Summer Bound (Wicked Lovely #5.2) - Melissa Marr

“Summer Bound”

Siobhan flinched as Tavish took another blow to the face from Tracie. Her Summer Court co-advisor, on the other hand, smiled joyously as he rarely did in public. Their makeshift gymnasium was filled with cool air and the soothing sounds of soft jazz. It had not been designed to encourage the fighting they were there to do.

Most of the others had left. Only Siobhan, Tracie, and Tavish were still there. Siobhan wanted to be left alone with him, and he’d demanded Tracie stay.

“Are you afraid of Siobhan?” Tracie taunted as she kicked out at him.

He caught her ankle. Blood already dotted his typically impeccable clothes, and strands of tinsel-like hair fell into his face. The plait that usually bound his silver hair tightly back had become loosened after several hours of training the small group.

“Not bad for a Summer Girl,” Tavish said, shoving Tracie toward the ground before he sneered at Siobhan. “Unlike you, Siobhan. Unable to hit me?”

Siobhan winced. He was intentionally being a prick. Tracie, one of the few of the former Summer Girls who had become a guard, was ruthless, though. Kicks followed punches, and Tavish blocked almost all of them.

Unlike Siobhan, Tracie seemed to be making up for their centuries of semi-dizzy lust with bursts of rage. She had found her place as guard, and Siobhan felt pride in seeing one of her own flourish. They had never been competitors. The Summer Girls were bound by Summer, trapped by the Summer King, and they had a bond that was unbroken still—even as a number of their group left.

Tracie stayed. Eliza did, too. A few became solitary, and a few went to the High Court. Siobhan had stayed with the Summer Court, but not as a guard. She’d become an advisor, not interested in unnecessary violence after the fight between the courts had ended.

Not that Tavish cared.

“And here, I’d heard that the Summer Girls were only good for—"

Tracie’s fists flew, and Siobhan watched as the other woman hit Tavish repeatedly and say, “I am not. a. Girl. Asshole.”

“And you?” Tavish dodged Tracie’s last blow and snaked out his leg to pull Siobhan off balance. She toppled to the ground in their makeshift gymnasium.

“What use are you, Siobhan?” he asked.

Siobhan glared at him as she launched to her feet. “Jerk. I serve Ash by advising her, and I learned enough to stay safe.”

“Pay attention. If someone comes here, you’re vulnerable,” he said, as if forgetting the guards that kept watch over the doors—and the queen herself, who was as fierce as any faery in any court.

Several centuries of playing at foolishness made Siobhan instinctively pout. It wasn’t an act that worked on Tavish anymore, though. His next punch was hard enough to knock her backwards.

“I’m not a guard, Tavish.” Siobhan spread her feet to give herself a more stable stance and shot her fist forward with as much force as she could. Her punch wasn’t enough to knock him backward, but it did distract him. “I don’t like to hit anyone.”

He was smiling, now. “Even me?”

Then, Tracie landed a solid blow across his throat. Tracie grinned. “I like hitting you, or anyone else I can.”

Tavish coughed hard, hand to his throat, not far from the black sun tattoo there. No one knew exactly how or why it had been put there. With his stern expressions and tightly bound hair, he didn’t seem the type for a tattoo on his throat, but one night over a lot of tequila, he’d told Siobhan that it was older than the then-king and had been applied when Miach, father to Keenan, ruled. That made it over nine hundred years old.

“Are you injured?” Siobhan asked

Rather than being upset, Tavish beamed at Tracie and said, “Well done.”

“Thanks, boss.” Tracie rolled her shoulders and asked, “Are we done?”

“You are,” Tavish said.

Then he turned to look at Siobhan. His approving smile vanished. “You can stay. You need to be able to defend yourself. What if you’re alone or with our queen and—”

“When am I ever alone?”

Tracie leaned up and kissed Tavish’s cheek. It meant nothing. Theirs was a court with little hesitation about affection. For a horrible moment, Siobhan hated Tracie for being the recipient of the approval she coveted. It was foolishness, but the more time she spent with him, the more his rare sweet words charmed her. She knew better. Faeries—especially Summer Court faeries—were notoriously fickle in their affection.

Far better to dream of a solitary, a Winter fey, a Dark fey. Not Tavish. Siobhan