“I’m still breathing, aren’t I?”
Beside us, Addie blanched. “That’s not as comforting as you maybe thought it would be.”
The truth was rarely comforting. Linus was my fail-safe, my guarantee that should I go off the rails again, I would be put down before I turned into a monster to rival Ambrose. But it was hard to hear that, and for me to mean it somehow made it worse.
“I respect your concern for Hadley,” Midas said, crimson rolling across his eyes. “I even appreciate it.”
A shiver tripped down my spine, not fear of Midas but fear for Boaz.
“Lower the blade,” Midas continued, calm and reasonable, “or I will do it for you.”
“Boaz,” Addie said quietly.
“This is our home.” I put my foot down. “You’re our guest, but I will kick your butt if you don’t knock it off.”
“You’re the only little sister I’ve got.” Boaz lowered his arm. “I worry about you, dork.”
“Hadley will be the Potentate of Atlanta,” Midas reminded him. “She can handle herself.”
“You’re Lethe’s little brother.” Boaz relented under Addie’s warning glare. “Maybe it makes a difference, that you’re the baby, or maybe it doesn’t, but I worry about my sister.”
Midas’s gaze dipped to the scars crisscrossing his forearms, proof of how much he loved his sister, a story I had no intention of sharing. No one else needed to know the depths of his love, or his pain. Everyone to whom it mattered already did, and I felt blessed to count myself in that small number.
Addie, however, watched me, the stand-in for the little sister she had lost, and she smiled gently.
“I think we all know how far we’re each willing to go for those we love.” She pulled Boaz down onto the couch beside her then draped herself half over his lap, which made him grin, but I suspected she was attempting to hold him down more than show affection. “Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s get back to the popcorn.”
Happy with the change in topic, I picked up the remote. “What movie did you guys decide on?”
“There’s a new romcom.” Addie winked at me. “Lots of love words, grand gestures, and smooching.”
“That still trumps whatever creature feature Hadley had cued.” Boaz patted her hip. “I’m in.”
We rented Addie’s pick with the press of a button, dimmed the lights, and settled in to watch a feel-good movie together. As a family. A year ago, I wasn’t sure I had one anymore. This… I could get used to this.
Snuggled up to Midas, his fingers in my hair, his lips never leaving my brow, I forgot about the popcorn and the movie, and I watched us all instead. And when my eyelids drifted closed, I listened to Boaz and Addie whispering and laughing, to Midas’s heartbeat and his every indrawn breath.
I had lost everything to get here. Everything and then some.
But goddess what a place to be.
Three
Dusk brought a summons that required Midas’s immediate attention, and he left Hadley sleeping under a quilt on the couch where he had woken. Boaz and Addie were gone, having let themselves out when the movie ended. The popcorn bowl on the couch sat empty even though neither Hadley nor he had touched it. Boaz and Addie had left their bowl on the coffee table, only bits and kernels, but it was sparkling clean now.
Ambrose, it seemed, had joined them for the movie, or at least for the snacks.
After Midas brushed his teeth, he glanced at his hair, what little remained, and dressed in fresh clothes.
The smell of black coffee hit his nose as he entered the hall and bumped into Ares.
“I have never been so tired in my life.” She drank long and deep. “I hate when family visits.”
“Liz has relatives in town?” He clasped her shoulder. “Have you made the big announcement yet?”
Liz, Ares’s mate, was inching toward the end of her second trimester, and she was starting to show. Otherwise, given their struggle to reach this point, he wouldn’t have been surprised if they kept it secret until the baby was safely in their arms to avoid jinxing their good luck.
“No.” Yawning, she cracked her jaw. “I saw the visitor logs.”
That didn’t explain why she was tired, but Midas didn’t push with her temper shortened by exhaustion.
“They wanted to surprise Hadley.”
“There was a note on the log that said Linus cleared it. Boaz was the guy who dumped Grier, right?”
A warning prickle slid down his nape as he waited for her to make her point. “Yes.”
There was no reason for her to draw lines between Boaz and Hadley, but with a Pritchard/Whitaker family visit looming, talk about him made Midas twitchy all the same.
“Can you imagine getting the girl but then being stuck with her ex in your life because the guy decided to go and marry your apprentice’s sister?” She mashed the button for the elevator. “It’s like he’s stalking Linus.” Her lips curved with glee. “Maybe he was obsessed with Linus and not Grier all along.”
Relief sluiced through him, smoothing his hackles, and he joined her in the car for the ride to the lobby.
“Necromancy is a small world.” Midas shrugged. “Society families are as close as pack.”
“Boaz is Low Society,” she said, as if testing her memory. “Addie must be too, right? And Hadley?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.” Ares gazed over the rim of her cup. “Boaz’s love for Linus was doomed from the start.”
Low Society necromancers rarely married up, and when they did, it was purely out of love to a High Society necromancer who could afford the indulgence. The lasting damage of such unions, in the Society’s mind, was generational. The bloodline would thin, as Low Society necromancers had little to no magic, the loss of status would be catastrophic, and the financial implications could prove ruinous.
“I’ll be sure to float that idea the next time I talk to Boaz.”
“Oh, to be a fly on that wall.” Knocking off the jokes, she studied
