RISING (#2, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 60

Too thin—played over and over in my head as well as what I'd noted about Tabitha myself when I'd latched my fingers around her icy-cold limbs and turned her over. What the fuck had her mother been doing in the forest that night? And what was she thinking taking her seven-year-old daughter in there too?

I had no excuse to go down into the Servants' Quarters where I suspected Tabitha was, and so finally, like a sad sap, I gave up hoping I'd run into her and left. I'd expected my sister to accompany me to act as a buffer between Irma and me, but my jerkass ex-girlfriend commandeered the front seat of my car. Irma locked the side door, declared she wasn't budging, and wanted to travel alone with me. Meanwhile, Byron offered to drive Valarie to the Szarvas estate.

"Please, Varen, hear me out," Irma begged, cutting through my thoughts.

Sunlight skittered off the car's silver hood as I angled into the oncoming bend. Crisp wind flowed through the open car window. Tires splashed through a puddle and sprayed an arc of dirty water while the engine responded with a growl as I quickly shifted through the gears and powered out of the curve. Behind us, the air was awash with a flurry of autumnal leaves as I pushed the Bugatti faster and faster.

At the Servants' Dance Irma had tried upbeat and innocent, almost as if she'd hoped the past had been wiped clean, and now I was convinced she was going to go down a desperate route and up the ante by laying on the guilt, thick.

The pregnancy...

I rubbed my eyes. A tension headache began to build behind my temples, aggravated by the floral perfume she'd doused herself in and the oncoming dread that she was going to bring up my baby.

I shot her a quick scowl. Irma had pushed her plump tits together by squeezing her arms to her sides, and the ends of her gold necklace disappeared into the deep cleavage. She'd also half-twisted around in her seat to face me better, but I think it was more a ploy to angle her long legs in such a way that the short hem of her skirt rode up even higher and exposed her panties or, fuck, the lack of them.

I quickly averted my gaze back to the leaf-littered road, while I sullenly counted down to the theatrics about to begin.

Three...

Two...

One—

Irma opened her mouth and then proceeded with her boring little monologue. I was pretty sure she'd send me to sleep with her yawn story of how hurt she was and how I'd hurt her even more by dumping her cheating-lying-ass.

She dramatically clasped a hand to a breast. "When Jurgana came out of the forest and set her beasts upon us, I thought I was going to die. You too, Varen. And I couldn't bear it. My life flashed in front of my eyes. And my life, it was filled with you, filled with us." As she spoke the last words, she swept a hand through the air before resting it on my upper arm. I shrugged her touch off with an irritated grunt. "There's hardly a moment we haven't been together. All those monumental moments in both of our lives, we've experienced them together, Varen."

I squinted at the road, wondering if Irma's version of monumental moments were us drunkenly celebrating birthday parties together, or lazing around on island beaches and me feasting on her pussy in between margaritas.

"I want to live Varen, really live, and I want to share my life with you. Everything that came before, all of that..."

Irritation slithered beneath my skin. Irma still didn't have the balls to own up to the mess she'd made of everything, ultimately setting me and Gratian on the course of duking it out in the Hemmlok Forest. His death had been reduced down to—all of that. She'd had an affair with my brother and didn't even have the decency to appear grief-stricken over his death.