Page 6

Chapter 5

Pretty Sure I’m Bait

~DOLLY~

Um. Definitely not the treehouse. And this isn’t the void either. I’m alone inside his vessel. His new vessel, atop a pile of beaded pillows that distinctly smell like Arrik’s cologne because this was Arrik’s former vessel. Velis hasn’t spent much time inside since getting them swapped. Beside the pillows there’s a dark T-shirt, stained with the scent of tobacco. I back away from it, and my hand lands on another article of clothing.

A pair of boxer briefs in a cut I’ve never, ever seen Velis wear.

WHY IS THIS NIGHT CONSUMED WITH SO MUCH ARRIK? Who is manifesting this shit?!

“You’re sure it was Arrik you saw?” Vel’s voice vibrates the walls around me, cutting in with uncanny timing.

“Why am I in here? Where are you?” I demand.

He’s quiet for a moment, and the world rocks gently like we’re moving.

“I’m not letting my family ruin another night. I’m going to show up as the Laird of Reilhander Estate, and you’re going to see the prince’s wings.”

Of course. Honeymoon aside, he’s determined to follow through on his first outing as laird. Despite what he says out of frustration for his father, deep down, this is important to him too .

“We won’t have another shot once we leave the grounds,” I infer, remembering the reason he had to chase after Arrik’s shadow and then use our genie-bond to summon himself back to my side.

“Yeah, no teleporting. I just need you tucked out of danger for a bit so I can put an end to this.”

“How?”

“ I’m going to lure them out, ” he says inside my head.

I was worried it might involve more luring .

He pretends he didn’t read that.

“Are you sure it was Arrik?” Vel sounds like he’s keeping his voice intentionally low, and I assume we’re moving through the crowd. The bottle sways with his gait. “Not Beckham?”

“It looked like Arrik, but isn’t it a moot point? Beckham can change his appearance.”

“Not in here. Small cosmetic tweaks only. False hands, slimmed noses. It’s why I had to disclose the enchantment on my hair when we arrived.”

Dream Arrik said he wasn’t the one doing this, and I’m inclined to believe him.

“Beckham and Arrik do have similar builds,” I say, “and it was too dim to see any tattoos from where I was standing. Even without manipulation, I suppose it could have been Beckham. But are we too hyper-focused? Aren’t there other races that can manifest illusions? Is there anyone else this could be?”

“ I don’t think so. No one else knows your connection with Arrik this intimately but my family. It’s Beckham or Amoira, ” Vel doubles down inside my head. “ Maybe Jeb, if they coerced him into it. The grandfather can’t leave that pocket without it folding. Not worth it when he still has minions at his disposal. My vote’s Beckham. Childish, provoking, inappropriate. Basically everything in his playbook. ”

Vel doesn’t think it’s Arrik either.

I let my eyes roam across the cozy interior of the vessel, feeling like I’m intruding, though it’s Vel’s and he was the one who forced me inside. It’s decorated exactly like his old vessel, except the dominant color is green. The hanging lantern here casts emerald instead of blue, setting an eerie aura over the space. I’m not sure what I expected, but after being in Vel’s old one, it feels a little like being inside the bad guy’s bottle.

“No, that would be Beckham’s,” Vel says. “Beck’s is ruby red.”

“Scary. And Jeb’s?”

“Ranch-dressing yellow. Our father—”

“Excuse me. Go back. Did you just say ranch yellow? Do you mean mustard ?”

He can’t be serious.

I can’t see his face in here, and it’s easier for him to screw with me. “It’s always easy, Doll,” he says, and I can practically hear his grin.

“If your ranch is ever yellow, leave it.” Shiver. “So, why are all your bottles exactly the same inside?”

“Our father hired the same decorator,” he responds simply. “There’s a code we have to follow. Traditionalist guidelines. They don’t want us getting too acclimated to Earthling life and migrating.”

“Interesting. I assumed the décor was original, like from two thousand Makayen years ago. And why do they only care about the inside? The outside is so modern by comparison.”

“It depends when they were crafted. The newer ones are designed to blend in with the modern human world.”

Ah. Which is why he’s now talking to a thermal bottle.

He laughs softly.

