“I told you I loved you and you said it was just a crush…” I feel my face flood with color again.
“I’m not the one who inherits, Kricket, Victus is—”
“You think I care about that?”
Trey takes a step toward me. “No one will want to see us together.”
“I know,” I shiver. “Kyon said the Brotherhood will try to kill anyone I love—”
“I’m not afraid of the Brotherhood.”
“You aren’t?”
“No.” He stops only a breath away from me so that I have to look up to see his face. “I’m trying to protect you, Kricket. If we tried to be together, we wouldn’t be able to trust anyone but each other.”
“I’m already there.”
“You’re only seventeen—this is your whole life—”
“My age is irrelevant,” I frown, “and I’m eighteen now…my birthday was last week.”
“Your birthday was last week?” Trey asks me grimly. Seeing me nod, he asks, “When?”
“Wednesday…I mean Fitzmartin…that’s Wednesday, right?”
“Yes,” he nods. He takes my hand and leads me away from the kitchen to the unoccupied drawing room. The carved wooden furniture in the room is the same rich, dark stain as the exposed mahogany beams of the high ceiling. Chandeliers hang down from above like melting stars in a night sky. We pass chairs with soft, cream-colored cushions facing a low, oval glass-topped table. Crossing to a sofa in front of the enormous stone-carved fireplace at the far end of the room, I wonder, and not for the first time, why they have such large fireplaces when the entire estate is practically climate controlled by the use of advanced technology.
Nearing the hearth, it dwarfs us with its graceful symmetry. I glance away from the unlit grate to study my hand in Trey’s; it’s tiny in comparison. For a second, I lose myself as I imagine his rough hands on me, running the length of my body. The thought makes my knees weak and my abdomen tighten. I reach out with my other hand to steady myself, touching the carved armrest of the sofa. It’s a replica of a saber-toothed saer from the Regent’s coat of arms; its legs and feet comprise the legs of the sofa as well. Its mate is on the other side with its ferocious mouth agape in a fire-breathing display of royalty.
Trey waits for me to sit upon the silk-covered cushion before he joins me. “Ignite fire,” he orders. The grate roars to life with fiery orange tongues.
The heat of the flames is seductive. I lean my head against his shoulder, feeling his hard bicep flex beneath my cheek. He moves his arm so that my cheek shifts to rest against his chest. His arm wraps around me to lie gently across my shoulders. He strokes my arm softly; warm fingers raise goose bumps on my flesh. I inhale deeply. His scent causes my paper heart to flutter and riot; a thousand folded airplanes made from its scraps soar within me.
“I missed your birthday?” he asks disappointedly, as his hand pauses on my arm.
I shrug. “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t tell you my birthday.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” he mutters. His arm tightens. He pulls me even closer to him to stroke my hair. I hear his heartbeat beneath my ear—calm, steady—the opposite of mine. “What did you do on your birthday—on Fitzmartin?” he asks in a silky voice.
“Uh…Fitzmartin?” I repeat him stupidly, feeling every fiber of my being come alive at his touch. “We went for a boat ride on the lake…with Em Quinn and his sons…remember?” I ask, feeling him brush my hair back from my neck, causing a sensual shiver to run through me. “Uhh…we had to listen to Em Quinn…tell us that long story of how he once saw a wild saer…near the boarder of Comantre,” I remind him, before biting my lip as Trey’s thumb caresses my nape absently. I don’t even know if he knows he’s doing it. It seems unconscious.
“Golden bathing suit,” Trey says softly near my ear in an intimate whisper, “which was actually just circles of gold linked together with golden-metal hoops…black wrap skirt that exposed your thigh with every step you took…black shoes with gold nail polish on your toes…I almost killed the little one.”
“You almost killed the little what?” I ask him, my eyes widening as I lift my head to look at him.
“The one that touched your—”
“Oh, you saw that?” I ask, surprised.
“Yes, I saw that.”
“Then you saw me smash his toes with my very sharp black heel?” I arch my eyebrow in a questioning look.
“Yes,” his perfect lips spread in a wide grin, “but it didn’t save him from the black eye.”
“You did that?” I gasp. “I thought he was thrown from his spix.”
“He was thrown, but he was nowhere near a spix when it happened,” Trey replies, then he adds, “I want to make it up to you.”
“Make up what?” I ask.
“Your birthday,” he says.
“Why? It’s just another day.”
“Because it’s not just another day—because I should’ve known it was your birthday.”
“That’s not your job to know.”
“It’s what friends do.”
He’s back to putting me in the friends zone. I stiffen. “I’m good, Trey. I don’t want to celebrate it.”
“Why not?” he asks, like the idea of someone not celebrating her birthday is ludicrous.
“Because it won’t be for me.”
“Whom would it be for?” he asks in confusion.
I wave my hand in a dismissive way. “Manus. You tell him it was my birthday and he’ll throw some outlandish swank—he’ll invite all his enemies and expect me to spy on them for him. He’ll make a big production of giving me some outrageously expensive gift—I won’t know what it is, thereby reducing me to a foolish-looking nim.”
“Is that what you think? That you look like a foolish nim?” he asks me, his violet eyes searching mine. I feel fragile under their scrutiny.
“People always laugh.”
Trey’s eyes soften. “They laugh because they’re delighted by you—you enchant them. You’re cunningly naïve—vulnerable yet fierce. But, the party I had in mind wouldn’t involve Manus—it would be with your friends—”
“That would be a very small party,” I smile in an attempt at levity.
“I’d be there.”
I look away from him, resting my head against his chest again in an attempt to hide the tears that brighten my eyes. He means just as friends, you idiot, my mind whispers. “You’re going to be far too busy for that,” I reply.
His arm tenses around my shoulders. “What do you mean?”
“The Alameeda are in Peney. You’ll be leaving.”
“Nothing has been decided yet,” his heartbeat beneath my ear becomes rapid.
“True, but you’ll probably be busy with your other swank.”
“My other swank?” he asks in confusion.
“Don’t you have a commitment ceremony you have to plan?” I close my eyes briefly. I didn’t intend to say that—I just blurted it out like a well-honed survival instinct. All the paper airplanes of my heart nosedive and crash, coming to rest in a heap in the pit of my stomach.