Marianna
I wake to spring rain and hazy gray sunlight filtering through modern blinds that don’t match the intricate stonework surrounding the windows. Gray paint makes the room darker than it should be, maybe even a few degrees colder than I’m sure it is outside. I stretch like a cat, groaning as my body pops and sizzles from lack of movement, then blink at the ceiling–domed, with a crystal chandelier hanging overhead. I realize with a start I have no godly idea where I am, but I’ve… hell, I’m not even surprised at this point. I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lives over the past two or three weeks, so what’s a strange bed in a strange room?
A room that smells like Blake at his rawest.
The door on the far side of the room smacks against the wall as it flies open, and a dark-haired blur is my only warning before Skye flies onto the bed.
I catch her with a crunch that stifles Blake’s rushed exhale as he follows her into the room, but he stops near the foot of the bed, his eyes sweeping across my face. Skye nuzzles my neck, her arms wrapped so tight my vision goes spotty.
“You smell like pancakes,” I whisper into her hair as tears spring loose.
“You missed breakfast,” she murmurs into my shirt, then sighs, relaxing into my touch, and I… can’t remember the last time she was like this. Cuddly. Wanting to be touched, to be held.
Blake notices my shock and edges closer to the bed and sits down near my feet, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and just… looks at us. Looks at me–me, holding his daughter in my arms.
A deeply rooted type of anguish–regret–passes behind his eyes before he shields it from view. I feel it settle in my chest, tight and unforgiving. A single glimmer of what he’s felt for years.
“How are you feeling?” Blake asks quietly.
I rub Skye’s back. “Weird, to be honest. A little numb.”
“It’s the herbs. Those should wear off soon, if not by the end of the day.”
“What’s my bill?” I laugh, unable to help myself. “I feel like the amount of herbs, potions, and tonics in my system is likely enough to fund Skye’s tuition at her next school until college.”
Blake’s smile is brief, but his eyes light with a silent laugh. “It’s on the house.”
Skye abruptly wiggles out of my arms and gets off the bed. “I’m going to go play,” she announces and then darts out of sight. My heart lurches, but Blake pins my hand to the bed, his eyes holding mine.
“She’s fine. Everyone here is keeping an eye on her.”
“How long has it been since we were in Crescent Falls?”
“We got back yesterday afternoon. You slept through the night. You haven’t missed much.”
I try to slide out of bed, but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder. His warmth radiates through my skin, reminding me of our night in his penthouse. It’s only been a little over a day since then, but everything feels different now. I just can’t put my finger on it. I’m dizzy and numb when he guides me back against the cushions, but he lingers, leaning over me, his face only inches from mine.
I reach up to stroke his cheek, and he leans into the touch, closing his eyes with a heavy sigh.
“Have you slept?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Come to bed then.”
“My parents are here. They want to meet Skye. I told them to wait until today, to give everyone a moment to breathe before… that.”
“How’d it go yesterday? We didn’t have time to talk about it.”
He shrugs a shoulder before relaxing against me, bracing himself on an elbow so he doesn’t squish me. This feels like… before. Before the festival in Moorn when everything changed. It feels like those quiet afternoons spent on my couch where I tucked my toes under his thigh and we talked for hours… or I talked, and he listened. Mostly, he listened.
He rests his head against my chest. I run my fingers through his hair, closing my eyes against the hazy feeling still gripping my body, my bones. “It went about as well as it could have. Telling them about Skye overshadowed abdicating the throne, for sure.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
He lifts his head. “Do you want to be queen?”
My body seizes for a moment. I wonder if he can feel the way I stiffen. We haven’t talked about… that. A future together.
I keep running my fingers through his hair as I say, “Can you imagine? Us on the throne of Crescent Falls? We’ve never been able to make a decision to save our lives.”
“All I do is make decisions,” he counters, and I smile.
“I make bad ones. You’d spend your entire day fixing everything I’ve messed up.”
“We don’t have to worry about that because I won’t be king. Not of Crescent Falls.”
Not of Crescent Falls… but of his kind. Skye’s kind.
I exhale deeply, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. “Do we have that kind of time?”
He lays his head back down, his body going boneless, like he hasn’t had a single moment to relax in days, and that’s probably true.
He doesn’t have a chance to answer, however, because a soft feminine laugh echoes toward us from the doorway, and I shove him off, my cheeks burning the same color crimson as Maeve’s robe. She’s now standing in the doorway looking smug, holding a breakfast tray.
Blake stands and runs his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes for several seconds before turning his gaze on her in a glare. “Do you ever knock?”
“No, this is my house.” She strides into the room, beaming, damn near strutting past Blake to place the breakfast tray in my lap. “Look at you! You look alive again!”
“Thanks,” I murmur as embarrassment burrows through my body.
She turns to Blake with a swish of her crimson robe. “Blake, your mom is driving me insane.”
“I know,” he begins, but Maeve cuts him off, running right over the top of him.
“She’s begging to meet Skye. Sydney, thankfully, is busy with Soren but–”
“I wanted Marianna to be there. They haven’t seen her yet, either. I told her she could come but needed to hold off until we were ready to make introductions.”
I cut into a pancake and stuff a bite into my mouth, watching the two most powerful people of their generation converse. It’s odd, really. They’re total opposites but so alike in their mannerisms, like having so much power just within reach makes them… stiff. Blake always looks like he’s walking on egg-shells around Maeve and vice versa, but they can’t help but try to rile each other up.
It’s amazing breakfast entertainment, to say the least.
