He tilted his head toward the door. “Gabriel. He should have been here when you first got back. He should have been part of this. You know he’d have wanted to be.” He paused, his gaze searching mine. “And I think you’d have wanted that too.”
My hands tightened around his and Damon’s.
Jin stroked my side soothingly. “It’s all right,” he said. “We all know we wouldn’t have been a group in the first place without Gabriel. He’s one of us, even if in some ways right now he’s not. We don’t have any right to be jealous.”
“Speak for yourself,” Damon muttered, but his expression softened when I looked at him. “You deserve all the love in the world, angel,” he added. “I’m not going to say I like sharing you, but I wouldn’t get in the way, if that’s what you want. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I shouldn’t want to bring him any more into this mess than he already is,” I said. “If I took him as my consort too, then he’d just be in more danger.”
“And you’d also have more magic to fight that danger,” Seth said. “Is itpossibleto take another consort after you’ve already done the ceremony with us…?”
A choked laugh spilled out of me. “I wouldn’t know unless I tried. I didn’t know it was going to be possible to take all of you as consorts in the first place. But… it feels like it should work. If he and I decided we wanted to. If I was okay with putting him in that kind of danger too. And if you all were okay with it.You’remy consorts. My loyalty is to you first. You have to know that.”
Seth hugged me to him and then leaned in for a kiss. “He’s one of us,” he said. “Even if not that way yet. I don’t have any problem with completely reuniting the group.”
“No argument from me either,” Jin said. “The more the merrier?” He winked at me.
“I don’t think you should need our permission,” Ky said. “But if you want to have it first, you’ve got it from me too.”
Damon shrugged, his hand still clasped around mine. “I’ve told you how I feel, Rose.”
“Thank you,” I said. Relief rolled over me, washing away the guilt I’d felt over my stirring feelings. One less thing to weigh on my mind. One less uncertainty hanging over me. Whether Gabriel and I came together as something more than friends or not, at least I wouldn’t have to feel I was betraying my consorts by simply thinking about it.
No, I had much more to worry about from the guy whothoughthe was going to be my consort but wasn’t.
“I think I need to do something about Derek,” I said. “He’s gotten… pushy. And there’s only so much I can do to put him off without having to justify myself to my dad.”
Damon bristled. “Pushy how?” he said, his voice dark.
“Just… trying to reinforce his position as my fiancé, I guess,” I said. “Wanting us to be more intimate, not really taking no for an answer.” I shuddered at the memories. “I can get rid of him in the moment with magic, but I don’t like using it when I’m not supposed to have it yet. When someone might see. And just telling him I’m not interested isn’t working.”
Did he think there was some hope of him getting control of my magic still, or did he just see enough other benefits in continuing the engagement? Just thinking about his possible motivations made me feel slimy by association.
I turned to Jin. “I had an idea that might help. If I showed you one of the witching glyphs, do you think you could incorporate it into an image so it was there, but no one would be able to actually see the lines of it? Hidden inside a more complex picture… or even painted right over might work. Just something small, that I could wear as a necklace. Even if the glyph isn’t visible, I could imbue it with enough magic to, er, repulse him.”
Jin’s dark brown eyes gleamed. I could practically see inspiration sparking behind them. “Absolutely. Just show me what you want me to work in. It’ll be a fun challenge. With the extra benefit of knowing it’ll get him to back off.”
A glimmer had lit in Damon’s eyes too. He rubbed his mouth. “A necklace,” he scoffed.
“Have you got a better idea?” Seth asked.
“Maybe. We’ll see. That asshole clearly has a lot worse coming to him.”
“Well, while you figure out what that is, I’ll stick to my idea,” I said dryly, and then to Jin, “Get me a piece of paper? The glyph for warding should give me the right vibe…”
Chapter Fifteen
Jin
The old, vine-shrouded towers at the far end of Rose’s property had always looked beautiful to me in an aged, majestic sort of way. Now, coming back to them for the first time since the consort ceremony, the sight of them sent a deeper thrill through my chest.
This was where we’d all come together. Where I’d sworn myself to Rose and her to me.
Our lives had gotten even more complicated since then, but I hadn’t regretted that decision for a second.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have done it,” Seth had said to the rest of us yesterday after Rose had headed home. “We knew she wasn’t sure how the rest of her community would react, and we still agreed, and now they might kill her for it.”
“We didn’t know,” Kyler had pointed out. “We couldn’t have known. We made the best decision we could with the information we had.”