It was a testament to his faithful nature that he’d still sought my friendship afterwards, that he still trusted me with his life in combat, that he still kept me close. A lesser man than him would have pushed me away, but he didn’t, and I was grateful for it because I still craved him. I still craved the smell of his skin when he accidentally got too close, hungered at the way sweat slid down the cords of his neck during the hot summer days. I was starved for him and willing to chase after scraps.

But that had to stop now. It had been two years since that day in the valley and he was engaged now. I had to move on; as my Aunt Nimue told her son Lyr often enough when he got in trouble, “This is your dishwater, now you have to soak in it.” I’d made the choice to put Ash’s future before any future we had as a couple, and now I had to live with that choice.

I had a text from Ash when I finished my shower. I’m doing lunch with Merlin—want to come?

I manifestly did not. It still hurt too much to be around Ash for one thing, and for another, I resented Merlin almost more than any human on earth. Even though this had all been my decision, my choice, and I owned it as such, a juvenile part of me still blamed it all on Merlin. On that day in the train car and all his talk of sacrifice.

Besides, I had to go to his birthday party that night and that would be more than enough of him for me.

I spent the rest of the day napping and fussing and finishing off the Hendricks, and when it came time to go to Merlin’s party, I was tipsy and resigned. I’d see Ash and Jenny, Merlin would see me seeing them, and it would all be terrible, but there would probably be an open bar and I wasn’t above prostituting my emotions if there’d be alcohol present. But I never made it to the party.

Life had other plans.

“Fuck,” the girl who’d just run into me muttered.

“My favorite word,” I said automatically, but also amusedly. But my amusement faded as she looked up and I saw her face. Her fucking gorgeous face.

Waves upon waves of waist-length hair in hues of gold and platinum. Soft, pretty lips. An arresting beauty mark on her cheek. A small cleft in her chin. Huge silver eyes limned with lashes longer and darker than Ash’s and that were now pooling with tears.

She was someone who didn’t cry often, I saw that immediately. People who cry often are good at hiding it or at least betray a certain amount of comfort with it, but she was neither hiding it nor was she comfortable. She was miserable with it, her shoulders hunched up defensively under her leather jacket, her chest juddering with jerky, unhappy breaths.

“Pardon,” she managed thickly and pushed past me.

Fascinated, I turned to watch her go and my shoe knocked against something. Her phone. She must have dropped it when she ran into me.

Fate at work, I decided. I wasn’t about to miss the chance to render aid to a beautiful girl like that. So I grabbed the phone off the floor and decided to go find out what could make such a pretty girl so sad.

When I was twenty-nine, I met a princess.

Her heart was broken, and so was mine. She had a raspberry dress, I had bright blue pants and deck shoes. She had tears and I had a hand to wipe them away. She had something she wanted to give me and I had something I wanted to take.

Maybe I knew it was love the moment she smiled through her tears at me on a Chicago curb. Or maybe it was in the Ferris wheel, kneeling at her feet as she pressed her hands to my face. Or maybe it was the moment I claimed a place in her body no other person had.

But the moment I knew for sure came later, after I’d fucked her for the first time, after the shower. As I brought her back to bed, eased into her tender cunt, and she arched in pain underneath me.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, worried.

“Yes.” And then a big smile in the dark. “Do it harder.”

She was like me.

It was in the way she twisted underneath me. It was in the way she scratched and shoved at me, bit me, came like a shot when I bit her. She wanted the pain, she wanted the rough, she wanted the struggle. I wouldn’t know until later that she only wanted the struggle with me, that with Ash—just as I was—she was fully submissive. I wouldn’t know until later that with each other, we found something we couldn’t find with him.

I only knew then that something in her body, her heart, was identical to my own. And that’s when I knew I couldn’t let her go.

“Where’s Jenny?” I asked as Ash slid into his seat next to me. We were at a coffee house near our hotel; I’d called him the moment I’d woken up to an empty bed, my chest full of panic that my Chicago angel had melted away in the morning sunlight. But she hadn’t—in fact, she’d even left her number and her hotel address in a note—and in my relief, I discovered something new. Something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Excitement.

I was excited about her.

And Ash was my best friend. I wanted him to know all about it, and if there was a small, spiteful part of me that also wanted him to witness my happiness without him, I didn’t admit it to myself.

Ash took a long time to answer my earlier question, looking over the pastry menu, and then he sat back. “I wanted to talk to you without Jenny here.”

For the first time, I noticed how haggard he looked, his eyes bloodshot as if he’d been drinking or up all night or both. “But I want to hear about this angel of yours,” Ash said, forcing a smile. “You wouldn’t have called me unless she’s amazing.”

Something was definitely off, something more than him being jealous of me with someone else, no matter how much I wanted that to be the case.