I brace my hand against the cold, curved wall as I make for a bookshelf, where a faded outline of something rectangular lingers on the top shelf. Unlike the books in Vel’s old vessel, these look pristine, like they’ve been carefully maintained.

Arrik is such a poser. Deep down, he’s just a nerdy boy.

Nerdy boy.

Nerdy . . . boy . . .

The thought reverberates through me, unchecked. Velis is silent.

WHAT TF IS WRONG WITH ME?

I stare straight ahead, trying to force my mind to go blank, but the silence between us grows heavier by the second, and the scent of Arrik’s cologne in here is strong.

“Dolly.” Velis’s thumb slides down the side of the bottle, and I feel his touch like a giant’s along my arm.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt. “I’m trying not to think about him.”

Velis makes a contemplative noise, maybe involuntary, like he’s holding back something heavier. As he shifts me, I hover—either magically balanced on his shoulder or suspended midair. We move down a glass corridor with the jungle crawling on all sides—and how do I know? A portion of the wall has become a window, revealing what lies ahead.

He’s approaching a set of glass doors that guard a room full of trees with dangling glass ornaments where leaves should be.

I dart to the transparent section, the screen-like effect over it making the scene outside feel like a video rather than a hole in the vessel’s wall.

“Is that . . . a garden of crystal trees?”

“Yeah, crystal trees. It’s more of a stylistic choice. Any kind of crystal works.”

“For what?”

“A nexus.”

A trauma response hits me, and my pulse quickens. “Wait—you said the nexus is set at core neutral right now. At the manor, that’s how Arrik and I broke our tether. Won’t it break ours if we go in there?”

“It is core neutral,” Velis responds, his voice vibrating the walls. “One of the conditions for breaking a tether. The other being a terminated license. And, well... earlier today, Evaris offered to terminate mine. Yes, we’re going in there.”

I’m shocked enough that I can’t even ask why we’d do something so stupid when there are people after us, and we’re so vulnerable, away from the home base.

“He said he could take care of suspending it tonight and reinstating it in the morning,” Vel explains. “We’ll be tethered again by noon tomorrow, no matter what happens over the next twelve hours. If we break our tether now, it leaves you temporarily open for Arrik. Might as well see what he wants.”

Hold on. Didn’t Velis just say he thought it was Beckham ?!

Instant hurt surges through me, and giant Vel stumbles back, as if the emotional shockwave hits him physically.

“You’re serious?” I grip the wall to steady myself. “What happened to us never untethering again? Wasn’t that the whole point of our garden ceremony?” My blood burns hot under my skin—so intense I hope Velis can feel it.

He braces himself with a hand against the nexus doors. “In case any of my family showed up tonight, I needed a backup plan. And, unfortunately, they did. Be mad at me if you want, Master, but my priority is keeping you safe.”

Fuck. THAT.

I’ve already felt a bond snap once—with Arrik—and it wasn’t just some string being cut. It was like a piece of me went with him, and I’m not ready to feel that again.

And aside from that, I’m pissed. Velis and I agreed to stay tethered forever, and the second things get complicated, instead of going back to the rental like I suggested, he decides to bolt into danger because he’s hero-boy Vel—

“ Master! ” His voice pings inside my head. “ Hang on! I’m not untethering us. I’d never do that! My license isn’t suspended, and going in there won’t break our tether. I just needed whoever’s messing with us to overhear the conversation. It had to be believable. I knew you’d be pissed for a second, but I didn’t think it would hit you that hard. I wasn’t thinking about how bad your experiences were in the nexus before—when you thought Arrik was selling you to Beckham, and when you two untethered. I’m sorry. ”

Oh.

He’s such a good not-liar liar. It truly freaks me out.

“ I know. I know. They teach us how to pull this shit. I try not to use it. Technically, I did discuss it as a backup with Evaris. He offered, but I told him there was no way in hell I’d untether us. There’s a good chance we’re being watched. If it’s Amoira or Beckham, they’ll think we believe it’s Arrik—and that we’re leaving this room untethered. It draws them out and gives us an edge. I doubt they’ll strike here, but we’ll need to be careful once we’re back at the rental. ”

I’m the bait.

He’s silent. He can’t even joke about it. My emotions have been manipulated too many times by his family, and he tries, with everything in him, to be better than that.

