Chapter Text
“You have a wife?!”
That was his mother’s voice shrieking down the phone, loud enough that Tharion had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“Sweet suffering Ogenas, Tharion,” his father cursed in the background.
He’d been dreading this conversation for weeks, and hoped that he’d be able to avoid telling his parents that on top of saving the world alongside Bryce and Athalar, and finding a new job under the Ocean Queen, he’d also found himself a wife.
But the water found a way and got ahead of him. Delta, the River Queen’s daughter, apparently made it her mission to tell every subject under her mother’s rule that her betrothed had jilted her for the daughter of a fae Lord.
“A fae, Tharion? You married a fae! And worse still, we had to find out from that busybody Mrs. Brooks,” she cried. Tharion had to give her that, he cringed at his parents’ nosy neighbour knowing anything about his personal life.
“Shannon,” his father warned. “Let him explain.” Havelock Ketos sounded already exhausted by this conversation, but was usually sympathetic to Tharion. Shannon Ketos meanwhile, would be all too happy to lecture him.
Ordinarily, he’d welcome it. Drown himself in their disappointment until it rolled off his back. He’d made enough colossal missteps in the last year alone—even if it all turned out fine in the end—and Tharion felt he thoroughly deserved a verbal dressing down.
Except for when it came to Sathia.
Despite everyone telling him that marrying her was a terrible idea, her own brother included, Tharion couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad for doing it.
“Look, I know it’s… unconventional—”
“You can say that again,” Shannon’s sharp voice cut him off. “The fae don’t divorce, Tharion. You’re stuck with her until one of you dies!”
“Mom,” he pleaded, “will you just let me explain?”
A pause, and Tharion could almost picture his mother twirling a strand of her copper hair around a finger, fighting off the indignation she was no doubt feeling in this moment.
“Fine,” she relented. “Explain.”
“Thank you,” he breathed. “And Dad, don’t let her cut me off until I’m done, okay?”
“Roger that, son,” his father confirmed, his voice calm and measured like the schoolteacher he was.
Tharion took a deep breath and told them the shortest version of the story possible: The trip to Avallen—not mentioning that he’d absconded from the Ocean Queen’s custody, the audience in front of the now-dead King Morven,and the ultimatum Sathia had been given.
“So her own parents abandoned her there? To those creeps?” Havelock muttered, a little clearer now, and Tharion guessed they were seated together on the sofa in the living room of his family home Below.
“Yeah, they’re real pricks,” he said, and judging by the way his mother didn’t admonish his cursing, he knew she agreed with his assessment. “And, I know it’s crazy, but all I could think of was…” he paused, knowing this next part would sting, “Lesia.”
Thanks to his vanir hearing, Tharion caught the sharp intake of breath from his mother. He continued talking before he lost his nerve.
“Her own brother, even though I’m pretty good friends with him, was content to let her be married off to one of those assholes. I hoped if it was Lesia in that situation, someone would step up for her. And I just couldn’t let it happen, Mom.”
He was met by silence on the other side of the line, and it didn’t sit well with him. Tharion hated the quiet, and felt the urge to fill it with some kind of joke, when his father’s voice came back over the speaker.
“I think your mom needs some time to adjust, Tharion,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”
Tharion sighed, and understood. After months of feeling like time was running out, the idea of having time to adjust was rather nice. He hoped his mother would come around eventually, once the shock of having a fae daughter-in-law wore off.
“In the meantime,” Havelock said, “tell me about her.”
Tharion almost choked on thin air. Sat on a rock on the shore of the Istros, enjoying the sunshine and taking in the gentle sounds of a city in recovery, he hadn’t expected the question from his father, of all people.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he admitted, and for once, Tharion was being truthful. “We worked together to get the River Queen to open her court to asylum seekers, and then…”
“Then what?” his father asked.
Tharion paused, trying to work out how to articulate that his wife had—for all intents and purposes—left him to chase after her first love, who was under the thrall of the Viper Queen. An allure he understood all too well, yet he found himself with very, very little sympathy for Colin McCarthy. If he’d had someone like Sathia waiting for him, with all her bravery and beauty and—
“She had some personal shit to deal with,” Tharion said bluntly, cutting off his own train of thought. “Still does.”
