Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
“Hush,” Teddy cooed to her. “There’s nothing to cry about, love. Nothing’s changed. We’re doing what we’ve been doing since we met. We’re off on another adventure.”
“If Mama had b-been able to give me a b-b-brother, I’d want him to be just like you,’ she said into his neck.
Teddy closed his eyes as the silk of that slid through him.
He opened them and teased, “I would not choose you as sister, for you’re too bloody stubborn.”
He heard her hiccup a laugh before she sobbed again.
He then met Faunus’s gaze.
Faunus was staring at him with so much warmth in his eyes, Teddy knew he’d feel it for the rest of his life.
And that slid through him like silk too.
Teddy moved from changing into borrowed sleep pants, splashing water on his face and washing his mouth out in the antechamber, to the bedchamber where Faunus was not wearing sleep pants, or anything, and lounging on top of the bed.
Teddy felt himself stir at the brilliance of the spectacle before him, but he did not give into that feeling.
He moved to stand at the foot of the bed, and he looked to his lover.
“Moira sorted, dinner at the royal castle with the King’s Counsellor done, everyone bedded down under velvet and Dellish wool, now we must talk,” he declared.
“Yes, it was my place to tell her she was coming with us because she belongs to you and you belong to me, so she belongs to me. No, you will not be finding a dwelling in which to live with her, for you will be living with me. She can live with Nyx and Lorenz, or Saturn, if he wishes this, and she takes him. Or we will find somewhere else she likes that is comfortable and close to us, for I know you and you will not let me fuck you like I like with her down the hall. Now, come to bed so I can fuck you like I like to fuck you.”
Teddy didn’t let that stir him either (though this was proving more difficult).
“That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about, though now I wish to discuss all of that.”
“There is nothing to discuss, it is done.”
And again, he could not find an artist or a teacher or a spice vendor.
No, for him, it was a highhanded warrior.
Teddy chose where to start and did that.
“I’ll be living with you?”
At his question, Faunus exited the bed and walked to their antechamber.
He was gone but moments before he returned.
And when he returned, he had something with him that Teddy had completely forgotten, but seeing it in the now made Teddy draw in a great deal of air.
And hold it.
His journal.
Faunus resumed his lounge in the bed, head and back to headboard, long legs sprawled, and tossed the book to the end, close to Teddy.
“You are in love with me,” he announced.
By the gods.
“You read it?” Teddy whispered, aghast.
In the gift of the pages of the book that Lorenz had given him, he had written everything.
About his father and mother.
The first stable boy he took up his arse.
Fenn and the Go’Doan and how he had lost his way in The Rising, confusing lust with love, misinterpreting manipulation for affection.
How he had treated his acolytes.
How Lorenz and Nyx had found him, what they had offered him, how they had changed him and how deeply he felt for the both of them.
How Saturn amused him and enticed him and taught him the parts about what true friendship was that Nyx and Lorenz had not.
And how he had fallen in love with Faunus. His beauty. His strength. His loyalty. His humor. His affection. His protectiveness.
“I did,” Faunus answered “It was found as we searched for you. Upon perusing, it was clear it was yours. I wondered if it would give us clues as to where you might be—”
“That isn’t why you read it,” Teddy accused.
Faunus shrugged. “Perhaps not the only reason, but it is one of them.”
“Faunus, those are my most private thoughts.”
His brows shot up. “Do you think your love for me should be private?”
“My feelings for you should be mine to share when I want to share them,” Teddy retorted.
“And when would that be?”
“I don’t know.” Teddy threw up both of his hands. “Whenever I decided.”
“To be a Trusted, I have to take the cock of every Trusted,” he declared. “And I have to fuck them in return. Even Lorenz. This is why I am not yet a Trusted, Teddy. The invitation was extended. But until I go through the rituals, that being one of them, I will not get the mantle with the red and green.”
“And?” Teddy asked.
“And?” Faunus parroted dangerously.
“Outside Lorenz’s position, that is the highest rank a Firenz warrior can have,” he told him something he already knew. “The Trusted Ones are revered in Firenze. Hell, they’re revered everywhere.”