43. Wren

CHAPTER 43

Wren

“ I think I ate too much.”

“Nonsense.”

“I definitely drank too much.” I giggled as Blane lifted me out of the back seat and carried me across the parking lot. Joseph had decided that he—she—was taking the evening off, so Blane had called a limo service. A freaking limo service. I tried to tell him a regular cab would be fine, but he insisted.

Was this going to be the new normal?

Dom had been pushy, and so was Blane, but in a totally different way. Dom used to insist I iron his handkerchiefs and vacuum three times a week, even if the floor wasn’t dirty. Blane insisted I spend eight hundred dollars of his money on a blue dress because the colour matched my eyes.

A sigh escaped as I ran a hand down his beautiful face. I knew which I preferred.

Blane, the handsome devil who treated me like a princess.

Music was pumping out of Club Dead, but Blane assured me that the management team could handle things for a few days. Maybe he’d check on things later? He’d confessed that he needed much less sleep than I did, only two or three hours a night, so he’d do some of his work while I rested. As for my job, whether I went back to Tilt was up to me. Blane said I should work if I wanted to, but money wasn’t an issue anymore. My bills were covered, and yesterday when I checked my bank balance, I’d found it had grown significantly. Stubborn Blane told me to give the money to charity if I didn’t want it, but he refused to take it back.

Over egg rolls and rice and chow mein, we’d talked about a vacation. He owned a vineyard in Italy and a villa in the Caribbean, but the destination was up to me. Blane was from another world, and now I found myself in one too, but I loved it.

I loved him.

I wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet, but my heart knew.

Upstairs in our apartment, Blane set me on the floor and steadied me as I walked across the foyer. In the kitchen, I paused. The units would be ripped out soon, and memories would leave along with them.

“The designer is coming next Monday,” he said. “It’s the soonest she can squeeze us in.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking about.”

“Do you want a midnight snack?”

“Maybe?”

“What kind of snack? I can get it delivered if we don’t have it.”

“You.”

“Me?”

Since the Laurent incident, we’d been sharing a bed, but that was all. Blane had kept his dick to himself, no pushiness in that department. A perfect gentleman. He was waiting for me to make the first move, but now that I’d made it, he looked more confused than anything. Another one of those missteps.

“Yes, you. Naked.”

“Here?”

For Pete’s sake. “You’ve done a great job with the chivalry, but five days of abstinence is long enough. Strip me, bend me over what’s left of the counter, and fuck me until I forget my own name.”

My words surprised even me. Around Dom, I’d learned to mind my language, but Blane never criticised the way I spoke.

“Caerus above,” he muttered. “You’re a siren.”

“Whoever Caerus is, he’s not invited.”

Blane just laughed, and I jumped as all the scented candles flickered into life. Like, thirty of them.

“Do you have any other party tricks?”

“I can give you a literal out-of-body experience if you want.”

“Uh, I’ll pass on that one. The night I burned the stir fry, did you extinguish the flames?”

“Of course.”

“Amazing. That means there’s another reason to keep you around besides your Grade A cock.”

“There are more than two reasons. I always put down the toilet seat, I toss my dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, I— Wait, was that sarcasm?”

“You’re getting it.”

“And so are you, my darling. Possibly in more than one orifice.”

Blane grinned as he reached for me, but I shrieked and leapt backward.

“Careful with the dress!”

“All evening, I’ve been dreaming of ripping it off you.”

“How about we settle for unzipping it gently?”

He nuzzled my neck. “For you, anything.”

There was something wildly hot about being slammed onto a cold counter and feeling a man nudge your legs apart. Blane draped my beautiful dress neatly over a stool and then slapped my ass. Now that we’d bared our souls to each other, he didn’t try to hide the raw power that rolled off him in waves, or his strength as he positioned me just the way he wanted. In his hands, I felt like a delicate little doll.

And in return for being his plaything, I gained his protection.

Best trade ever.

Dom had liked to boss me around in the house, but in the bedroom, he’d expected me to do all the work. Blane was the complete opposite. He took charge of my pleasure, feathering kisses down my spine as he leaned over me.

“Did you tell the kitchen designer that the island has to stay?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Planes above and below, you’re beautiful like this. Not that you’re not beautiful in every other way, but?—”

“Blane, stop talking.”

He turned me over and pushed my legs apart, hooking my knees over his arms as he raised my ass higher, higher. I gripped the edge of the granite for support, and how was I ever meant to eat breakfast here again? His tongue slid through my folds and dipped inside me, and I bit my lip to stop from crying out.

Wait, why did that matter? The music downstairs was loud enough to cover gunshots; I knew that from experience.

“Oh, Lord.”

“A bit formal, but acceptable.”

