Page 96 of Blood Oath
I thought this was the best tactic. Coming clean about the bet and trying to create distance any way I could. But seeing that brief agony on her face is a thousand times worse than I expected, and I choke.
“I take it back. I’m sorry?—”
“Stop talking.”
She turns and begins to walk out, but it feels like my heart is being yanked from my chest so I move to follow after her, the frost on my hands spreading to my forearms as my emotions spiral.
“Maven, wait. Please, I?—”
There’s a thin whooshing sound, and all my instincts go haywire a second before a dagger cracks into the cabinet directly beside my head. I halt, blinking at the weapon that nearly just killed me. My eyes snap back to Maven, who keeps her chillingly blank expression. It’s like she just switched off her ability to feel, and all warmth has disappeared from her body. She moved so quickly that I didn’t even see the dagger.
Without a word, she turns and leaves.
It takes significant effort to remain rooted in place instead of rushing after her to try to soothe the sting of my words. But I just hurt her. She doesn’t want to see me, and this way, she isn’t in danger of my curse. If it means I’m miserable and feel like the scum of the earth, then that’s what I’ll fucking deal with because it’s better than the alternative of my curse getting a hold of her.
I just hope that maybe she’ll forgive me when the time is right. When I can finally adore her the way I can’t afford to right now.
Dear gods, I hate this.
My phone buzzes. I ignore it. If it’s a family member, they can be pissed at me later, and I definitely don’t want to answer it if it’s one of my quintet members.
Sure enough, not ten minutes pass before Silas walks into the kitchen. “Where is Maven?”
“Not here.”
Crypt materializes behind the blood fae, who instinctively whirls and lifts his hands that glow with red magic. The Nightmare Prince doesn’t even spare him a glance as he frowns at the room. “Her aura is here. She was just here. Where did she go?”
“You’re her invisible stalker, you should know,” I mutter, making my way to the wine rack and glasses. I need something to dull the sharp edges cutting up my insides.
Silas’s blood-red gaze sharpens on me, and the anger is already in them. “When she was in here, what did you say to her?”
I pour myself a large glass. The moment my fingers curl around the wineglass, the glass frosts and the wine chills, ice fractals swirling on top. Now isn’t a good time for them to get pissed at me, but then it never is.
The hulking dragon shifter sweeps into the room next, and it’s no surprise the brute is somehow shirtless again. He glances at the rest of us. “What’s going on?”
“Everett. What did you say to her?” Silas repeats carefully, still focused on me. Something about the fae has always reminded me of a shark. Any amount of blood in the water, and there’s no shaking them. Plus, they’re equally ruthless. It’s been a while since I got on his bad side, so I guess I’m overdue anyway.
“Just the truth. She deserved to know a bet has been motivating you hypocritical assholes all along.”
For one second, they’re all silent. Then all hell breaks loose.
“You fucking idiot,” Silas snarls, storming toward me.
Crypt beats him to it, going from zero to a hundred in a fraction of a second. Before I can take a sip of my wine, I’m suddenly crashing through the wall of glass, shards of it raining down into the snow as he pins me by my throat to the ground outside the inn. His swirling markings are glowing, and his glare is unhinged.
“How dare you hurt what’s mine?” he seethes, gripping the broken wineglass beside me like he’s barely holding back from cutting up my face.
He probably is. But even if he wants to kill me, I’m in Maven’s quintet, too. None of them is going to actually kill me.
They’ll just grow to hate me even more than they always have.
“Get. Off. Me,” I bite out, unable to stop the thick, ominous ice that starts crawling up Crypt’s hand planted on the snow beside me.
“No surprise that it’s the Frost who screwed everything up,” Baelfire snaps as he exits through the broken window. The look he levels me with is all disgust before he turns, runs, and leaps off the hill the inn is perched on, shifting and expanding midair until he’s a golden dragon. His wings beat the air, creating a swirling draft that stirs the snow around Crypt, Silas, and me as he takes off with a roar.
I glare up at Silas, who is glowering down at me. “You found out Maven was playing games, and it changed your perspective. She had the right to do the same thing. You should have told her sooner or called the bet off entirely. It’s not like she would have never found out—I just made sure it happened sooner than later. Now that it’s out of the way, we can pick up the pieces and make real progress with her.”
His jaw clenches. He also looks like he wants to kill me, but the blood fae can’t argue with what I’m saying. Because it’s true. There is no keeping secrets from a keeper, and the bet was always going to make Maven doubt our intentions with her.
