Sigurd, he said his name is Sigurd. If he’s real, I need to remember it.
“What—” Sigurd shakes his head, the sheen of lust and intoxication gone from his eyes.
I sit upright, pulling the furs around me. My body shakes. “You’re real. This is real.”
“I already told you that.” He crosses his arms.
“Yeah, but…” The room takes on a whole new light. It’s still beautiful and enchanting but real, very real. The air grows thin. My breaths come short and quick. “Fairies don’t exist. I’m not this Evelyn you keep talking about.”
“You don’t even know what you are.” He shakes his head, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Incredible.”
My lips purse. “I’m Wren. Wren Dawson.”
Something flashes across his face and is gone before I can process it. “Named for a bird.”
He better not make fun of my name. Nope, nope, nope.“It’s not—”
“Beautiful.”
Oh, well… The heat flushing my face takes on a new form, and I can no longer meet his gaze. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me. Saving me. Healing me. Really, it’s incredible. I’ll find a way to pay you back,” I ramble on, unable to glance at him for fear that the look on his face might convince me to linger. “But I really need to go home. My grandmother will be so worried. I have to get back to her and let her know I’m fine. Oh, and my boss, he’s going to be so upset that—”
“No.”
I snap my head toward him. All the tenderness on his face has vanished. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“You can’t leave.”
Umm… “If you can bring me here, you can take me home, right?” Shoot, it must have been expensive to heal me or whatever. “I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
Gran has to be out of her mind that I didn’t show up at home, not to mention the robbery. If she has a heart attack worrying about me when I’ve been sitting here flirting with this idiot, I’ll never forgive myself. I slide from the bed, not caring that I’m in some silky nightgown that barely reaches halfway down my thighs. The cool floor tickles my feet as my cheeks flame. Oh, good Lord, did he undress me? Can’t think about that. Doesn’t matter.
Sigurd stalks toward the bed. Before I have time to process his actions, he grabs my arm, raising it before my face.
A pattern of navy wings circles my wrist in a strange tattoo. What the heck?
“You’re bound to the Court of Air, Wren. To me.”
The way he says my name has my heart stuttering.
A dull crash echoes from outside the room.
“Sigurd!” The furious female voice makes every inch of him go rigid.
Sigurd’s hand tightens on my wrist, almost painfully, before dropping it like a soiled rag. His name still rings in the air as he turns and stalks toward the door.
“Stay here,” he grates.
A lover? My stomach drops. If so, it’ll be terrible if she finds me here. She’d think that we… And oh gosh, we almost…
I shake myself, but the tattoo draws my attention like a magnet. I’ve always wanted some ink, but Gran thought it was a terrible idea, so I caved to her wishes and avoided the tattoo parlor. This though… Ugh, I would never have picked this.
Another door looms on the other side of the bed. A closet? Somewhere to hide? I step toward it as another screech reaches my ears. “You nearly got the King of the Forest killed!”
Every part of me freezes. I glance back in disbelief. That was so not what I expected their fight to be about.
Sigurd responds, but I can’t make out his words.
“Well, they’re blaming you!” the woman yells back.