Page 43 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Very.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be friends.”

“Maybe you should stop throwing a fucking tantrum and come back to Adriata.”

Her finger sneaked from the buttons of my shirt to the space between them, softly grazing my skin and making my mind spin. “Why do you want me back there? I thought you might want your privacy back.”

“You know the innards of my mind. You think I can even have that right?”

“I can give it back to you.”

“Keep it. And you’re coming back.”

“I am?”

“You are,” I said, pulling her hand off my shirt and making to stand. Only stopped by her firm grip on my sleeve.

“Can’t you stay?”

“I can’t. No until you stop trying to put me together. You know how long it took me to pull apart at everything.” No one but her knew, and I’d relied on her knowing that she wanted me as I was—pulled apart. But then she’d started looking for all the parts I’d buried. While I’d thought she was holding onto them, she’d tried to piece them together behind my back. Since I’d returned from Isjord, she smiled at me more, she touched me more, she looked at me more, she spoke less and listened more. All because I’d now become something for her to fix. What I’d feared most. What I hated most. Not because I wouldn’t let her do it. But because I’d disappoint her when she would fail.

“You’re a problem. Worse is, you’re my problem now.” She gave me one last polite smile and laid back, tucking herself tightly. “Deal with it, Malik.”

For a second, I stayed there, watching her stubborn head scrunch her nose all satisfied with herself and wriggle back in a comfortable sleeping position that was about to make me very uncomfortable to be clothed by the waist down.

“Leave now. You’re distracting me. I need to concentrate on thinking away thoughts of murder.” She sighted and then playfully murmured to herself, “Be gone treacherous thoughts. Be gone. He’s an idiot, but he’s my best friend. No need to think so maliciously, he needs that head and those hands. His tongue, too. I can’t possibly pluck his eyes out, he’d miss looking at me like a creep.”

Without even noticing it, I was smiling down at her. “You need to grow up, you know that?”

She peeled those piercing green eyes and raised a brow at me. “I’m grown enough. Just not for you, apparently. You like them wrinkly.”

“You little shit.”

Like the little hellion she was, she tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, gave me another sugary smile and then closed her eyes again.

I stood, forcing myself to back away from her bed. “You better be in Adriata tomorrow night.”

“Will not,” she sing-songed, yawning. “You want me there? Come get me and my problem-solving self with some polite begging and a gift of some sorts. Like chocolates. Or lace trimmings for my new gown.”

Throwing away her bedsheet, I pulled on a naked leg, dragging her across the mattress and then throwing her over my shoulder, before fading to Adriata.

Between Olympia and when I had her tucked back in her old bed, there was no time to get a reaction from her beside the wide eyed, open mouth look she gave me. I gave her thigh a little smack and let my hand linger there a little to feel the soft skin I knew no one had ever touched. “Night, night, bird,” I said, feeling her shiver under my palm.

“No good night kiss?” she playfully asked just as I made it to leave her room.

“It would be a good night bite, so go to sleep now.”

“I still want it.”

Sweet, sweet hells, I hoped she wouldn't notice me laughing and grinning like an absolute idiot as I forced myself to leave her room and shut the damn door.

“Hope you didn’t just murder my sister or something,” Snow said as she casually passed me, wearing her night clothes and missing the usual six foot and four feet accessory drooling after her.

“Did you pet and snuggle your dog to bed?”

“Takes him more than some snuggling and petting to put him to bed, Mal sweetheart.”

“Where are you going?”