“I see,” Havelock answered. “Well, I suppose congratulations are in order?”
Tharion huffed a laugh. “A little late for that, but I’ll take the wins where I can, Pop.”
His father laughed, and it was a nice sound—one he hadn’t heard in quite some time. Lesia had always been able to make him chuckle, her witty sense of humour aligned nicely with his, and Tharion wasn’t sure whether either of his parents laughed much these days.
“Just be careful, alright? Your mom and I are glad you’re okay, but just don’t make any more rash decisions. Your mother can’t take another heartbreak.”
The words landed with full force against Tharion’s chest. His father was right, of course, and he really did want to take things easy for a while. Though anything that involved Bryce Quinlan didn’t necessarily mean easy, it also didn’t mean alone anymore. At least he had that.
As for Sathia… it had been a month since he’d seen her.
He’d sent her the odd text, just to check that she was alive. Sometimes she’d text back with an ‘all good’, sometimes with a thumbs up emoji, or no response at all. The latter didn’t mollify Tharion, but he hoped no news meant good news. Plus, if something had happened to her, the grapevine that had become his social and professional circle would tell him soon enough.
He was also soothed by the fact that she was in Bryce’s ‘Asteri Ass-kickers’ group chat, in which she’d sometimes like a selfie Bryce would post, or a laugh-react to a photo Bryce had sent of Athalar’s ass when he spoke at important conferences.
When he stopped thinking about how weird it was that he was in a group chat that included a roster of Crescent City’s deadliest people, he thought about Sathia. If she was looking after herself, if she’d made any progress with Colin, and selfishly, if she ever thought about him.
Probably not, asshole, he’d tell himself.
Ordinarily this kind of pining over a female either wouldn’t happen to begin with, or would send Tharion straight into the arms of one of the many available, ready and willing females vying for him on any given night—getting under someone else was a tried and true method in his book.
But Sathia gave him pause.
They hadn’t even set out what the terms of their relationship, if you could even call it that, should be, yet the thought of sleeping with another female while married to her made him feel icky. Wrong, maybe even shameful, in a way he’d never felt before. Even when betrothed, he didn’t particularly care that he slept around behind Delta’s back. That was part of the game.
Was it because, on some level, he knew that his tie to the River Queen’s daughter was as solid as a piece of driftwood? Probably. But this was a marriage. An unconventional, undefined marriage, but for the first time in his immortal life, Tharion wasn’t content to play. Sathia had suffered enough, risked enough. The last thing she needed was a husband who didn’t give her a second thought before they’d even talked things through. Her king, her parents, and damn him, even Tristan, had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t give two shits about her, and despite all the stupid things Tharion had done in his life, he wasn’t about to make marrying Sathia one of them. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to fuck this up. He owed it to her to be a knight in shining armour. Someone noble, for once in his gods-damned life.
He hung up the phone on his father, both agreeing they needed to prioritise battery life, with Tharion promising to check-in more regularly, and Havelock assuring him his mother would come around.
His lunch break was almost up, and he was due back on the Depth Charger to oversee a delegation of human and vanir engineers and physicists intent on studying how the city-under-the-sea powered itself without first or second light.
All very good and fine work, but it still didn’t ease the pain in his chest. At knowing he’d be coming back to an empty apartment—something that ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered him. But now it made him feel… hollow.
And not the good kind of hollow pleasure he felt after fucking a beautiful female. Not the hollow oblivion he felt under the thrall of the Viper Queen’s venom. Not the hollow sadness he’d felt every day since Lesia had died.
No, this was the kind of emptiness you felt when you wondered, maybe even dared to hope, that something out there could fill it.
Or someone.
The text was from an unknown number, and Sathia usually wouldn’t even bat an eyelid, but as she sipped on her flat white, she scanned the message over and over again. For a sign? A secret code? She just didn’t know anymore.
Getting through to Colin had been a careful dance of half a step forward, and three steps back. Every time she saw a glimpse of the male she’d known,the male she’d fallen in love with, the mirage would dissolve. He’d go back to her, do her bidding, or whatever she asked of him, and only deign to return to the apartment she was currently sub-letting from a friend week-to-week in the small hours of the night, if he did at all. Stinking of something she couldn’t name, covered in blood that could have been his, or someone else’s; Colin would collapse on the sofa and sleep all morning, and all afternoon while she worked, and disappear once more as the sun set.
