Maeve
I button up the men’s shirt I found in the closet. It brushes my thighs as I turn to inspect my reflection in the foggy mirror, sighing heavily but immensely relieved to be totally clean.
Soren’s friend keeps his upstairs bathroom, which isn’t fancy by any means, fully stocked with not only soap but shampoo and conditioner.
I found a comb in one of the drawers and ran it through my hair, which is now starting to dry in soft, hydrated waves… not the frizz I’d experienced yesterday or the day before. I’m not sure how much time has passed, honestly, and the memory of waking up in the woods only a few hours ago is weighing heavily on me.
I’m better than this. I’m more powerful than this. I understand I completely depleted my powers. I get it. But the last time this happened… I’d opened a portal, whisking me and two other people to an unknown land, using my powers to not only guide us into oblivion while keeping us alive, but through an impenetrable veil… whereas this time, chasing down a train in my bird form had done me in.
I found a pair of sweatpants that might fit. I slide my legs into them, tightening the drawstring, then pad barefoot down the hallway past the open loft overlooking the lower level of the cabin, and into the upstairs bedroom.
Soren is rummaging in the closet, but his eyes catch mine, his nose wrinkling as I step past him to look out the window. “What’s that face for?” I ask, glancing at him over my shoulder.
“You smell like a man.”
I frown at him as he turns back to the closet, shoving several flannel shirts out of his way.
“Well your friend must not have women here often because my only options were soap and shampoo scented like cedar and suede.”
He chuckles, keeping his back to me. I fold my arms under my chest and turn back to the window overlooking the front… yard of the cabin, if I can call it that. The fire is burned down to flickering embers in the rain, but a shadow passes next to them then nears the house.
“Who’s that?”
“Who?”
Soren steps around the bed to stand at my side. He eyes the shadow, then curses under his breath, saying, “Stay here.”
He leaves the room, shutting the door with a snap behind him, but I’ve never once obeyed a man, and I’m not going to start now.
I follow him out to the railing, but he’s already halfway down the stairs. Patton comes into view below wearing a pair of oven mitts as the third man, I assume Duke, steps into the cabin, shaking out of his raincoat. His silver band catches the light coming from a scone directly above his head.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” Patton says, but the smell of roast chicken distracts me from the sharp look Soren’s giving me from the bottom of the stairs. I take a single step off the loft, and Duke lifts his face, his eyes scanning mine, then narrowing.
He’s shorter than both Soren and Patton by several inches, and maybe a few inches shorter than me, but that doesn’t matter. He’s built like a brick manor–his shoulders and heavily muscled arms bulging beneath his fitted navy blue Henley. Those shoulders straighten as he looks me up and down then turns to his friends in a silent command, a silent question.
Patton looks between them before turning on his heel and disappearing into the kitchen directly below the loft and out of my line of sight.
“This is Maeve,” Soren says, but his tone… it’s harder and darker than it was when he briefly introduced me to Patton, and dripping with possession. “She’s staying the night. With me.”
Duke and Soren stare at each other. I can taste the tension between them. It’s thick–so thick I’d struggle to cut it with a knife. I slowly move in Soren’s direction, feeling like the best place I can be is directly at his side. He hasn’t moved from the last step, and his hands are flat at his sides, his thumb resting on the clip of a knife hanging from his belt. My fingers graze his lower back as I come to stop on the step above him, my eyes not leaving Duke’s, who watched every move I made down the stairs like a predator stalking his prey.
“Nice to meet you,” Duke says low in his throat after a very long, tense few seconds, then his eyes meet Soren’s. I have a feeling these two don’t like each other. There’s history there, for sure. Duke’s dark green eyes shine like polished gems as he takes a breath and turns from us, saying to Patton, “The creek is swollen and the rain’s not stopping. I’m staying here for the night.”
Patton’s pulling a baking dish of leftovers from the oven, his blue eyes wide as he nods, but his gaze slides to Soren’s, then mine. He grimaces, mouthing, “Sorry,” before setting the dish on the stovetop.
I shiver involuntarily as the tension continues to rise. Duke makes a move for the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the mantle only a few feet away from where me and Soren are standing, but Soren steps off the stairs, his tone like ice as he says, “I need to speak to you. Outside.”
Duke looks him up and down, smirking. “I’m not after your leftovers, Soren, if that’s what you think.”
“Outside,” Soren growls.
I look at Patton, who’s standing perfectly still near a dining table with two plates in his hands, his eyes locked on the tense exchange.
Duke’s smirk turns to a flat line when he looks at me again, but Soren steps into him, his dark brow raised. “Don’t fucking look at her.”
“If you’re going to fight, do it outside,” Patton says sternly from the table, setting the plates down.
“We won’t be fighting,” Soren says, “Right?”
The threat in his voice is clear. My heart skips a beat, a warmth spreading through my chest at his promise of violence… over me. For me. It shocks me to my core, and before I can blink, Duke whirls and heads for the door with Soren hot on his heels.
I flinch when the door slams shut, rattling the picture frames I hadn’t noticed before. Patton exhales deeply, his eyes on the door, before he meets my eyes. “Soren said you’d be hungry.”
“I am,” I reply weakly, not liking the knot of unease forming in my stomach.
Patton turns toward the cabinets and starts rummaging in a panic. “I have cloth napkins somewhere–”
“Oh, don’t worry about it–”
“I–I’m sure this isn’t what you’re used to,” he rushes out, clasping a trio of chipped, slightly dusty wine glasses before thinking better of it. “I don’t have wine.”
“It’s okay, really,” I say, trying to sound soothing, but Patton looks horrified when I sit down on a rickety stool before he has a chance to pull it out for me. His cheeks flush crimson as he bows deeply. “You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to bow to me.”
