Page 85 of Blood Oath
“You certainly could when it’s just us,” Silas drawls. “Though I’d prefer you entirely nude.”
“Agreed,” Crypt teases, appearing at the foot of the entry stairs as I walk back down them.
Everett’s impatient sigh from where he stands in the foyer with folded arms draws my attention. “We get it. You’re all beyond horny, and you refuse to leave her alone about it. Moving on, have we decided on today’s itinerary?”
Yet again, how unhappy he is to be here with me is oddly bothersome. The irony isn’t lost on me that if all my matches had been as indifferent about me from the beginning, they would have already appealed for a new keeper. I would be well on my way to accomplishing my mission and moving on.
Baelfire bristles at the professor, but Silas studies me. “We’re near a small town called Hope Falls. I learned they have an impressive display for the human holiday season, several historical sights…and an impressive greenhouse open to the public in the winter.”
I wasn’t lying when I told him I’m a botany aficionado. The greenhouse is genuinely appealing, especially because I won’t be stuck here with four legacies that I can’t stop thinking about trying to touch, thanks to the bizarre dream I had last night of the four of us.
Going to Hope Falls is a needed distraction from the lingering throb between my legs.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
I insist on driving Kenzie’s Mustang despite Silas’s attempts to take one of the two cars he and Everett brought. He doesn’t seem to trust the baby blue vehicle. Unsurprising, since he doesn’t seem to trust anything. After he lays a couple of protective spells on it, he gets in the passenger seat. Everett slides into the back, and Baelfire tries to, but it quickly becomes apparent he’s built too big for the older car.
“I’ll grab a shirt and meet you there,” he winks.
Right. Because a twenty-five-ton dragon won’t freak the humans out at all.
Crypt is invisible, but there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll be keeping up and watching, too.
Hope Falls is everything Silas said it would be. It’s a tiny human community covered in glittering snow with festive decorations on nearly every building we pass driving into town. It’s complete with an old clock tower atop a church, a town square filled with people chatting in earmuffs and puffy coats, and a collection of random historical New England monuments.
I park in front of a spot in the town square where there is an ongoing competition to see who can build the best snowman. As we watch, a massive shadow passes overhead, blocking out the sun before twisting midair. The sunlight catches on Baelfire’s gleaming scales as he lands somewhere just out of sight to shift back. I can’t help smirking as I watch a small child gawking so hard at the sky that she accidentally pushes her snowman’s head off when trying to stick a carrot in it.
Crypt appears outside the driver’s side door, opening it before I can. “After you, darling.”
Baelfire catches up with us quickly, but it doesn’t take me long to decide that strolling through the cheery streets of the cozy human town with them feels…odd.
For one thing, we don’t blend in well. People’s eyes keep shifting to us, lingering on the four disturbingly handsome men in my posse before looking away. Living so close to the Divide, I’m sure they see legacies often enough that we’re not outright freakish to them, but they’re obviously still uncomfortable.
But for another thing…I feel entirely out of place here.
They think I grew up somewhere like this, but it couldn’t be more alien to me. Honestly, I can barely reconcile this cozy atmosphere with the brutal way I was raised.
Everything is so wholesome.
It makes me sick.
We stop to tour the fabled greenhouse, which is also decked out in holiday lights, and pictures of a fat man in a red suit, which I don’t understand at all.
Silas glances at me as we pass a row of thriving orchids. “Did your adoptive father celebrate all the human holidays with you?”
Baelfire must have told him about that. “Not really.”
Unintentionally, my attention slips to the glass wall at the front of the greenhouse. Everett opted not to come in, grumbling about not wanting to freeze their plants accidentally.
“Ignore him, love,” Crypt murmurs, picking an orchid and offering it to me.
Immediately, a red-faced human woman bustles toward us, tucking a spade into her gardening apron with a huff. “Hey! The signs very clearly say no picking the flowers.”
The Nightmare Prince doesn’t bother looking away from me. “And I very clearly don’t care.”
She stomps toward him, ripping the orchid out of his hand and wagging it in his face. “I don’t care if you’re one of those monster spawn keeping this area protected! We work damn hard to keep this greenhouse nice, and your tattooed punk ass is about to get thrown out!”
“My ass is not tattooed.”
