Chapter 143: Wolves Don’t Share Their Toys

Killian walked.

He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t care. He walked until Jack’s quiet street turned into a busier one, and then a busier one after that, until the sidewalks were crowded with beastmen heading home for the evening. They took one look at his face and got out of his way.

Good.

He needed space. He needed air that didn’t smell like her.

He had spent his whole life trying to master it. As a child, he hadn’t understood why the servants wept when he was upset, or why his tutors laughed too loudly when he was pleased. He was better at it now. He kept his emotions cold and flat and still, and most days, nothing leaked out of him that he didn’t choose to let out.

Most days.

It had slipped with Rain. But that had been anger, and he hadn’t cared to hold it back.

This was different.

He hadn’t been angry. He hadn’t been anything, not at first. He had leaned over to read her answer, and she had looked up at him with those plain brown eyes, and he had noticed her mouth.

That was all. He had noticed her mouth.

And then it was too late.

Killian stopped at a crosswalk and stared at the red light without seeing it.

He had felt the heat come up in him. He had felt it pour out into her. And then he had tasted it on the air between them, her pulse jumping, her breath going short, her body answering what he had put into it. He had tasted it, and instead of stopping, he had leaned closer.

His hands curled into fists at his sides.

She was his pet. A plain, trembling, maddening lesser, and she was his. Pets were owned. Kept. Protected. One did not desire a pet.

And yet.

The light turned green. The beastmen around him crossed. Killian didn’t move.

Killian exhaled slowly through his nose and turned around.

He should go home. Call his driver. Send Jack a message saying the arrangement was finished, and find the doctor himself. That would be the sensible thing.

But he had given the crow his word. Two days.

And a Lexur did not break his word.

* * *

Dinner was the quietest meal Blair had ever sat through.

Clarice and Kael had come home from the park just before sunset, Kael sticky with ice cream and chattering about a duck that had tried to eat his shoe. Clarice had taken one look at the dining room, with Blair sitting alone at the table and her eyebrows had risen very slightly.

She hadn’t asked a single question.

She had just started humming again.

Now they sat around the table with a pot of stew in the middle. Clarice at the head. Kael in his booster seat, next to Blair. And an empty chair where Daemus should have been.

"Daemus isn’t hungry," Clarice said pleasantly, ladling stew into a bowl. "Poor thing. He must have tired himself out at practice."

Blair stared into her bowl.

"Why is Dae sad?" Kael asked.

Blair’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth.

"He’s not sad, sweetheart," Clarice said. "He’s just tired."

The front door opened.

Everyone turned. Killian walked into the dining room, calm and composed, as if he had simply stepped out for some fresh air. His silver hair was a little windblown. There was a small paper bag in his hand from a stationery shop.

He took his seat at the far end of the table. He did not look at Blair.

Not once. Not when Clarice asked if he wanted stew. Not when Kael tried to show him the drawing of the duck. Not even when Blair’s spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered against her bowl. His purple eyes stayed fixed firmly on his food, or on Clarice, or on the wall behind Blair’s head. Anywhere but her face.

Blair should have been relieved.

She told herself she was relieved.

* * *

After dinner, Blair offered to wash the dishes. Mostly because it gave her somewhere to put her hands.

Killian went upstairs without a word. Kael fell asleep on the couch in a sticky heap. And Clarice picked up a dish towel and came to stand beside Blair at the sink, drying each plate as Blair handed it to her.

She was humming again.

"You and my son had a disagreement," Clarice said pleasantly.

It wasn’t a question. Blair scrubbed harder at a plate that was already clean.

"It’s... it’s nothing," she whispered.

"Mm." Clarice took the plate and dried it slowly. "Daemus has always had a temper when it comes to Killian. Ever since they were kids. They used to fight over everything. Toys. The last cookie. Whose turn it was on the swing." She set the plate in the cupboard. "Killian always won, of course."

Blair didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

"He’s very handsome, isn’t he?" Clarice went on. "The Crown Prince."

The glass Blair was holding slipped out of her fingers and splashed back into the soapy water.

"Luna has a whole room dedicated to him, you know. Pictures on every wall." Clarice laughed lightly. "Half the girls in the kingdom would give anything to have him look at them the way he looked at you today."

"He didn’t," Blair whispered. Her cheeks were burning. "He wasn’t... You weren’t even..."

"I have a nose, dear." Clarice tapped the side of it with one finger. "The whole dining room still smells of it."

Blair wanted to crawl into the sink and drown.

"Oh, don’t look like that. I’m not judging you." Clarice took the glass from her hand, dried it, and held it up to the light to check for spots. "Beasts share. It’s perfectly natural. But Daemus..." She sighed, almost fondly. "Daemus has never been very good at sharing his toys. He is a wolf after all."

Blair’s hands went still in the water.

Toys.

Clarice set the glass in the cupboard, folded the towel neatly over the oven handle, and patted Blair’s cheek with a cool, dry hand.

"Get some sleep, dear," she said. "You look exhausted."

She walked away humming.

Blair stood alone at the sink with her hands in the cooling water, staring at the soap bubbles slowly popping one by one. It took her a long moment to put her finger on what was bothering her.

That night, she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. She thought about going upstairs to Daemus’s room and tell him everything.

She rolled over and pressed her face into her pillow.

Heather’s name on that form. 3:12 AM. Killian’s ID in the box beneath it. People who get close to him have a way of disappearing.

She had been so afraid, all this time. Too afraid to ask. Too afraid to look him in the eye. Too afraid of what he would do if he knew she knew.

But Heather had been gone for weeks. And every day Blair spent being afraid was another day Heather spent wherever he had put her.

Tomorrow was the last day of lessons. Jack would be home the day after. And then Killian would be gone, back to the academy.

Blair stared into the dark.

Tomorrow, she thought. Somehow, one way or another, she was going to find out what had happened to Heather.