attention to me at all, and I could do without the attention Kellan has directed my way.
August sets down my foot. “I wasn’t needed for anything else, and you shouldn’t have to go around uncomfortable if I can change that easily enough. It’s bad enough what Aerik and his cadre put you through.”
That doesn’t explain why he’s been so much friendlier than the others, but I guess it’s a reasonable explanation. Before I can decide whether to prod further, he reaches out and gives one of my newly trimmed locks a playful but still gentle tug. Tipped toward me like that, his knees nearly touch mine—his unsettlingly handsome face is less than an arm’s length away.
My pulse flutters again, this time with a quiver of heat that’s not embarrassment.
“We could do something else with your hair,” he offers. “Cut more off, change the color—whatever you like. Take you farther away from everything you’ve had to endure.”
I kind of like that idea, and it’s a welcome distraction from the new sensations spreading through my body. Mom always said I could dye my hair when I got older. Well, I’m older now, aren’t I?
I tamp down on the hysterical giggle that bubbles up my throat at that justification and manage to say, “Another color—I think that would be good.”
He gestures to the windows. “Whatever you like. I’ve got plenty of materials to bolster my magic.”
Any color I want? Thinking of my captor with the sunflower-yellow hair and the purple tint in Sylas’s, I have to assume even the natural range for fae coloring isn’t as restricted as it is for humans.
A memory pops into my head so suddenly it jerks at my heart. A few months before I was taken, I saw a singer whose name I can’t remember anymore in a music video, her hair neon pink, and became desperately determined to emulate that look. It seemed like the height of coolness.
I’ve got no one here to impress with my style and probably using my preteen sensibility for guidance isn’t the best idea ever, but it would be a tribute to my old life. The one I was meant to have. And I definitely wouldn’t look like a horror movie wraith like that.
“Can you make it pink?” I ask.
August grins. “Absolutely. Wait right there.”
He gets up and bounds out into the garden, but not so swiftly that I miss the indecipherable whisper as he opens the door. Yeah, it’s got a locking spell on it too. Damn it.
As he crosses the garden to the fruit trees, I can’t help watching his muscular stride, taking in the blatant strength of that brawny body and the eager energy with which he carries it. It’s a combination that’s more appealing than I want to admit.
He isn’t just a man. He untangles hair with a word and conjures flames from his hands. He can turn into a wolf—one of those huge, vicious wolves like the one that left the ring of scars on my shoulder.
August has just passed out of sight amid the trees when Whitt strolls into the kitchen, dressed in an indigo housecoat of what looks like satin with gold embroidery along the cuffs and hems. If he’s surprised to find me there, he doesn’t show it.
“Hmm,” he says. “I came to get some breakfast, but it looks like August has been busy. Are you lunch?”
I wince, but the remark is too flippant for me to take it seriously, the total opposite of Kellan last night when he threatened to have me for supper. Whitt’s eyes glint as he watches my reaction, and I’m gripped by the urge to play something other than the trembling captive just this once.
“At this point, I don’t think I’ve got enough meat on my bones to make much of a meal,” I say.
Surprise flashes across Whitt’s face. My pulse hiccups with the fear that I’ve made a mistake, but then he barks a laugh.
“We’ll see how you turn out after a few weeks of August’s cooking, then,” he says in the same offhand tone, grabbing a couple of pastries and a heap of bacon out of a basket at the back of the counter and dropping them onto a plate. He saunters out without another word.
The tension from the brief encounter releases from my limbs with a tremor, but at least he’s not around to see how much it took out of me to produce that single retort.
August hustles back inside with a couple of glittering fruits