Page 29 of Reaper’s Curse

If he believed complimenting me would successfully redirect my thoughts and cause me to forget his infraction, he had another thing coming.

“You just…” He waved his hand in a circle before me. Around me. With a half-lidded gaze, he appeared to devour the sight of me. “You get this ethereal glow about you when you’re upset. It’s intense, and wild, and, gods help me, excitingly attractive.”

Was he talking about my reaper’s gift? Was my anger somehow activating one or more?

I clenched my teeth and glared. Whatever he was doing, intentional or not, it was not going to work. I was mad, and I was going to stay mad.

“Your attempt to deflect will not work.”

“Again, I’m sorry.” He clasped his hands in front of his waist, clutching tight enough to squeeze the blood from his fingers. “I wanted to make sure Valen treated you well yesterday, and I tried checking on you last night, but you didn’t get in until late. And when you finally did, you were asleep before I could call on you.”

I shifted my weight to one hip. “And you knew I was asleep because…” I let the word roll slowly off my tongue. “You let yourself into my room then, too? Without my expressed approval?”

“I was concerned. You were recently injured, quite gravely, might I add, and you are still healing. Who’s to say⁠—”

“Just because I am a guest here, under your roof, doesn’t mean you can simply barge into my room whenever you feel like it. I’m a guest, and as such, there are boundaries.” I started pacing.

“I am fully aware, but⁠—”

“But nothing,” I snapped.

“But,” he continued, and my glare narrowed, “in addition to my concern regarding your day with Valen, I thought you would want to know, rather immediately, that I saw your coworker Chace.”

My arms dropped to my sides, all my defenses going limp.

“You saw him?” My eyes widened, and my jaw slackened. “How did he look? Is he all right?”

He tilted his head as his hands relaxed and slid to his sides. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”

“What? No.” I jerked back another step, my heart flopping on a flutter. “That would be…”

I sought the correct word, and in the silence, his brow arched.

I flung my hand in a dismissive wave. “Absurd.”

A hint of a smile flashed to Winter’s lips. It was there and gone in a blink. “Yet again, it would seem I owe you an apology. Your relationship with that individual, whatever it may be, is none of my business. Although I must confess to being pleased at hearing the two of you aren’t romantically involved.”

Heat flushed my cheeks, and I prayed my skin hadn’t brightened to match. Was I embarrassed due to my unsure emotions regarding Chace? Or born from my curious and unexplored feelings where Winter was concerned?

“But to answer your question, Chace…” He dragged the name off his tongue as if it stuck like tar as he tipped his head to his shoulder with a shrug. “He seemed all right.”

All right? That word could mean a plethora of things. How all right was Chace? Was he all right in the sense that he was alive? Was he just all right in the fact that he was talking, hopefully walking? Or were there no serious injuries to his mental and physical state?

Before I opened my mouth and asked him to clarify, Winter clasped my shoulders and turned me toward the bed, saying, “I think you should sit down.”

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

All right didn’t really mean all right at all. Why else would he want me to sit down?

“Why—” My throat closed up, so I restarted my question, even as I allowed him to steer me to the bed. “Why must I sit down?”

With a gentle press of his fingers upon my shoulders, I settled on the edge of the mattress. Anxiety wrung my muscles and squeezed my throat.

He folded his hands around mine and dropped to his knees before me. My mind reeled, and my heart pounded. What was he doing? What was happening? Was the room growing hotter?

Winter’s chest heaved. “Chace told me something, and I am unsure how to tell you this, but…”

He swallowed hard and paused his delivery for too long. Far too long.