Page 4 of A Match Made in Error

“Your face is telling me a story I can’t translate, but I know something is up. Did you break another bottle of rare wine and don’t want to tell me?” You’d think I was the boss by how he hates telling me when something bad happens at the bar.

“ImenteringtheFestival,” he blurts out like it's one word.

My eyes bulge, body freezing as I process what’s just been said. “You? You did that once and hated it.” With me. “Said you didn’t want a soulmate.”

“Angora says if Fate matches us, then she’ll finally let me worship at her altar.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. Gag me.

“You’re a swine. You’re going to disgrace the sacred rite of Fate to bed your scary girlfriend? You’ve only just started dating. You’re in lust with her, not love, and the Festival is for love.”

“Sacred?” He smirks. “I thought it was for fools and chumps?

“You can’t be serious about this.”

Riven shrugs it off. “You’re right. I’m not going to take it seriously. It’s not like we have to accept a soul pairing at the end.” Don’t I know it. I know it three times over. “Will you come and watch?”

“Over my maggot-infested dead body would I come and support this. It’s sacrilegious.” He bends down before me, grasping both my hands in his.

“Poppy,” he says quietly, “I know you’re done with the Festival. I get it. Truly.” My glare is unwavering. He’s done a lot of stupid things, but this is one I cannot get behind.

He lets me go and steps back, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly young and vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen him be. “But could you…come anyway? Not for the Moirai. For me.”

“No.” What does he need me there for anyway? It’s not like I need to always be there to co-sign his bad choices. He gets in plenty of trouble all on his own.

“You didn’t even think about it.” He bends, voice whiny.

“I don’t need to. My answer is no.”

He tilts his head, studying me like I’m the only person in the room.

“Poppy, if I’m going to make an idiot of myself, I want you there to narrate it. No one mocks me quite like you.” A flicker of sincerity washed out with a joke. Classic Riven. “Besides… I trust you to keep me grounded.”

“Riven, it’s just really stupid, and I can think of 500 better ways to spend my day than watching Angora belittle and emotionally abuse you and then get her way again.” Someone brushes past me in the suddenly crowded bar, and I immediately ignore it. Assuming it’s a passerby unknowingly getting too close…until a palm cracks across my backside and several males begin to hoot and holler behind me.

I jolt, gasping. Did someone just…smack my ass? Before I can whirl around and snap at the bastard, Riven does it for me.

He doesn’t lunge.

He doesn’t shout.

He simply turns, slow as a storm deciding where to break.

From the start, he had been all warmth tonight—gold light on his hair, shoulders relaxed, dimples flashing as he teased the regulars and flirted mercilessly with anything that walked past him.

Harmless.

A softhearted flirt.

A man made of banter and sunshine and easy charm.

But now?

The sunshine has darkened to night.

Riven’s smile stays, but it’s wrong now, and his eyes don’t match it. Warm amber gone predatory, his pupils pinpricked like he’s sighted a target. His whole body tightens, shoulders squaring as if he’s slipping into old, well-fitted armor he hoped he’d retired. The bar darkens, the shadows of his fae heritage assisting him in this act of retribution.

The man who’d slapped my ass is twice Riven’s size, but it doesn’t matter. The air around Riven has changed, and the darkness around us answers only to him. The once smiling and honey-dipped Fae has hardened into a soldier.

“You shouldn’t touch what’s not yours,” he says, tone light. A bluff…no, a threat wrapped in velvet. Riven knows as well as I do that men are more likely to respect women who belong to other men.