Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,94

my flask as I go. The first gulp—duskapple wine tonight—burns the edge off my frustration. The second clouds over the images I wanted to banish. The third brings me back to that glimmering plateau where my wits fly free of any hindrance of emotion but I haven’t quite tipped over into unsteadiness. I stop there.

It’s no good talking to Sylas. I can see that much. If he’s already allowed himself to stake that much of a claim over the girl, there’s nothing this situation can end in but an absolute mess, no matter how well I master my… curiosity, no matter that Kellan’s no longer spurring the tensions onward. As long as she’s with us, the fissures that were already forming will only widen.

As long as she’s with us.

I pause in the hallway outside the kitchen, the fermented spirits fizzing through my veins. My gaze lifts to the door at the far end of the parlor.

Wouldn’t our lives be so much simpler if she’d made her escape as she intended to a week ago?

What of it if we lose our “cure”? She could never have been a permanent solution anyway, as Sylas himself admitted. We’re only delaying the inevitable. We are wolves—we’re meant to be wild. Why shouldn’t the rest of my folk accept that?

There are other ways we can win back the arch-lords’ favor. Ways that won’t mean fracturing the bonds between lord and cadre even more. Ways that won’t require me to watch my brothers—

I shove off that thought and the memory of her striking, pink-haired head tucked between them. It isn’t about me. I was weak once and nearly destroyed us myself. This time…

This time I can save us.

And to do that, the girl must go.

27

Talia

While I bathe in the pool, August keeps up a steady stream of seemingly aimless conversation, chatting about everything from human sports—it seems he’s a football fan; big surprise—to what exercises I might try to strengthen the muscles around the warped part of my foot. I don’t think his rambling straight from one subject to another really is so aimless, though. The aim is to avoid any mention of what happened between us here several days ago.

I’m okay with that. For a little while last night, everything seemed so simple and right. But it’s been impossible not to notice throughout the day how the energy between August and Sylas has changed.

They haven’t argued—they haven’t said anything directly about their interest in me or mine in them at all—but there are pauses where there didn’t used to be before, glances that give me the impression of sizing up rather than comradery.

I’d rather not fuel whatever tensions are lurking unspoken any more than I already have inadvertently. In the pool, I stay away from the jets, and when I get out, I dry off and pull my clothes back on quickly. August smiles at me as he emerges from behind the folding screen, but he leaves a few feet between us as we walk down the hall to the stairs.

In less than a week’s time, I might have much bigger problems. I thought getting closer to the fae lord would make it harder for him to give me up, but with the way things are going, maybe he’ll decide it’s better for his cadre if he hands me over to the arch-lords and lets them work out how to best make use of my blood’s inexplicable power. I’m sure he’ll try to arrange things so that they’ll treat me kindly, but he won’t really have any say once I’m in their keeping, will he?

Every step I take here, every decision I make, feels so precarious. I can’t even predict all the consequences that might ripple out from a single word or act.

I shrug off those worries as well as I can—nothing’s happened yet, and I don’t know what I could do right now that would definitely make my situation better rather than worse anyway—but it’s hard to ignore them when we reach the top of the stairs to find Sylas waiting for us. Or rather, for me. He gives August a nod of acknowledgment with another of those brooding looks and waves the younger man off before turning to me.

“I’m still attempting to work out what’s causing the effect you have over our ‘curse’,” he says. “Would you allow me to take a few of your hairs to test?”

The request eases my nerves a little. My wellbeing matters enough to him that he’s asking