Page 21 of Trials of Dusk and Dreams
The sounds of destruction travel through the gap beneath the door. They should have let me entertain the dragon. At least we would have saved the furniture.
Bodin stalks to where Styx lurks and retrieves something I can’t distinguish. He unwraps strips of shadow to reveal the jar of stolen wisps. Holding my gaze, he crosses to Legion’s desk and drops it with a thunk.
All eyes narrow on me. After a moment, I ask, “You all remember you can’t get into my head, right? Styx can only project his thoughts to me or listen to mine . . . well, apparently, I shout them anyway. The point is, I’m not a mind reader. If you have a question, ask it.”
A fee-lion seems to have caught their tongues because they’re baffled at my question. I collect the jar and slide my butt onto the desk, crinkling the papers as I get comfortable.
Styx finally leaves the shadows and walks to stand beside Bodin. Every instinct in my body wants to look at him—to inspect his clothes and compare them to Fox’s “ostentatious” fashion sense. Instead, I swing my legs and inspect the little balls of trapped magic.
“Why do you think Titania is hoarding these in her temple with the treasures?” I muse. “More importantly, why aren’t any found in nature? Where have all the wisps gone?”
Silence.
I glance up and catch multiple gazes averting from my bare legs. Someone clears their throat, and a smirk tugs at my lips. They can’t fight their attraction to me even when they’re magically bound to forget their true natures. There is a saying in Elphyne—the Well wants what it wants. It means we can’t fight fate. If the Well blesses a union, there is no stopping it. My parents fought their attraction to each other. My brother fought his attraction to Laurel. Leaf—the most stubborn Guardian of all, fought his fate so hard that he sent himself on missions in the opposite direction of my mother’s psychic guidance to find his Well-blessed mate. He was happy being brooding and lonely for the rest of his life. As it turned out, his mate Nova turned up anyway. She was someone he loved and lost centuries ago.
“All streams lead to the Wellspring,” Styx mutters, then realizes he spoke aloud and faces the war map with a scowl.
“Listening in on my thoughts?” I tease him, mind to mind.
Sensing I’ve made his brother uncomfortable, Emrys snarls and snatches the jar from my fingers.
“Explain yourself, Shadow.” Legion frowns at my legs. “And kindly remove yourself from my desk.”
So polite. So faerie. Ugh.
Some possessive part of me wants to get a rise out of him. It wants to obliterate that faerie decorum. It belongs to Titania and her stupid, fake rules and stupid, fake pleasantries.
Styx shoots me a curious sideways glance, and I assume he heard my thoughts. In the temple, he became quite impish when I warned him not to break the jars of wisps. He broke more.
“I’m quite comfortable here, thank you,” I answer Legion and swing my legs.
“Give me one turn of the hourglass with her in my chambers,” Emrys promises darkly.
“Yourbedchambers?” My eager tone makes him balk. I almost laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him confused or awkward like this.
“Give me half a turn,” Bodin offers with a growl. “That’s all I need to crush her insolence.”
I pretend to consider it. “Well, crushing sounds kind of hot if it involves me between the two of you.”
“Thirty seconds,” Styx counters.
“Crimson, Styx,” I laugh, shaking my head in disbelief. “Thirty seconds?”
“One second,” he corrects, baring his sharp monstrous fangs.
“I hope you last longer than that,”I tease, mind-to-mind.
“What?” He blinks.
“In the bedroom,”I explain, waggling my brows.“You’re going to need to last longer than one second—correction—longer than thirty seconds if you want to keep up with me. Fox could go all night.”
His gaze dips to my swinging legs.
“Enough,” Legion snaps, gripping my calf to halt the next swing. “Remove yourself from my desk, Willow, or we will do it for you.”
Our eyes collide. My whole world starts in that connection but ends where his warm grip zings electricity into my limbs. I see a hint of desperation in his expression and remember what brought me here. Fox is gone.
“Fine.” I sigh, sliding from his desk and onto a guest chair. “Explain what?”
