When they reached her cabin, he straightened them, spread his wings and slowed. Snow still covered the ground and crunched when they landed. She didn’t pull away. Didn’t run. Something else he’d been prepared for.
Clearly he knew very little about her.
“It’s probably best this way, you know,” she said flatly, keeping her back to him. The wind slapped her hair against his cheeks. “That was my afterglow talking earlier, anyway. I never should have invited you to the wedding. We’re too different to make anything work.”
“I was willing to try,” he said through gritted teeth. Don’t do this, he projected. Don’t end us.
She laughed without humor, and he marveled at the difference between this laugh and the one she’d given inside his cloud. Marveled and mourned. “No, you were willing to hide me away.”
“Yes. Therefore I was trying to make something work. I want to be with you, Bianka. Otherwise I would not have followed you. I would have left you alone from the first. I would not have tried to show you the light.”
“You are such a pompous ass,” she spat. “Show me the light? Please! You want me to be perfect. Blameless. But what happens when I fail? And I will, you know? Perfection just isn’t in me. One day I will curse. Like now. Fuck you. One day I will take something just because it’s pretty and I want it. Would that ruin me in your eyes?”
“It hasn’t so far,” he spat back.
She laughed again, this one bleaker, grim. “The scarves I took were made by child laborers. So I haven’t really done anything too terrible yet. But I will. And you know what? If you were to do something nauseatingly righteous, I wouldn’t have cared. I would still have wanted to take you to the wedding. That’s the difference between us. Evil or not, good or not, I wanted you.”
“I want you, too. But that was not always the case, and you know it. You would care.” He tightened his grip on her. “Bianka. We can work this out.”
“No, we can’t.” Finally, she twisted to face him. “That would require giving you a second chance, and I don’t do second chances.”
“I don’t need a second chance. I just need you to think about this. To realize our relationship must stay hidden.”
“I’m not going to be your secret shame, Lysander.”
His eyes narrowed. She was trying to force his hand, and he didn’t like it. “You steal in secret. You sleep in secret. Why not this?”
“That you don’t know the answer proves you aren’t the warrior I thought you were. Have a nice life, Lysander,” she said, jerking from his hold and walking away without a backward glance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LYSANDER SAT IN THE BACK of the Budapest chapel, undetectable, watching Bianka help her sisters and their friends decorate for the wedding. She was currently hanging flowers from the vaulted ceiling. Without a ladder.
He’d been following her for days, unable to stay away. One thing he’d noticed: she talked and laughed as if she was fine, normal, but the sparkle was gone from her eyes, her skin.
And he had done that to her. Worse, not once had she cursed, lied or stolen. Again, his fault. He’d told her she was unworthy of him. He’d been—was, right?—too embarrassed of her to tell his people about her.
But he couldn’t deny that he missed her. Missed everything about her. That much he knew. She excited him, challenged him, frustrated him, consumed him, drew him, made him feel. He did not want to be without her.
Something soft brushed his shoulder. He barely managed to tear his gaze from Bianka to turn and see that Olivia was now sitting beside him.
What was wrong with him? He hadn’t heard her arrive. Normally his senses were tuned, alert.
“Why did you summon me here?” she asked. She glanced around nervously. Her dark curls framed her face, rosebuds dripping from a few of the strands.
“To Budapest? Because you are always here anyway.”
“As are you these days,” she replied dryly.
He shrugged. “Did you just come from Aeron’s room?”
She gave a reluctant nod.
“Raphael came to me,” he said. The day he’d lost Bianka. The worst day of his existence.
“Those flowers aren’t centered, B,” the redheaded Kaia called, claiming his attention and stopping the rest of his speech to his charge. “Shift them a little to the left.”
Bianka expelled a frustrated sigh. “Like this?”
“No. My left, dummy.”
Grumbling, Bianka obeyed.
“Perfect.” Kaia beamed up at her.Bianka flipped her off, and Lysander grinned. Thank the One True Deity he had not killed all of her spirit.
“I think they’re perfect, too,” her youngest sister, Gwendolyn, said.
Bianka released the ceiling panels and dropped to the floor. When she landed, she straightened as if the jolt had not affected her in any way. “Glad the princess is finally happy with something,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, “I don’t understand why you can’t get married in a tree like a civilized Harpy.”
