Page 86 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

My stomach sank.

He’d been with her.

And I had been wrong.

Rain shook me back to reality. “Please, aunty, make me an ice one, or I will be as old as ten when uncle finishes that one.”

“Ten is a big age,” I said, smiling and trying to erase the look of discomposure from my face. “You might not even fit in it by then. You’re lucky your aunt is rich and powerful.”

Malik dropped his hammer and cocked both hands on his hips. “You’re playing favourites, baby doll.”

Rain nodded once, not even denying it. “She is my favourite, and I’m her favourite, too.”

He took a seat on a garden bench and sprawled wide. “Yeah? I used to be her favourite once.”

I didn't look at him. “That’s a lie.”

“It is not,” he murmured, resting his head back and closing his eyes. “I was your favourite.” When I didn’t reply, he cracked open his sleepy eyes and just looked at me with a tired smile weighing down the gloom on his face. “Maybe I still am.”

Tearing my attention from him, I lifted a hand forward and my magic followed the wooden skeleton of the house Malik had already built, letting ice create a thin coat of walls and a roof. Rain didn’t mind the cold either. Despite her gift of death, she was also blessed by ice. Sometimes, when I watch her, I could almost swear that her grey eyes had tiny little shapes of snowflakes in them. They were like crystals. Clear. Cold. Eyes the true colour of winter.

My little odd niece squealed and giggled from happiness, squeezing the life out of that freaky doll she loved and running right inside of the makeshift tiny ice castle.

“You and Kil were training with her today?” I asked, taking a seat beside him.

“We were,” he replied, his attention on our niece. “Took her inside the Danic mist before the sun rose. Kil wanted to see how the old magic would react to hers since it’s the most similar to hers that we’ve both felt. The trip wore her out a little, so I promised to build her very own castle as per her request.”

The thought that my tiny little niece was this giant storm in the making terrified me just a little. “Couldn’t you just buy her a present like any normal uncle?”

“Normal uncles don’t meet their nieces for the first time when they are five years old.”

“Spoiling her rotten won’t get her to forget you’ve missed all five first years of her life. You can just tell her the truth. She might spare you some grace that way. Rain’s a good kid, and she’s got the biggest heart. She is a bit like—”

“Kil. She’s like Kil.”

I turned to him and he turned to me, too. “I was going to say she’s a bit like you.”

He pushed my fringe to the side with a finger. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I murmured, straightening my fringe back.

For a moment, we remained silent, refusing to look anywhere else but at each other. “You’ve not had anything to eat all day. Have dinner with me.”

“I have eaten.” Lie. I don’t even remember drinking a glass of water today.

“You have not.”

“You wouldn't kno—”

He gave me a pointed look. “I have eyes in every shadow. Even that of your own.”

“I wish you just used your own. They’re pretty nice eyes.”

He was trying really hard not to laugh as he narrowed his eyes at the distance where Rain was coming in and out of her ice castle. “You like my eyes, little bird?”

“I like them when they are looking at me.” The shyness had been literally ripped out of my bones at this point. He knew I’ve wanted him since the moment we met, and I was never shy about him knowing that. Once, I’d been cautious, yes. But only because he had drawn a line between us. Even though I’d crossed it many times, I’d always reared myself back behind it, for the sake of keeping him.

“Careful,” he said, leaning both elbows back on the bench. “Those aren’t things you say to friends, Thora.”