The tip of his tongue flicked against my clit, and he didn’t let up until I screamed his name, my back slip-sliding across polished stone slick with sweat. Now I understood all those romance novels where the good girl falls for the villain.

And when Blane flipped me with effortless ease and unzipped his pants, his hard cock springing free, I embraced the darkness and licked my lips. My new favourite colour was morally grey with a hint of hellfire.

“What did my brother do to you last night?”

I regarded Aurelia through bleary eyes. She looked so damn perky. As for me, there wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t ache. The devil had stamina, and he had the skill to match. When I was ten years old, one of my foster parents used to wag her finger at every indiscretion and tell me, “If you keep that up, you’ll be going to hell, young lady.” I so, so wished I could go back in time and tell her I was looking forward to it.

Wait, hold on a second…

“Please, don’t ask me for the details. Can you rewind time? Like, by seventeen years?”

“No, I can only slow it down.” Ah, well. “Why?”

“Doesn’t matter. Are those Danishes from Gerard’s?”

“Joseph picked them up. Josephine. I have to remember to call her Josephine.”

“Has he…she ever changed gender before?”

“As in a body swap? Once or twice. In Plane Three, she’s more gender neutral.”

“Wow. It’s going to take me a while to get used to.”

“Don’t worry; she won’t get offended if you get it wrong, and her given name is actually Grimwald. Joseph is her middle name.”

“Grimwald?”

“Yup, and her sister is Grimalda. Grimalda was born ten minutes earlier, so if you want to get on Josephine’s nerves, just call her Little G.”

“Does she hate it?”

“Detests it.”

“Awesome.”

Aurelia laughed along with me as I made myself a mug of coffee, but when I turned back to sit at the island, I found her expression had grown serious.

“Is Blane awake?” she asked.

“He’s getting dressed. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, yes. I just found out something interesting.”

“About Laurent?”

“No, about you.”

“Me?”

“Your internet is a wonderful thing. Well, mostly. Some people are mean, and others lie a lot, but you can find so much information if you look in the right place. Like you can find out about whole families.”

Had she dug up dirt on my mom? I didn’t appreciate the idea of Aurelia snooping through my background, and why hadn’t she just asked me? I’d thought we were becoming friends.

“My mother is in prison. I’ve never tried to hide that.”

“I’m so sorry to hear it, but this isn’t about her.”

“My father? I don’t know who he is.”

“This is about your sister.”

“I…I don’t have a sister. Only a brother.”

“But you did once. In another life.”

“What’s going on?” Blane appeared behind me, and I needed his steadying hand on my shoulder. “Don’t upset Wren before she’s even had breakfast.”

“I don’t mean to. Did you know Nevaeh had a second sister? ”

Blane took a seat beside me, and he looked as shocked as I felt. “A second sister? She only ever mentioned Esther.”

“If her parents were the control freaks you said they were, she might not even have remembered. Aerin Michaels died when she was three years old. They were twins.”

He gripped my hand. “And you think…”

“I don’t know. But I’m saying it might be possible. Likely, even.”

I’d once been a twin?

A memory sparked. “When I first met Lola, before anyone told her my name, she called me Rin. I thought she was trying to say Wren, but what if…what if she’d meant Aerin ?”

“We already know her soul wasn’t properly wiped because she remembers Blane. I think she remembers you too.”

Of all the things that had happened in the past two weeks, of all the things I’d learned and horrors I’d seen, that was the revelation that turned me into a weeping mess. I cried for Aerin and I cried for Nevaeh, two girls who’d never been able to reach their full potential. And there was guilt too. Guilt that Lola and I were here with Blane, and they weren’t.

And Blane? He just held me and let me cry it all out.

“Don’t be sad.” Aurelia put an arm around me. “Great-Uncle Tiberius wrote in his journal that once souls are bonded, they always find their way back to each other. You have this life with Blane and Lola, and someday, you’ll have another with them too.”

“How do souls become linked?”

“Even Great-Uncle Tiberius didn’t know the answer to that. He thought that maybe one of his predecessors designated a matchmaker to take the regular human aetherbond and amplify it between the planes, although that’s purely speculation. The Creatori were terrible at keeping records. There are journals and notes and scraps of parchment going back for millennia, and until I took over at the library, none were in any discernible order.”

“Aurelia’s spent years filing,” Blane said. “She’s being groomed to take over in Plane Two when Mother and Father finally retire, but that’s centuries away. So for now, they’re happy for her to while away her time on a project that keeps her out of trouble.”

“Don’t you ever get bored?” I asked her.

Blane let go of me to give his sister’s shoulders a squeeze. “She loves it.”