Gwen anchored her hands on her fists. “Because my dream has always been to be wed in a chapel like any other normal person. Now, will someone please remove the naked portraits of Sabin from the walls? Please.”
“Why would you want to get rid of them when I just spent all that time hanging them?” Anya, goddess of Anarchy and companion to Lucien, keeper of Death, asked, clearly offended. “They add a little something extra to what would otherwise be very boring proceedings. My wedding will have strippers. Live ones.”
“Boring? Boring!” Fury passed over Gwen’s features, black bleeding into her eyes, her teeth sharpening.
Lysander had watched this same change overtake her multiple times already. In the past hour alone.
“It won’t be boring,” Ashlyn, companion to Maddox, the keeper of Violence, said soothingly. “It’ll be beautiful.”
The pregnant woman rubbed her rounded belly. That belly was larger than it should have been, given the early state of her pregnancy. No one seemed to realize it, though. They would soon enough, he supposed. He just hoped they were ready for what she carried.
What would a child of Bianka’s be like? he suddenly wondered. Harpy, like her? Angel, like him? Or a mix of both?
A pang took root and flourished in his chest.
“Boring?” Gwen snarled again, clearly not ready to let the insult slide.
“Great!” Bianka threw up her arms. “Someone get Sabin before Gwennie kills us all in a rage.”
A Harpy in a rage could hurt even other Harpies, Lysander knew. As Gwen’s consort, Sabin, keeper of Doubt, was the only one who could calm her.
With that thought, Lysander’s head tilted to the side. He had never seen Bianka erupt, he realized. She’d viewed everything as a game. Well, not true. Once, she had gotten mad. The time Paris had punched him. Lysander had been her enemy, but she’d still gotten mad over his mistreatment.
Lysander had calmed her.
The pang grew in intensity, and he rubbed his breast-bone. Was he Bianka’s consort? Did he want to be?
“No need to search me out. I’m here.” Sabin strode through the double doors. “As if I’d be more than a few feet away when she’s so sensitiv—uh, just in case she needed my help. Gwen, baby.” There at the end, his tone had lowered, gentled. He reached her and pulled her into his arms; she snuggled against him. “The most important thing tomorrow is that we’ll be together. Right?”
“Lysander,” Olivia said, drawing his attention from the now-cooing couple. “The wait is difficult. Raphael came to you and…what?”
Lysander sighed, forcing himself to concentrate. “Answer a few questions for me first.”
“All right,” she said after a brief hesitation.
“Why do you like Aeron when he is so different from you?”
She twisted the fabric of her robe. “I think I like him because he is so different from me. He has thrived amid darkness, managing to retain a spark of light in his soul. He is not perfect, is not blameless, but he could have given in to his demon long ago and yet still he fights. He protects those he loves. His passion for life is…” She shivered. “Amazing. And really, he only hurts people when his demon overtakes him—and only if they are wicked, at that. Innocents, he leaves alone.”
It was the same with Bianka. Yet Lysander had tried to make her ashamed of herself. Ashamed when she should only be proud of what she had accomplished, thriving amid darkness, as Olivia had said. “And you are not embarrassed for our kind to know of your affection for him?”
“Embarrassed of Aeron?” Olivia laughed. “When he is stronger, fiercer, more alive than anyone I know? Of course not. I would be proud to be called his woman. Not that it could ever happen,” she added sadly.
Proud. There was that word again. And this time, something clicked in his mind. I’m not going to be your secret shame, Lysander, Bianka had said. He’d reminded her that she committed all her other sins in secret. Why not him? She hadn’t told him the answer, but it came to him now. Because she’d been proud of him. Because she’d wanted to show him off.
As he should have wanted to show her off.
Any other man would have been proud to stand beside her. She was beautiful, intelligent, witty, passionate and lived by her own moral code. Her laughter was more lovely than the song of a harp, her kiss as sweet as a prayer.
He’d considered her the spawn of Lucifer, yet she was a gift from the One True Deity. He was such a fool.
“Have I answered your questions sufficiently?” Olivia asked.
“Yes.” He was surprised by the rawness of his voice. Had he ruined things irreparably between them?
“So answer a few now for me.”
Unable to find his voice, he nodded. He had to make this right. Had to try, at least.
“Bianka. The Harpy you watch. Do you love her?”