But she was already back in the doorway, water bottle in hand. “Your fridge is worse than mine,” she said, shoving the bottle toward him and entering the living room again. Ruhn sipped as the stereo system in the back thumped the opening notes of a song, guitars wailing, and she angled her head, listening, weighing.

Fae impulse—to be drawn to music, and to love it. Perhaps the one side of her heritage she didn’t mind. He remembered her showing him her dance routines as a young teenager. She’d always looked so unbelievably happy. He’d never had the chance to ask why she stopped.

Ruhn sighed, forcing himself to focus, and said to Bryce, “Why are you here?”

She stopped near the sectional. “I told you: I need to talk to you.”

Ruhn kept his face blank. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d bothered finding him.

“Why would your cousin need an excuse to chat with us?” Flynn asked, murmuring something in the dryad’s delicate ear that had her heading for the cluster of her three friends at the pool table, her narrow hips swishing in a reminder of what he’d miss if he waited too long. Flynn drawled, “She knows we’re the most charming males in town.”

Neither of his friends ever guessed the truth—or at least voiced any suspicions. Bryce tossed her hair over a shoulder as Flynn rose from his armchair. “I have better things to do—”

“Than hang out with Fae losers,” Flynn finished for her, heading to the built-in bar against the far wall. “Yeah, yeah. You’ve said so a hundred times now. But look at that: here you are, hanging with us in our humble abode.”

Despite his carefree demeanor, Flynn would one day inherit his father’s title: Lord Hawthorne. Which meant that for the past several decades, Flynn had done everything he could to forget that little fact—and the centuries of responsibilities it would entail. He poured himself a drink, then a second one that he handed to Bryce. “Drink up, honeycakes.”

Ruhn rolled his eyes. But—it was nearly midnight, and she was at their house, on one of the rougher streets in the Old Square, with a murderer on the loose. Ruhn hissed, “You were given an order to lie low—”

She waved a hand, not touching the whiskey in her other. “My imperial escort is outside. Scaring everyone away, don’t worry.”

Both his friends went still. The draki male took that as an invitation to drift away, aiming for the billiards game behind them as Declan twisted to look at her. Ruhn just said, “Who.”

A little smile. Bryce asked, swirling the whiskey in its glass, “Is this house really befitting of the Chosen One?”