Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

My entire body felt like a live wire as I stared at the entrance. It was fine. Letak was smart. He had kept me safe the other night when those pixies had come, and they had been nowhere near us.

Everything would be fine.

“He seems responsible enough.”

I rubbed my arm, my other hand hooking into the circle on the collar. “Demons mature incredibly fast. Zalins grow from kits to mature adults in six months. It’s not that I don’t trust him, but…”

“It’s Mark,” Cole said, looking over. “They’ll be okay.”

I looked over. “You think?”

He shrugged. “Mark seems far more mature than I was at 11. Even trapped in a basement, I was trouble.”

I felt my heart tighten. If I could erase his terrible beginning, I would have. He didn’t deserve that kind of pain.

“You and Trick?”

I rolled my eyes, dropping my hands at my sides. “I don’t want to hear about it,” I said, heading back for thecottage, assuming Trick was gone if Cole thought he could bring it up so brashly.

“Kyra, you’ve only known him two months.”

“And I’m not declaring my undying love for the guy,” I shot back. “I’m not even fucking him. He gave me a gift and I thanked him for it. What’s so wrong about that?”

“He was stalking you for over a year,” Cole said as I stepped into the cottage. “This isn’t healthy. You are new and shiny and once he gets bored he’ll find someone else to play with. He’s done it again and again.”

Did everyone think I didn’t know that? Of course, I knew that. I’d said as much to Trick. I’d let him woo me until he got bored. That was the plan. By then, Mark would be old enough, maybe Penny could let Letak go with Mark to the Fae Court. He would love that.

“Talons,” Cole tried.

I snatched Mark’s things off the table and turned to him. “I know, alright?”

He slowed, his brows worried.

“I know he’s dangerous. I know he’s evil. I know you all claim he’s this horrible monster. Iknow. I know the history the world believes about him, but does that mean we’re not allowed to be friends? If that’s the case then you and I shouldn’t be friends either because what the world says about him, they say about the entire race. Rapists, torturers, murderers. That’s all of you, not just him if you haven’t forgotten.”

“You haven’t seen what he’s done to the women.”

“I don’t want to know about it,” I hissed back. I spun on my heel and headed for the room, my heart skipping. I couldn’t knowabout it.

“Why? Because you’re afraid you’ll tell him to leave and he will?”

Because I was…I was fucking jealous, and some horrible, sick part of me understood why he murdered those four guys becauseIwanted to murder the women he fucked before he met me. It was irrational and it didn’t make sense, but there it was, and I hated it. I hated that what he told me before this all started was right.

He shouldn’t be right about it.

This was all just so…fuckedup.

“Talons, stop,” Cole said as I hung up Mark’s new coat. “Trick is going to kill you.”

There was the confirmation I needed, but that was fine because that was the plan.

“Why don’t you care? Why are you falling for his games? They’re just words.”

I slowed, staring at the clothes hanging before me. They weren’t though, not to me, and maybe Trick knew that. Maybe he knew that nothing like that had ever been said to me. In my entire life, those words had never been said to me.

I crave you.

My cock throbs for you.