She would try to cobble food together, usually takeout, in order to rouse him, but his hunger for her outweighed any other desire, any other instinct. After a month of failed attempts, Sathia still had no idea what to do. He was completely and utterly under the Viper Queen’s thrall, and no amount of begging, crying, or screaming would get him to leave her.
The only thing she could compare it to was shouting at a blank wall, expecting it to say something back. Colin sometimes offered a slurred response, but nothing more than that.
His own parents had long given up on trying to get him out of this stupor, leaving him to high-tail it to Avallen, and talking to her own about it was a non-starter. So, Sathia did her best to weather this storm by herself.
She headed up a hodgepodge team of sympathetic PR and communications experts to help Bryce through the government transition, and thankfully, wrangling them took up most of her day. With the upcoming Nena summit, she was too busy to worry about anything else. But when her meeting-filled days ended, Sathia would try and get Colin to talk, laugh, cry. Show an emotion that wasn’t sloth. She’d put on a sunball game, a crime drama, reality shows about anything and everything, but nothing piqued his interest.
She would invite people over, but since most of their mutual fae friends had left for Avallen, all that was left was her new circle.
Tristan, the prick, wouldn’t entertain the notion of trying to rehabilitate Colin for one second.
“He was an asshole then, and he’s an asshole now. At least now you have an out,” he’d said when he dropped Ruhn and Dec at her door to try and help, refusing to even set foot in the apartment. He scrunched his nose. “I can smell that disgusting venom from here.”
Despite their earnest attempts, her brother’s friends had no luck. Hypaxia, too, even with all her medwitch knowledge, had nothing to help him either.
“He has to want to go,” she’d explained after assessing him and giving him a sedative to ease the night terrors. “It’s how Tharion rid himself of her.”
Tharion.
A sobering reminder of the person she’d left behind to deal with this mess. She’d been avoiding him, because in true PR fashion, she thought it best to deal with one crisis at a time. And since her personal life was actively going up in flames, Sathia hoped, perhaps naively, that Tharion would still be there when this was all over. If he wasn’t, though, she could hardly blame him.
She checked her phone to see he'd messaged again.
She considered answering his “All ok?” message, but every time her thumbs hovered over the keyboard, the words she needed to say wouldn’t materialise. She typed out various responses.
Too sad. Delete.
Too light. Delete.
Too personal. Delete.
So, all she could manage was:
And his response was immediate.
Followed by a really cute photo of an otter, to which she reacted with a “😍”.
Then a selfie of him smiling broadly with the same otter perched on his shoulder.
And for the first time in weeks, she laughed. A chest-shaking laugh that made her look like a total psycho in this coffee shop, but she didn’t care. It was a nice, light feeling, compared to the dread she’d grown so accustomed to.
She studied the photo a little longer, admiring the blue sky and aquamarine sea behind them. The smile on the otter’s face and the grin on Tharion’s. His honey brown eyes were hidden by a pair of sunglasses, but his jaw-length auburn hair was slicked back, and his striped shoulders and chest were glistening with freshwater. Or sweat.
She allowed herself to linger on the shadow of his pronounced pectoral muscles. And the obscene curve of his bicep. And the veins on his forearm.
Before she could question the ethics of objectifying the male who happened to be her husband, a whistle sounded behind her: “Ooh he’s handsome!”
Sathia whipped her head around to see an older fae female peering at her phone screen. “Your boyfriend?” she asked.
Her instinct was to deny it and hide the phone away, but for a moment, she had a chance to be normal, and indulged.
“My husband, actually,” she said. It still felt a little weird to say that. A good weird.
“Merciful Cthona,” she drawled, practically drooling over the photo. “She certainly favours you,” she said. “I wish mine looked like that.”
Sathia couldn’t stifle her chuckle. Nor could she even deny that Tharion was ridiculously gorgeous. Or stop herself from blushing.
“How long have you been married?” the female asked, and Sathia hid her grimace at the memory of her so-called ‘wedding day’.
“Six months,” she lied quickly, as she imagined weddings were the last thing on most normal people’s minds this summer.
“Oh, congratulations!” she cooed, as a younger fae male approached, carrying two mugs.
