Page 48 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
At the use of his pet name, my eyes shifted to the faces looking on. My face, already red, turned a full shade of scarlet. I spotted a balcony not far off and started pulling Finch towards it. He resisted again, at first, but then he saw where I was leading him and relented.
The night air sobered him a bit once we stepped outside and the swell of music dropped again. He let go of me and went to lean against the balcony, his hands gripping the wound vines tight.
I considered leaving him to go find Zev, but his voice once again made me stop.
“Did I do something wrong?”
His head turned slowly, and this time, there was a sadness in his eyes when he looked at me.
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When we first got you, you and I…” he trailed off, his face finally turning from mine to stare out into the darkness. The court was nearly pitch-black outside without the pixies to light it. “There was something between us. A spark. And then it died.”
He turned back to be suddenly, just for a moment. “And don’t tell me it has anything to do with Shiel and his lies,” he said. “It was something else.”
I almost told him he was wrong, that he was imagining it, but then I stopped. Because, as his words settled into me, I couldn’t tell him that. Not without lying.
And after all the lies I’d been weaving in the last weeks, I didn’t want to add one more.
“Zev warned me…about you,” I said, quietly. I thought back to that night in the inn, when Zev had looked at his friend as he snuck off to gamble. He’d warned me not the get my heart broken, and I supposed I’d listened…because the more I thought about it, the more I knew that Finch was right. There had been more than a moment once when a single glance from Finch had made my heart flutter, had made my mind conjure unholy fantasies that involved him in the forest river with me instead of Icarus.
But I wasn’t about to tell him allthat.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Zev searching for us inside, where he’d last seen us. He turned in a circle that grew more frantic each time he turned around the room and didn’t see us. I wanted to wave him down, to save him the panic that was surely rising in his chest, but Finch was still looking at me like his was the heart in the midst of breaking.
So I admitted to him what little of the truth I could.
“I don’t want to be just the next girl in the parade of females you take to your bed, Finch.”
“Is…is that it?” he asked. “Is that all you’re worried about?”
“I mean…Finch…” I stammered, “there’s a thousand reasons you and I shouldn’t be together.”
“But you’re saying there’s a chance? You’re saying you might one day…consider me?”
I took a moment to look at Finch, toreallylook at Finch for the first time since that night in the tavern. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d taken Zev’s words to heard until this moment. I’d discovered Shiel’s lies—and by extension, both his companion’s—so shortly after, that I hadn’t really had time to consider what other reasons I had for going so cold on Finch.
I’d gone cold enough to push him out of a window, for goodness’ sake.
Though…now that I considered it, I might have done that anyway.
But he was right, and there was no way to deny it without lying to myself, too, first.
“Finch…if you’re asking me to choose between you and Zev and…” I couldn’t even bring myself to mention the others. “It isn’t fair. I can’t even be thinking about that right now. I have so much else—”
“I’m not!” he cut me off, each breath coming out more excited than the last. “I would never ask you to choose. I just want to know I have…hope. Even if that hope means I have to share you with one fae or a million, I don’t care.”
“Except Icarus,” he clarified, his nose scrunching up. “I think that’s where I draw the line.”
“Ah, well then, you’re out of luck, Finch.”
What was meant as a joke turned his face into mask of horror as he quickly walked back what he said. “Line undrawn. Even Icarus!”
As only Finch could, he’d once again drawn a laugh out of me under the most impossible of circumstances.
“See, see just now…seeing you like this, when you laugh…”
Finch let go of the balcony and took my face up in his hands, tilting up my chin so I had no choice but to see the sincerity in his eyes.
