Page 88 of All the Devils are Here

“If I’m going to do that, I’ll need coffee. And a shower. Is there a shower in this house?”

“Yes there is. A very large shower. Room for plenty of people.”

I rolled my eyes, but grinned. “How about you make us coffee so we don’t spend three hours in there?”

“But that sounds like fun.”

Laughing, I pushed him off me, and he went, freeing me. “It sounds like I’d have pruny hands and feet, and I don’t feel like that today.”

I glanced down at my arms and startled. In the midst of Laurent loving me, I hadn’t noticed that my arms were violet to the elbow. Like gloves. My legs too, all the way to the middle of my calf.

There was a mirror in the closet, and sure enough, my hair looked like it was growing out purple. “Wow.”

“It’s all right.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure about that, given the dream. But panicking wasn’t going to help me.

Laurent’s eyes were on me as I went into the bathroom. He wasn’t wrong. The shower was absolutely massive. Enough for all five of us.

Down, girl.

If I started thinking about all of them at once I might ignore what I’d said to Laurent and pull him into the shower with me.

This place would be perfect for Trin as well.

Guilt welled up in my stomach. I needed to go see him, and see if he was all right. It was all because of me, and I’d spent the whole night out of my mind with pleasure.

I went through my shower quickly and threw on some clothes from the closet. Leggings were my comfort zone as a dancer, so I was happy the closet seemed to have plenty of them, given the way my clothes were torn off me last night.

The scent of coffee was everywhere, and I didn’t see Laurent. Instead, I went straight to Trin’s room. It didn’t seem like he’d moved, but he did look better. Already his skin had more color, and the pieces of him that had been bitten were healing.

I couldn’t look too closely at those.

But I knelt by the side of the bed near him and took his hand in mine. “I’m sorry.”

If I thought it wouldn’t hurt him, I would curl up next to him and listen to him breathe.

Wind stirred my hair, and gentle hands touched my shoulders. Ariel. “I feel guilty,” I said. “This is because of me, and I didn’t even spend the night with him.”

“Don’t feel guilty,” he said. “It’s not because of you, it’s because of the island’s power. And he’ll tell you himself not to feel guilty about spending time with your mate. Especially when you were in need of comfort.”

I shrugged, and he lifted me to my feet, turning me. “Don’t believe me?”

“I do. But it’s hard not to feel it. As for the magic, there’s something you need to hear.”

Both his eyebrows rose into the inky black of his hairline. “All right.”

Laurent had coffee ready in the living room, and Ban was lounging on the couch in his feline form, where he hadn’t been before. “Thank you.” I took the cup from Laurent and sat in a chair where I could see all three of them.

“I had a dream, and it was the island.”

“What?” Ariel’s laser focus was on me now. “What happened?”

I told them everything, including what I’d seen of Prospero. “It seems like when he first took the island’s magic, but I thought he was still human.”

All three of them looked shocked.

“Technically, he was,” Laurent said. “He was still mortal. Giving his heart to the island would have bound him here until his natural death. My creation stripped him of his humanity, and therefore his mortality.”

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