Page 60 of Beasts of Briar
Goji didn’t even blink.
“Why would you do that?”
She surged forward, her wings fluttering behind her. “The better question is why would you ever allow yourself to get close to her? You have a mission. An important mission. The entireworld hinges on your success. And you think now is the right time to start flirting? To start a relationship?”
I winced at the brutal reality of her words. She was right. I needed to get those weapons, and then I had to use them to ensure the other gods never got free. If they did... not only would my life be in jeopardy but so would everyone else’s. I couldn’t let anything distract me. Especially not a woman I couldn’t even fully trust. A woman with mysterious powers and a mysterious mission.
“I’m doing this for your own good, you know,” Goji said. “I’m not trying to be cruel.”
“I know,” I said.
“So have you discovered anything out about her in all those nights you’ve spent together? Or were you just discovering parts of her body?”
“Bloody shadows,” I muttered.
The images that brought up in my mind. My shadows stripping Bellamy in front of me, her pale body bare beneath me. My cock stiffened at the thought.
“Get a room,” Goji said with a knowing look.
“I’m in my room,” I shot back, banishing all thoughts of a naked Bellamy from my mind. It wouldn’t do me any good to yearn for something I couldn’t have. “Have you?” I asked. “Found anything out?”
She, Jerome, and Wesley spent every damned day with them, entertaining them, eating with them, sitting in the gardens with Bellamy as she harvested those nettle weeds.
“Well, I know they don’t trust you.”
“Shocking,” I mumbled.
Goji shrugged. “No. They aren’t telling us anything. Well, Driscoll has told us every piece of gossip known to mankind.”
“I bet Jerome loves that,” I said.
“Oh, he does. Wesley pretends not to, but he loves it too.” She paused, running a hand over her blonde hair. “They’re not... terrible company. But they are hiding something. At some point, we’re going to have to just make them tell us. I can use my pixie dust to force them to tell the truth. Or you can use your shadows...”
“No.” My voice came out harsher than intended, my shadows lashing out and making Goji flinch.
And there it was. I’d known Goji for a thousand years. She could be brutally honest with me. Advise me. But when it came to my shadows, she was still scared. The fear was fleeting, but it was there.
“Sorry,” I said. “Let’s not resort to that just yet.”
If we did, I knew it would irrevocably break any trust I’d built with Bellamy. That then she might truly see me as the monster everyone else did. I wasn’t sure I could stand that.
Goji peered at me, suspicion in her green eyes. “Okay,” she said finally. “Fine. We’ll let them be our guests a little longer. We’ll play pretend, but eventually, reality will come knocking.”
“I’ll send more shadows out tonight,” I said. “We have to find those final weapons.”
I’d been searching for so long, and I could feel that I was getting closer, closing in. It was just a matter of time. As long as no one else found the weapons first.
“There’s something else,” Goji said. “A few shadows returned. I think they might have some news about his whereabouts.”
I stilled. Bathalous. I’d been searching for him for years, unable to find him. Convinced he’d died. If that was true, I needed to see the shadows right away. Bathalous had helped me once, and now I would need his help again.
“You can do this, Kairoth,” Goji said, her gaze flicking to my shadows, which had once against started moving, growing agitated.
The pixies hated the gods as much as I did. The gods had created the pixies, basically used them as slaves. It had taken me some time to earn the pixies trust once I’d been freed, but I had managed to do it, and they had no desire to become slaves once again.
Goji’s gaze softened. “I just wish you could find a way to save yourself too.”
“That’s not the plan,” I said. “And you know it.”