“I do,” Aurelia agreed, but before she replied, I saw something else flash in her eyes. Resignation? It was only there for a second, and I might even have imagined it. “And speaking of the library, I have a new assistant starting today. Well, yesterday, and I just know I’m going to get a lecture from Mother because I wasn’t there to greet him.”

“Is that the exchange student?”

“From the nine hundred and sixty-third realm?” Aurelia’s sigh suggested she wasn’t thrilled about the arrangement. “Yes. His name is Lysander. Meggie said she’d show him around.”

“He can’t be worse than the girl from the thirty-second.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.”

“Do you still have the earplugs?”

“In my desk drawer. My last exchange student didn’t stop talking for a month straight,” Aurelia explained. “I kept thinking she’d go hoarse, but no. In the end, we had to reinstate the rule of silence, and of course she took it personally.”

“If you need to get away for a couple of days, you could always come to visit again,” I suggested. “We could go see a show.”

“I’d love that.” Aurelia drained her coffee and gave me a hug. “No rest for the wicked.”

And then she was gone.

Blane took the seat she’d just vacated and studied me, those amber eyes assessing.

“Are you okay? Aurelia has a habit of speaking without thinking sometimes.”

“You mean about the Aerin and Nevaeh thing? I’m not gonna lie—it freaks me out a little. But there’s nothing I can do about it, and even Aurelia can’t turn back time. Are you okay?”

“I’ll always regret that I didn’t get to spend more time with Nev, but the aetherbond brings me comfort. I’m always going to outlive any human I fall in love with, so knowing you’ll be back, that I only have to wait a while until I see you again… It helps to dull the grief.” He tucked loose hair behind my ear. “Negligible senescence brings its own challenges.”

“Negligible what?”

“Immortality, more or less. You’ll age while I won’t. People will look at us differently. And when I remain youthful while the world around me changes, I’ll have to move away and reinvent myself so others don’t ask questions. We’ll both live many lives, but in different ways.”

I’d been so busy surviving that I’d barely thought about the future, not long-term. But now I realised he was right. Both immortality and the aetherbond would be a blessing and a curse. We’d never lose each other. But the connection wouldn’t always be one that society approved of.

Life wouldn’t always be easy.

But how I handled the situation was up to me.

I could laugh about it or cry .

“What are you meant to do? Date Lola when I age out?”

The look of absolute horror on Blane’s face made me snort. “No! I couldn’t, not after I’ve watched her grow up.” He kissed my hair. “I’ll just have to go home and annoy Decima for a few decades while I wait for you.”

“You can never die?” I asked. “Won’t the immortal world get overcrowded at some point?”

“The universe is forever expanding. New realms are created, and staff are always needed. My uncle and his family were shipped off to Realm 73,927 centuries ago, so we don’t see them much these days. Then there are the other dimensions… And yes, we can die.”

“How?”

“Are you planning to get rid of me already?”

My turn to be horrified. “Never! I’m just curious. It’s not every day I hook up with an immortal.”

“I should hope not.” Blane took a sip of my coffee and helped himself to a Danish. “There’s a substance called tirrium. If we spend too much time near it, we weaken like Vee in the sunlight, and eventually we die.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s mostly found on our penal planet. The Celestial Council sends immortals there if they’re found guilty of gross misconduct, but thankfully, that doesn’t happen often. Usually, it’s just a threat our parents use when we’re young—be good, or you’ll be sent to Tirria.”

“Gross misconduct? Like drinking someone else’s coffee, you mean?”

He glanced down at the mug he was holding. “Sorry. I’ll make you another cup, and then I need to head over to Tilt.”

Blane moved to the coffee machine, and I replayed his words in my head. “What did you mean by ‘mostly’? ”

“Huh?”

“You said tirrium was mostly found on your penal planet. There’s none here on Earth, right?”

“There are small quantities elsewhere. We know of a piece in Brazil. It lives in a crumbling temple in the Mala Valley.”

I shuddered. “Have you ever been to Brazil?”

“I tend to avoid the area, but not even regular tourists visit. The temple is guarded by the Karaza tribe with terrifying ferocity, and they worship it as a god. The valley is the only place on Earth where coco du ciel trees grow, but that’s a story for another day.” Blane checked his watch. “I really do need to leave. Sheikh Mahbrouk is in town, and his wife’s dog got loose last night and ate a poker chip.”

“Batman?”

“I’m sorry? I can’t fly, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, the dog. The cute little fluffy one. She named it Batman because its ears stick out.”

“Ah. I wasn’t aware of that.”

“You want me to come help? The sheikha is a sweetheart, but she always seems nervous around people she doesn’t know.”

Blane beamed at me, the full hundred-watt smile. “Your presence is always appreciated.”