But he’s right. It’s a clever plan. We’ll have the element of surprise. And I’m not letting these fucks ruin our vacation.

“I really am sorry, Dolly.”

“I’m in.”

There’s a brief hesitation beyond the bottle.

Desperate measures, Vel.

He pushes through the doors.

This nexus is even more beautiful than the Reilhander one. The crystal leaves catch any slivers of light they can find through the dense jungle beyond the all-glass walls. Though the light is scarce, it glimmers off the delicate, frost-like leaves dripping from trees no bigger than apple trees. It feels like we’ve stepped into a cabinet full of breakable figurines, a fragile, midnight wonderland.

Vel keeps me inside his vessel to shield me from the nexus’s negative emotional effects—and from the stale, empty air—and it helps. That vacant, lonely feeling I experienced the night my bond with Arrik shattered feels distant, kept at bay by the warmth of Vel’s massive hands cradling me.

It’s hard being in here, surrounded by all of Arrik’s discarded things, remnants of a life he left behind. I wonder what was on that shelf. A miniature tank of sprites? Did he take them on the road with him like pet fish?

Let me get this straight. You genuinely believe I’m the kind of guy who would kidnap baby mermaids, wait until they grow to full size, and then fuck them?

Damn it. I did it again.

Vel clears his throat—loud enough to make me jump. “Yeah, since we’ve got a sec, can we talk about that?”

“Talk about what?” I ask the ceiling.

“About how every time you think about my brother, I hear it.”

My tiny stomach drops. “Can we please not?”

“Look, I know it’s not really my place to say anything, since I shouldn’t even be hearing it—but when you react, it gets louder. The guilt is harder to ignore than your actual thoughts. Normally, I can tune that stuff out, but when you do it for my sake... it just makes it worse.”

“That’s . . . fair.”

“I get why your mind goes there, Dolly. Really, I do, okay? The bond between a master and djinn is the most intimate one two people can have—and yours with him was... well, it wasn’t normal. He bonded you outside his vessel— twice . Living together. The length of time you were tethered. His manipulation of your memories. You’re the only master he’s ever had that remembers him, and you were friends. None of that is normal.”

He knocks his head back against the wall with a dull thud that echoes through the metal, amplifying the weight of his words.

“So yeah, I expect your mind to drift to him. But it’s the reaction part that makes it seem like you think there’s something to be guilty about. We talked about your feelings for him the night we tethered. I don’t blame you. There’s a lot at play here. I just want you to get through it. I just want it to go numb and die.”

I remove my mask and settle against the wall of Vel’s new vessel, knees tucked to my chest.

When he puts it like that, this connection with Arrik seems inevitable. He was in my head, like a constant second conscience, for weeks. Despite never seeing me naked, it’s like he’s seen every inch of me, and it’s not like we had a fight before he left. It’s not like he did anything wrong. It’s just... lingering, like a ghost of a connection that refuses to detach, even though I’m tethered to Velis, with my heart fuller than ever.

It’s complicated.

“I know you have no right to use my emotions against me. But the truth is, you do feel them, and you’re allowed to be frustrated about it, Vel.”

“Who says I’m not? Fuck, it’s not like I’m okay with it—okay?” Velis exhales, barely keeping his emotions in check. “It’s hard, watching you work through everything with him. Especially on our honeymoon. It’s fucking ass. But I’m not going to make things harder on you by directing my anger at you. Both times you bonded with him were because of me. None of your involvement with him has been by choice. And as civil as we all pretend to be with each other, at the end of the day, he’s a predator, I’m a predator, and you’re our prey, and I can’t blame you for falling prey to your desires around a bunch of desire-farming djinn.”

There’s a lot to digest. Humans are complex. So are djinn. And it’s surreal that my boyfriend knows I have side feelings I’m trying to work through, and he’s not raking me over the coals for it. I don’t think there’s anyone else out there where any of this could actually work.

“I love you, Velis,” I tell him, soft but sure. “No matter who shows up tonight or what goes down, you’re my favorite.”

There’s no hesitation. The walls around me warm, and I know he’s holding his vessel to his chest. “I know, Master. And you’re the most important person in my life. I’m not going anywhere.”