“Oh–uh, yes, Your Highness–”
“Or that,” I say, smiling up at him. “Just call me Maeve.”
Patton blinks at me for a moment, then nods, sinking into a stool across from me. He doesn’t eat, but I do. I pile my plate with chicken, roasted vegetables, and fresh baked bread with creamy, salted butter. But just as I lift my fork, I pause, the tension still hanging heavy in the house as I look up at Patton, who’s staring at the window overlooking the table.
It’s pitch black beyond the glass. It has to be the middle of the night at this point, maybe the earliest hours of morning.
I set my fork down, clearing my throat. “What’s their problem?”
Patton sighs heavily, knitting his fingers together on the table’s surface. “It changes from day to day,” he says, like the answer is actually that simple.
My eyes lock on the silver manacle on his forearm. He has the same lifted, web-like scar from here the silver cut into his skin repeatedly over the years. I wonder if he even feels its burn at this point. I wonder if he’s worn it as long as Soren has.
“Soren–he told me he works for someone named the Viper.”
Patton seems to be having a hard time meeting my eyes. He chews the inside of his cheek, nodding gravely.
“Do you work for the Viper, too?”
“From time to time.” He briefly looks in my direction but quickly looks away, rising to fetch the bottle of whiskey off the mantle. Instead of coming back to the table, he leans against the dormant fireplace, fiddling with the cork.
“Does Duke work for the Viper?”
“We all do.” He lifts the whiskey to his lips and drinks deeply before resetting the cork. “Soren less often these days, but yeah. We’ve been working together for over a decade now.”
An angry shout echoes from beyond the walls. Patton looks down his hands, flexing them, and I see the soft, silver outlines of scars cross-crossed over his knuckles.
I want to ask what he does for a living, what they all do, but decide to finally take a bite of the food while Soren and Duke shout obscenities at each other only a few yards from the front porch, their shouts lifting over the rain.
“This is really good,” I tell Patton, smiling around a bite.
His cheeks warm, and his eyes sparkle. When he smiles, he even shows a bit of teeth. But when I raise the fork to my mouth again, the door opens and shuts with a slam so loud it makes my ears ring.
Soren stalks inside, looking at Patton, then me, then back to Patton. “Duke decided to cross the creek and continue on his way.” He tucks his bloodied hands into his pockets, but I catch the smears of crimson, wondering if the blood belongs to him or Duke.
Patton nods, his brows raised as he looks down at his hands while Soren stalks across the room to the stairs, climbs them, and disappears into the bathroom.
Silence hugs the cabin until I hear the shower running, and then I turn to Patton, arching a brow.
Patton pops the cork and drinks deeply, gulping once, then twice, before shaking himself off and rasping, “Duke and Soren got into some shit a few years ago that made things pretty hard for Soren.”
“What happened?”
He clears his throat, moving back toward the table. “I–I don’t know much about how you and Soren got into your… situation–”
“He broke into the palace and stole most of my jewelry.”
“Yeah… well, he’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s an absolute angel,” I murmur sarcastically, and Patton’s soft smile is touched by a sadness I hadn’t expected.
“He got dealt a bad hand. I don’t know all the details about what happened between him and Duke, but they’ve never been friends. We just run in the same circles, end up in the same places sometimes.”
“Is Duke dangerous?”
“Yeah. We all are,” he says, and I stiffen, but Patton doesn’t notice.
He moves past the table, putting the unused dishes away, and for a while, it’s quiet. I have more questions than answers from these men. I can tell, however, that Soren and Patton are friends–good friends. Based on Soren’s behavior when Duke was here, looking at me… Soren wouldn’t have let me be alone with Patton if he hadn’t trusted him with my life.
Not that it matters to Soren. He’s probably counting down the minutes until I leave, just like… I should be. I can, however, readily admit this is the most exciting thing that's happened to me in years. I’m eating delicious, perfectly roasted chicken in a den of thieves… thieves who can cook, apparently. Thieves who have dried flowers hanging in frames along the walls… but maybe that’s Patton.
He takes my empty plate in silence. I thank him for the meal and start moving toward the stairs, but Soren appears in the loft, towel drying his hair and walking toward the bedroom in nothing but a pair of shorts.
My chest tightens when he meets my eyes, tilting his head toward the bedroom door in a silent command to follow.. Below, Patton does the dishes, humming to himself in a way that reminds me of Jane, totally oblivious to the fight about to begin the second we close ourselves into the bedroom.
At least, I expected a fight.
Soren pulls the curtains closed, his back muscles tense as he grips the fabric for a moment before turning to me.
“Are you okay?” I ask, scanning his face for new injuries, new bruises and scratches that weren’t from our battle in his apartment. Scratches and bruises not left by me.
I shouldn’t feel territorial about that…. This weird, suffocating feeling is because–because I’m stuck here, with him, and he just growled and snarled at a man who dared look in my direction. He jumped from a train, off a bridge, with me in his arms rather than leave me behind despite several threats to end his life.
“I’m sorry for what he said,” Soren says, reaching for a T-shirt he left on the corner of the bed.
“What do you mean?”
“The leftovers thing.” He slips into the shirt.
I watch his muscles flex with the motion. “Patton is a great cook. I don’t blame him for being territorial about the chicken–”
“That’s–” Soren says, then laughs lightly, the corners of his mouth ticking in the first real smile I think I’ve seen. “That’s not what he meant.”
The sudden intensity of his eyes on mine nearly steals my breath.
Something feels… I’m not sure what this feeling is. Lunacy, perhaps.
“Go to bed, Maeve,” he says, and brushes past me, but pauses in the doorway. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
“About what?”
“A truce between us. Sound good?”
I nod my head, and he smiles.