox lets out a growl.What is he trying to say?

“Shut up,” I tell him.

“First smart thing to come out of your mouth, Ricky,” I tell my friend, making my voice as nonchalant as possible. “She’s grumpy as fuck.”

“Real character though,” my friend comments in a pensive voice.

I don’t say anything. I just imagine her, once again, standing there with an unwavering gaze as she told us what she learned.

I shake my head, forcing myself to shrug it off.

And it’s just then that I spot them, our pack, climbing up the slope to meet us. They rush to surround Ricky, inspecting him, patting him on the back and asking him questions, most of which I don’t catch because they’re talking over each other.

And it does make my lips curl into a soft smile, but it doesn’t really make me warm around the heart.

“So,” O’Malley Senior starts when we finally start walking back to the camp, “what’s the plan, Boss?”

“The plan?” I ask as I watch the rest of my ‘council’ fall into step with me.

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