Page 112 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

Sam smirked a little, but my niece looked offended. “Hey,” Rain said, frowning at me. “I do not.”

“Alright,” I said, laying next to Malik. “You do not.”

I touched a finger to his cheek. “Are you still angry at me?” Poking my finger on his cheek again, I murmured, “You can’t be angry at me. I should be angry at you. You left me for ten years and I’m not going to ever let that go.” When he didn’t stir after my continuous prodding, I pinched his cheek. “I know you’re not asleep. You told me so yourself, you’re always awake.”

“He’s asleep,” Sam casually announced after my whole speech.

I gaped, a little embarrassed of myself. “You should have told me.”

“Why? You wanted to say those words anyway. Father says it’s good to get things out of your chest.”

“Bullshit,” Rain muttered under her breath.

I gaped at my niece. “Rain Helenia Castemont, who in the hells taught you that?”

She shrugged a tiny shoulder and then continued to braid more braids in Malik’s hair.

I laid beside him again, putting my head on his stretched arm. “If you weren’t so damn handsome, I feel I could hate you just a little.”

He stirred a little, pulling me to him and burying his face in my neck, his warm breath fanned by skin and my stomach dipped at the sensation pooling there.

“Still asleep,” Sam boredly added, still flipping through the book.

“I think I lied,” I murmured, racing a finger down the scar on his eye. “I don’t think I can hate you even if you were ugly. You’d still be my ugly thing.”

“Pink or red?” Rain asked, whispering at me while she held two pots of makeup.

Chapter twenty-six

Blue Liatris

Malik

There was a rock sitting on my chest. Another one at my side. I was sinking into the mattress entirely and this whole thing felt like one suffocating dream. Until I tried to move my limbs and cracked my eyes open to find my niece sleeping on my chest and my nephew on my right arm. “Morning, you night terrors,” I groaned, my head pounding and itching and aching from some odd tension, awfully reminding me of a hangover.

After masterfully placing Rain on the bed and taking Sam off my paralysed arm, I got up and headed to the bathroom, stepping on about a dozen tiny wooden cubes that had my head spinning from pain. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Just as I finally made it out of the torture chamber that was Rain’s room and into her bathroom, the glittery flower shaped mirror in front of me told me that I could potentially still be asleep and unable to wake from a nightmare.

My hair—it was sticking like horns from all sides, braided and stuck with glittery clips and bows. There was some sort of pink powder on my cheeks and another glittery blue one on my eyelids. “Fuck me.”

It took me an hour to get myself sorted and then scrub my eyes raw to get the glitter specs out of my skin.

“You’re up and sparkling,” Kil said as I got out of his kids’ room, coming in my direction. “I see you had time to touch on your makeup, too.”

“Shut up.”

He chuckled. “Thora was here last night.”

I stilled. “You should have come to get me. Was there something wrong? Wait a fucking minute. My guard would have notified me. I would have known if something was wrong. Did she know I was with the kids?” Hells. I didn’t want her thinking I was elsewhere again.

“Who do you think put the glitter in your eyes?”

She’d been here? Why had I not woken up? “The little shit.”

Kil stopped by the threshold and turned to me. “Did you get any answers from Neo?”

“Yes.”