“Nana, are you bothering strangers again?” he asked, and something about him looked awfully familiar. He glanced at her, and a flicker of recognition showed in his features. “Holy shit, you’re Tristan’s sister, right? Sally? Sarah?”
Stunned at being recognised by anyone, Sathia turned back to look at her coffee cup, wishing she had a pair of sunglasses or a hat to cover her face.
“No, you’re mistaken,” she said, and picked up the cup to down its remaining contents before she left.
“No, I know you, the Hawthornes, right? The one who had to marry a fish? Holy shit!”
“Silas, language!” the elder female admonished him, but he ignored her.
Then, to Sathia’s horror, he pulled out a phone and started taking photos of her.
No longer willing to sit and be humiliated, she bolted from the café, not even looking back to see if the guy’s grandmother had made the connection or not.
She hurried down the block, thankfully not too far from her apartment, and waited until she was firmly inside the door before she broke down in tears.
Her life had become a waking nightmare, between the disaster that was Colin and the marriage to Tharion, she was persona non grata among the fae. Her parents had deemed it easier to shun her than try and help, and Tristan would not speak to her while Colin was in the picture.
She needed to talk to someone. Ideally it would be Bryce, who understood just how fucked up the fae were, but she had so much shit to deal with already, that her problems seemed like nothing in comparison.
The odd little sorority that had formed around the new fae queen was still finding its feet. Lidia and Hypaxia were still working out how to rule Valbara, supporting their partners or ruling on their own—girl talk was not high on anyone’s agenda.
So, Sathia picked up her phone and dialled the one number she’d avoided calling this past month.
He answered on the first ring.
Tharion had been walking home, excusing himself from work early. Commander Sendes allowed it, on the condition he report on anything happening Above, which he was planning to do anyway.
The frat house he’d lived in with Holstrom, Dec, Flynn and Ruhn quickly dwindled. Holstrom moved to Moonwood after becoming Prime; Dec moved in with Marc, and Ruhn shacked up with Lidia—leaving Tristan and the fire sprites to their own devices. If he wasn’t already ticked off with Flynn for the way he treated Sathia, whatever was going on between him and Ariadne was enough of a reason to keep his distance.
That, and he figured a real adult with a real job (and a wife) should have a decent living situation. Plus, if Sathia ever resurfaced, he wanted her to know he had thought about her, and so he moved into a modest penthouse close to the Istros, by the old River Gate. Thanks to the Ocean Queen’s desire to keep tabs on what was happening Above, she deemed both Tharion and the apartment an asset to her court.
“How you always manage to fall upwards, I’ll never know,” Holstrom had said when he helped Tharion move in. Frankly, he didn’t know either.
Despite its proximity to the Istros, the apartment had a private pool and balcony, two generous king-size bedrooms, a walk-in closet, and a home office. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran the length of the living space, offering panoramic views of the city to the north and a calming view of the river to the south.
The finishes were modern and understated—affirming this was a work perk and not a bachelor pad. Pale stone floors, warm wood accents, fixtures chosen for longevity over fashion. At night, the city’s glow softened the space, reflections rippling faintly across the ceiling from the pool beyond the glass. Secure too, with 24-hour security, biometric locks and safety spells.
He hadn’t told Sathia about the place yet, but it was ready when she was. He couldn’t really do more than that.
He was just about to let himself in and order pizza for dinner when his phone rang.
Sathia? Calling him?
He answered immediately. “Sathia? Are you okay?”
His breathing came thick and fast, unable to shake off the feeling that something had gone wrong. That for her to call him meant it had to be.
A muffled cry answered him, “Tharion?”
“Tell me where you are,” he said, turning on a heel and heading back out onto the street.
“19 Solas Street, just off Central,” she sniffed, her voice weakened from crying. “Apartment 6.”
“I know it,” he breathed. “I’m on my way.”
Maybe it was too much, an overreaction he had no control over, but so many people had let her down, and Tharion wasn’t adding his name to that list.
Thanks to his levelled up power, Tharion ran across the city in record time, pushing past people without remorse. Ordinarily he wouldn’t be so brutish, but damn it, he had to make sure she was alright. Something in him drove him to her.