“What, exactly, are you waiting for? Huh? The next lunar eclipse?” Maeve urges, her hands planted on her hips.
Blake glowers. “It’s my decision. Her decision.” He waves a hand in my general direction. “Skye doesn’t know I’m her father–”
“She’s not dumb, Blake, for fuck’s sake. She might look like Marianna’s twin, but those eyes? Give me a break–”
“It will change everything for her. The life she’s lived so far will be over. It’s been her, Marianna, and Leona for her entire life, and I can’t just walk back into it.”
“Leona and Sarah have been in knots since dinner last night over this.”
“It’s not up to them–”
“But–”
“It’s not going to affect Skye in the slightest,” I cut in.
Maeve and Blake look at me, startled into silence like they’ve forgotten I’m here. I shrug, taking another bite of pancakes.
“She’s not like that. She’s not going to cry and throw herself around or jump on Blake acting like her life is now complete, or something, if that’s what you think.” I focus on Blake with a small, sad smile. “I’m sorry. If that’s what you wanted–”
“She really is your daughter,” Maeve smirks, clapping him hard on the shoulder. “Whatever. She’s in the garden with Soren as it stands. But Blake, you need to at least let Sarah spend some time with her.”
“I wasn’t keeping her from her in the slightest. It’s just been–I had other things to worry about.” Blake is on the verge of losing his patience. It’s odd. I feel like… I suddenly get him again. Like we’re teenagers again, and I can gauge what he’s feeling, what he’s…
Oh, my gods.
My chest tightens to the point that I struggle to breathe.
Maeve is walking out of the room. Blake continues arguing with her while following her to the door, all while I stare at the back of his head in… utter shock.
He closes the door behind Maeve, locks it, and raises a hand against the solid wood. Echoes of his power drift from his fingertips, violet light shimmering along the walls, the windows…
“We’re mates?”
Blake drops his hand and turns to me, his face totally and completely void of emotion.
I sit up straight as the herbs in my system fade, shoved away by the adrenaline now coursing through my veins.
“Blake–”
“You feel it now?”
His scent is overwhelming my senses, turning my… honestly, fury and confusion, into something so heated I feel like my body is suddenly molten. I try to shove those feelings aside, but Blake stalks toward me, his eyes dark as they search my face.
“Marianna–”
“How long have you known?” I clutch the breakfast tray like it’s my only lifeline.
Blake stops short of the bed. His power radiates through the room, shimmering along the walls. It’s a shield, I realize. It has to be. No one is going to be able to come near this suite while we… have the conversation we should have had almost eight years ago. I slide the breakfast tray to the side and rise. A thin, silky nightgown falls to just above my knees–something I don’t remember putting on but… it’s the furthest thing from my mind as I square my shoulders and fold my arms under my chest.
“How long, Blake?”
He blinks at me, narrowing his eyes as he scans my set, inspects my expression–grim determination.
“You’ve known this whole time, haven’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I looked into your timeline when I was eighteen years old, Anna. My powers weren’t mature yet. I couldn’t even shift yet, but… I tried, and I saw that you’d die young, and our bond–”
I shove him hard. “You did know!”
“It wasn’t something I would have been able to interpret with the skills I had at the time. I quit my training with the mystics after a few months. I didn’t even make it a year under their care!” His voice edges on a shout, which startles me. I back up a step, which causes his furious expression to shatter. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
“What did you see? What does it even look like?”
“I–it’s hard to explain–”
“Try.”
He swallows hard, his eyes shining like polished amethyst in the dim light of morning. “I quit my training with the mystics a few months before I met you. I was torn to shreds, Marianna. I can’t explain what it was like, but it was what I prevented Skye from going through. Torture. Mental and emotional torture. I came home a broken kid, just on the cusp of becoming a man, and had no idea where to go from there. Then I met you, and those voices in my head finally shut the fuck up and left me alone. Every time I was with you, it was just music and light. Your voice, Marinna, was enough to make me whole again. And as the months passed, and we grew closer, and I finally found the nerve to open up to you, to get close, I… I fell head over heels in love with you. I was young and dumb and had to know that you were mine. I looked. I saw our love there, written in the stars. It was just as clear as the fact that you were supposed to die, and it was going to be my fault–”
“How was any of this your fault? Dean–”
“Dean found a binding spell, yes. He put you under a curse, yes. But if I hadn’t been the one to ruin everything between us, none of this would have happened. If I hadn’t scared you–if I hadn’t lied to you from the beginning about what I was and what I was capable of back then…. I should have told you the truth from the beginning. That was where our threads frayed. I ruined us. You left me, rightfully so, and your thread became ensnared with someone who should have never even met you. It was my fault.” Blake’s eyes are hollow as he holds my gaze, his hands outstretched in a show of surrender. “I gave you up. I gave Skye up thinking I was protecting you, that being with me was the reason you’d die young. I thought it was because of the Spider. I thought everything I had to do over the past five years was to–to keep you alive, but I was the one causing you harm from the beginning.”
I can’t do much but just stare at him. My heart quakes. “Blake–”
“We’re mates, Marianna. Fated mates. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you for a fucking second, but if this isn’t what you want–”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap then howl a laugh that bounces from wall to wall. Blake looks utterly, completely confused, like I expected. He might be opening up more, shedding that mask, his brain somewhat less busy, but his lack of social cues… yeah, those are still alive and well.
“What’s–what’s so funny?” He steps toward me. “Are you rejecting me?”