As Blay spoke up, Qhuinn broke eye contact with the angel and looked at his mate. “What?”
“You shivered. Are you okay? That wound isn’t getting infected, is it?”
“No, it’s fine.” He sliced off a piece of—what was on his plate? Beef? Chicken? Couldn’t be fish. That was the only thing he was sure of, because the King hated the smell of the stuff and forbade it in the house except for Boo the cat’s dinner, which was given nowhere near Wrath. “I’m good.”
Granted, whatever he was chewing could have been a piece of the table, and he was, in fact, running a case of the cold sweats like an iced tea on a hot night. But none of that needed a physician’s review. Besides, he was embarrassed at his case of the cobblywobbles.
Who’d have thought Lassiter in his normal bouncy-castle mood was something to miss.
Caught up in a sense of doom, he refused to look at the angel again, and his eyes skipped over the familiar faces around the table as his awareness retreated deep within himself. Under the fake-it-’til-you-make-it theory, he somehow managed to join the clean-plate club, and talk to Xcor and Layla, and trade off the twins, and get to his own two feet when the meal was over.
All in all, a good performance. Maybe not Oscar caliber—because he could tell Blay wasn’t buying it—but certainly worthy of a Golden Globe nomination.
Out in the foyer, there was a dispersing of bodies, people heading upstairs, across to the billiards room, back toward the library. Meanwhile, he stalled out—
Until he realized Blay was standing in front of him with expectation on his face. Something, apparently, had been asked.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Qhuinn replied.
He figured that was a good, broad-spectrum answer, capable of treating a variety of inquiries: Would you like a drink and a round of pool? Would you like to watch a movie? Would you like to head to bed?
Actually, that last one required more of a Fuck, yeah.
Blay frowned. “You want to do that?”
“What?”
“I said, it’s Layla and Xcor’s night to do bath and play, but Lassiter’s got diamond art going on in the library with the other kids, and has asked everyone to join in.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Exactly.” Blay cleared his throat. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He flashed his pearlies, hoping to hit the a-okay mark. “I mean, I’m not thrilled with being stuck here all night, but I thought I’d go down to the training center and check in with Luchas for a while. I was going to stop by his room when I got my medical release—but time got away from you and me, didn’t it.”
Just as a very attractive blush bloomed across his mate’s face, a strange sound wove into the background noise, low and persistent. Qhuinn looked to the windows that faced out the front of the mansion.
“Holy crap, is that the wind?”
He walked over and opened the door into the vestibule, stepping through to the cathedral-like portal of the house’s grand entrance. When he went to lean outside, he had to put his shoulder into the effort, and you want to talk about a slap in the face? The wind was a one-two punch of cold and powerful, the skin of his cheeks stripping back, his eyes burning, his front teeth humming a tingle tune.
Given all of that arctic-ness, he wasn’t exactly sure why he went all the way out. But one minute, he was on the cusp; the next, he was standing at an angle into the gusts and looking in the direction of the distant suburbs . . . and even farther away, to the downtown skyscrapers and the bridges.
Darius, who had built the manse, had chosen a defensible position on the tallest of the mountains just north of the city of Caldwell. The descending acreage, which was extensive and as pine-packed as a Christmas tree farm, was protected from enemies and humans alike thanks to V’s mhis. But that invisible force field had no dimming effect on the wind at all. The gale-worthy blasts didn’t so much weave their way through all those conifers as tear their way past the linked boughs to batter the front face of the mansion.
He actually pivoted and double-checked that the great stone house was holding up all right, but he shouldn’t have worried. All those tons of gray rock and all that cement were standing strong, as if the mighty, sprawling construction was part