When Tharion finally arrived at her apartment building, having cut through the Fi-Ro district at break-neck speed, he called #6.
“I’m here,” he panted, realising just how damn fast he’d been running to get here.
The sound of what he assumed to be Sathia getting up off the floor to buzz him in, preceded her saying, “Already?”
He looked down at the call length: 06:45.
River Gate to Fi-Ro in six minutes? Holy fucking Urd, this new power was insane.
The door unlocked as Sathia’s answering buzz sounded, and he bolted up the stairs to her apartment, only for it to be open. Sathia stood in the doorway, tears streaming down her face, eyes puffy and mascara streaked beneath them.
“What happened?” he panted, checking over her for signs of… he didn’t know. She wasn’t injured or covered in blood, which in his line of work was already a huge relief.
She sniffed again, looking him over in kind. “You ran here?”
He cocked a head at her change in subject. “I needed the exercise,” he said casually. “What happened?” he asked again.
She bit her lower lip, it too was swollen. “Come in,” she said, her voice soft with sadness. “I’ll tell you over coffee.”
Tharion followed her in and took in the space around him. It was a fine apartment, high ceilings and modern furnishings, but the windows were small, and the only view was the apartment block across the street. He didn’t say so, but he thought Sathia would really love the city view from his place. Their place.
She went to the kitchen counter to make a machine coffee, but her hands began to shake.
“Here,” he said, stepping up beside her. “Let me.”
He looked down at Sathia, who without shoes on, came up to his shoulder. Even crying she managed to look lovely, but now wasn’t the time to ogle her.
He grabbed an espresso pod from the jar on the side and placed it into the machine, whirring as it poured into a small cup. Bougie, he thought. Ordinarily, he’d be conscious of using up the power, but right now, it didn’t matter. Getting her something, looking after her, was more important.
“It’s literally so stupid,” she said, folding her arms around herself. “I’m not even sure why I got so upset.”
“I bet it wasn’t stupid,” he said.
She sighed. “I was just grabbing a coffee down the street, when this old lady started talking to me,” she started, and her eyes flicked up to meet his. Two sparkling emeralds in the early evening light, and Tharion swallowed whatever feeling the sight of them gave him. “About you, actually.”
He raised his brows, keen to know what that conversation entailed, but she moved on quickly.
“When her grandson recognised me, and started taking pictures of me. He knew about me, about us, and I just… panicked,” she said, waving a hand around. “Like an idiot!”
“Of course you panicked. And you’re not an idiot,” Tharion assured her. “Marrying me made you a pariah to your people, but that’s not your fault.”
He felt like the absolute lowest of the low. Only he would do a good deed, or what he thought was good, and end up making everything so much worse.
“And I thought I was ready for that,” she said, gratefully taking the cup of coffee he offered her. “Ready to sneer at anyone who said anything, or made a stupid comment. But he insulted you too, and I just didn’t know how to handle it. Ordinarily I’d have said something back, but I was so stunned, I couldn’t speak. And that’s never happened to me before.”
Tharion offered an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Sathia,” he said. “Want me to find and drown the bastard?” he joked, trying to lighten the mood.
And thank Cthona, she offered him a smile in return. Soft and small. Beautiful, actually. Her freckled cheeks bunching up, making her eyes crinkle. It made his chest ache.
“No, thank you, though. I don’t think that would help fae-mer relations.”
He realised how that sounded as she did, and a pretty blush crept up her cheek. Tharion cleared his throat to diffuse the tension, helping himself to a cup of coffee. “Well, if you need me to, just say the word, sweetheart.” He blinked at the nickname that just rolled off his tongue, feeling a very unfamiliar heat rise in his own cheeks. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—”
“It’s okay,” she said, brushing a strand of hair behind a pointed ear. “Here, take a seat.” She gestured to the seat opposite the small round table. “How have you been?” she asked, and he was grateful for the change in subject.
“I’ve been good, working for the Ocean Queen Below, living Above.”
“Just good?” she asked, and her face was still red from crying, but at least the tears had stopped—which was good. Good, because he hated seeing anyone crying, and good because he’d have felt a very strong compulsion to comfort her. Something she might neither want nor need, and he thanked sweet, merciful Urd that he hadn’t been put in that position.
