Sirensong

hoped Titania would be at least a little attached to my dad and might not want to hurt him. After all, they’d been together more than a century, and they had a kid. But the fact that she’d been sleeping with the Erlking told me just how sentimental she was.

“You know coming after us when you could have used the brooch to get away was probably one of the stupidest moves in the history of mankind,” Kimber said. “You might want to avoid your dad for the next year or two until he’s had a chance to calm down.”

Great. I’d come back and saved everyone, and my dad was mad at me for it. Not that I was surprised, mind you. I think it’s in the parental rule book somewhere that you have to get mad at your kids if they do something dangerous, even if it’s the right thing to do and everything turns out well in the end.

“I couldn’t just run away and leave you all behind,” I said. “I couldn’t have lived with that. Maybe coming back was stupid, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” And I refused to feel bad about it.

Kimber winced. “I suggest you not say that to your dad. Or to Finn. Or to the boys, for that matter.”

“But my saying it doesn’t bother you?” I had a feeling that wasn’t a good thing, and the look on Kimber’s face confirmed it.

“We’ll talk when you’re all better.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Kimber—”

“Don’t!” she snapped. “We’re not doing this now.” She sounded really angry, but her eyes were kind of shiny, like she was about to cry.

I guess that answered my question about whether she’d forgiven me. Every secret I’d kept, I’d kept with good reason. At least, what I’d thought was a good reason at the time. Looking back, I wasn’t so sure.

“Can I at least say I’m sorry?” I asked.

“You don’t actually believe words will make it better, do you?”

No, I didn’t. I’d told too many lies for my words to have much meaning. I wanted to point out that my coming back to the palace after she and the others were captured spoke louder than any words, but I didn’t. Tears burned my eyes. Maybe I saved my friends’ lives, but that didn’t make me any less of a screw-up. I wasn’t good friend material, not when I was biologically incapable of trust and honesty.

Kimber was the only real friend I’d ever had, the only one I’d had more than the most superficial relationship with. The thought that I might lose her friendship, that I might already have lost it, hurt more than the bullet wound and the bone-deep gash on my palm combined.

My throat ached and my nose got all stuffy as I fought to contain tears. I was always reluctant to cry in front of anyone. My mom cried at the drop of a hat, using her tears as a tool to get sympathy whenever she’d done something stupid or irresponsible. She cried so that you’d rush in with reassurances and tell her everything was going to be all right, so that you’d somehow end up apologizing for being mad at her when she was the one who’d been in the wrong. I was not going to be like that.

I looked into Kimber’s stony face, saw how she sat with her arms crossed over her chest in what I knew was a defensive posture, and realized I was doing it again. Hiding things from her, then justifying myself with reasoning that couldn’t withstand close examination.

Was I really trying to put on a “brave” face and pretend that losing Kimber’s friendship wouldn’t hurt me? Was that the message I wanted to send her? Was that what she deserved?

I let the tears fall, and once they started, I couldn’t get them to stop. Too much had happened, and I’d been putting on the brave face for too long. I’d hurt my best friend. I’d killed a man. And I’d abandoned Elizabeth when I could have helped her. Each decision had felt like the right one at the time, but I was far from sure now. These weren’t the kinds of decisions I should be having to make, not at my age! My decisions shouldn’t determine who lived and who died, who was protected and who was thrown to the wolves. My most earth-shattering decision right now should be which colleges to apply to in the fall, not whether letting my best friend in on a secret might get me or her killed.

Kimber sighed and gave me a hug. That made me cry even harder. This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to let myself cry in the first place. I didn’t want to manipulate Kimber into forgiving me.

“I-I’m sorry,” I choked out through my tight throat, meaning I was sorry I was sniveling all over her, but I couldn’t get a deep enough breath to say the whole thing.

“I know,” she said softly, still hugging me. “I’m sorry, too. I can’t even imagine going through everything you’ve been through.” She was a far better friend than I deserved.

Eventually, the tears began to dry up and Kimber let go of me. She didn’t leave, though, instead sitting quietly on the bed beside me, waiting for the hiccuping to finish. I felt even more tired now than I had when I’d first woken up, the crying jag stealing the last of my energy. I think I even did one of those magic-hangover space-outs somewhere along the way, because my face went from being damp with tears to bone-dry in the blink of an eye.

“You still need a lot of rest,” Kimber said, her voice startling me out of yet another daze.

I blinked and shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said automatically, despite how heavy my eyelids felt. I didn’t want to just blubber all over Kimber’s shoulder and then take a nap.

“Go to sleep,” Kimber ordered. “I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“Really?” I asked, managing to sound hopeful and skeptical all at once.

She snorted. “You don’t think I’m letting you off that easy, do you? You’ve got lots more gut-spilling to do, and you can’t do it in the state you’re in. So sleep, already.”

My eyes slid shut despite my best efforts to keep them open.

* * *

Kimber was wrong. She wasn’t still there when I woke up.

I awakened to the unfamiliar feel of an arm wrapped around my waist and a warm body snuggled up against my back. I went from sound asleep to wide awake in the space between heartbeats, my breath catching in my lungs.

I knew without having to look that it was Ethan. Maybe it was just a natural guess—who else would be cuddled up on the bed with me?—or maybe there was something about the feel or the scent of him that gave him away. Whatever it was, I was lying in bed with him, his whole body pressed up against mine, and the sensation was both exhilarating and terrifying.

I held absolutely still, not wanting the moment to end. As long as we lay still and quiet, there were no complications, and I could just enjoy the warmth and comfort of his body. If he knew I was awake, he might go and ruin things by giving me his version of the lecture on why I shouldn’t have come back.

I wondered why he was in my room and Kimber was gone. I imagined my dad was insisting I be under twenty-four-hour guard, but I wouldn’t have thought Ethan would get a shift. There was no way my dad would trust Ethan that far. He was the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse.

Ethan shifted behind me, pressing closer, nuzzling my neck. “I know you’re awake,” he murmured against my skin, and the feel of his lips made me break out in goose bumps.

So much for lying still and quiet.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, then wanted to bop myself for it. It was pretty obvious what he was doing as he brushed light kisses all the way up the side of my neck. I wanted to rephrase the question in a way that made sense, but my thoughts were too scrambled.

The hand at my waist slipped under the edge of my nightshirt, touching the sensitive skin of my lower belly. Cue more goose bumps. And I had to remind myself to breathe.

“You freed me,” Ethan whispered right in my ear as he worked his hand farther up under the night shirt.

Right, I remembered in a flash. I’d made a new deal with the Erlking, and so Ethan and I were free to …

But surely he didn’t mean to take advantage of that freedom now. I was still recuperating. And I wasn’t ready to go from doing nothing but some heavy kissing to going all the way.

Ethan’s hand stilled on my stomach. “Don’t tell me you think I’m such an asshole that I’m planning to jump you here in your sickbed.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Guess my trust issues were showing again. Then again, Ethan was a teenaged boy, and I knew he’d earned his reputation as a player fair and square.

I squirmed around so I could face him. He was as gorgeous as he’d been the first time I’d met him, the blue stag gone from his face, along with any sign of the hideous burn. His eyes weren’t the same, were older and wiser