“You loved Sala in one glance.”
It was fruitless to argue with him. Glass did not give his affection easily. If he said he loved Trey, then he meant it. And Red unfortunately believed him. He should’ve known the moment he met Trey that he would capture Glass’s attention. The young man was charismatic, irreverent, and full of life. He was like Tamir in many ways. And like Tamir he was a burning soul of energy and light, a light that Glass, with his grave demeanor and weighty responsibilities, found soothing to his own soul, a balm against the dark.
Still, what Glass was proposing was a commitment he could never back out of. “Think on it a little longer, brother.”
“I will.”
Silence fell between them and together they stared out over the still water. Red wondered if his brother was also wishing that life could be as calm as the Aegean was today. But no. There was always some catastrophe on the horizon. Lately that catastrophe was his other brother, the White King. And “lately” had lasted centuries. He wanted to hate him. A part of him did. But their bond as the Seven Kings of Jinn, the connection that tethered them together and to the world, kept the hatred from growing into something unmanageable, into something like vengeance. He may not be able to make White pay for killing Sala, but Red would certainly make sure White never got what he wanted.
“White is tearing through Mount Qaf looking for Mother’s remains.”
“He does realize that could take him a thousand years or more?”
“He can be patient when he wants to be.”
Glass grunted in agreement and turned, his large hand coming to rest on Red’s shoulder. “Will you speak with Ari?”
Ari.
Sala.
Pain.
Red nodded reluctantly, willing the ache out of his chest as he thought about facing the physical reminder of all he’d lost. “In a few days.”
Chapter
Four
Expecting the Moon and Getting the Sun
“Should I tell her?” Jai asked Michael, his voice hushed with the weight of what he was asking, with the need for direction from a man older and more experienced than he was.
When Michael called, Jai could hear in his voice that something was up. Upon Michael’s arrival at the house, Jai’s suspicions were confirmed when he saw Michael’s face.
The Guild believed Charlie Creagh was back in town. It wasn’t because he’d used magic. It was because his picture had been passed around the entire Roe Guild and two of them thought they’d seen Charlie in the neighborhood. He’d been coming out of the mall on Mount Holly Road. Before the two hunters had time to blink, they’d lost sight of him.
Now everyone was on alert. Except Ari, who had no clue.
In an effort to beat back the aggravation and uncertainty he felt over his and Ari’s relationship, as well as expel the frustration that Ari would probably have to confront Charlie very soon, Jai had spent the entire day in training. Ari hadn’t stopped by at all, which meant she was avoiding him too.
Why she was avoiding him, Jai could only guess.
Why he was avoiding her? For a number of reasons, Charlie not the least of them. The truth was Jai had been worried for days about her and the growing distance between them. She’d been snapping at him, throwing him fake smiles, and generally frustrating the hell out of him. He had no clue what was going on with her and would admit only to himself that he was starting to panic. Buried deep somewhere inside him was the worry that Ari’s feelings for him weren’t real—that they were born of fear of being alone, and born from feeling safe with him. When she’d started pulling away, Jai worried that she’d finally realized the truth of that.
However, that was until this morning.
In the kitchen.
That nightie.
Damn, that nightie. It was like she was deliberately trying to kill him. But at least the nightie had cleared things up a little bit.
Ari thought he wasn’t hot for her because he hadn’t slept with her yet.
Jai couldn’t believe it. Part of him felt like a damn idiot for not putting two and two together. The other part of him resented the fact that being a good guy had suddenly made him a bad guy.
Hell, did she not know what kind of willpower it took to walk away from her?
They had a lot to talk about. Starting with Charlie.
Michael stared back at him with masculine sympathy. He’d come down to the gym to tell Jai how late it had gotten. “I try to never keep anything from my wife. I learned fast that secrets come back to bite you in the ass.”
Jai sighed heavily, stepping back from the punching bag. “I don’t want her in the middle of this.”
“She’s already in the middle of this. You can’t protect her from that. Plus, you’re the one person she trusts in this whole world. Don’t take that away from her.”