“Just good,” he replied. “I moved into a new place by the River Gate,” he said, pausing to consider whether he should tell her it was her place too should she want it, but he figured it could wait for a time when she wasn’t so upset. “And I’m working under Commander Sendes.”
“Ah,” Sathia said, recognising the name of the mer female. For a moment, something unreadable crossed her face—a tightening at the mouth, a flicker in her eyes—and then it was gone, replaced by a soft smile.
Weird, Tharion thought, but he let it slide. “How’s it going here?” he asked.
She returned an unimpressed huff. “Awful,” she admitted, rolling up the sleeves of the ivory blouse she wore, resting her elbows on the table and holding her head in her hands. “I’m getting nowhere with Colin, my parents have totally shunned me, and Tristan won’t talk to me while Colin’s still around.”
“I’m sorry, Sathia,” he said, unable to think of anything better to say. “If I’d known—”
“Hey,” she cut him off. She looked up at him, softening her tone and reaching out a hand across the table to lay it on his. Her palm was warm from the mug she’d been holding, and it fit in his nicely.
He realised this was the first time they’d actually touched each other, and like a damn teenager, it was making his heart thunder. Suddenly, the sound of the water in the pipes was louder, and every sense lit up. Holy fucking Urd, he cursed himself silently.
“You saved my skin back in Avallen, if you hadn’t stepped up—” her voice caught, and Tharion didn’t hesitate to squeeze her hand, knowing where her thoughts must have led her.
“I know, and I’m good with how things turned out,” he said, and he meant it. “Take all the time you need, Sathia. I’m going nowhere until you tell me to.”
She smiled again, and used her free hand to wipe a tear away. “Thank you,” she whispered.
They spent the next hour or so talking. Sathia walked him through the ten-step PR plan she’d devised for Bryce to navigate the power shift in Valbara, the conference in Nena, then the big-picture plan for all of Midgard.
Tharion offered up what he could about the Ocean Queen’s plans, but he decided, in a rare moment of wisdom, to confirm how much he could share with a spouse before he spilled proprietary information to her.
Then, she offered to make dinner, and he accepted. Instant ramen with a boiled egg, spring onions and pickled ginger; simple, yet perfect.
Tharion insisted on doing the dishes, leaving Sathia to scroll on her phone. He filled up the sink and got to drying—using his power to will the water off everything and back into the sink.
“Holy shit,” he heard Sathia mutter behind him.
“It’s not that impressive,” he said, only half paying attention. “I can do it without thinking.”
“No, not that,” she whispered, and her phone rang out so glaringly he almost dropped a cup.
“Hey,” she answered. “Yeah, I’ve just seen it.”
“Seen what?” Tharion mouthed from the sink.
“I had no idea he was sending those photos to anyone,” she said, sitting up straight on the sofa. “Oh gods, Bryce is going to flip.”
“Sathia,” Tharion spoke louder now. “What’s going on?”
“Hang on,” she said to the person on the phone. “That asshole sold the photos he took of me to Faemous, and they’ve just posted them to their two million MagiGram followers.”
“What’s Faemous?” Tharion asked, suddenly feeling very out of touch.
Sathia took a deep breath before answering. “It’s a fae society gossip blog,” she seethed. “So not only do all the Valbaran fae know about me now, all of Midgard will know.”
“Oh,” he said. “Not good?”
“Oh gods!” she shrieked, grabbing a pillow from her sofa and screaming into it. “The number one rule in PR is to not become the story. Now everyone will be talking about me and you, and not about Bryce and the Nena conference. Ugh!”
“So?” Tharion asked.
Sathia stilled, clutching the pillow to her chest now. “So?”
“Yeah, so what if they talk about us?”
He dropped the dish towel he’d been holding and walked over to the sofa to sit beside her.
“My parents are going to go ballistic,” she winced. “Tristan is never going to let me hear the end of it, all my ‘friends’,” she said in air quotes, “are going to—”
Her voice started to strain under the weight of her short, sharp breaths. And though Tharion never claimed to be good in a crisis, he knew a panic attack when he saw one. He placed his hands on Sathia’s shaking shoulders, before he could think better of it, to stop her from spiralling.
“Sathia, you’re hyperventilating, and I need you to breathe easy, okay?”
She nodded her head, and between the scent of whatever shampoo she’d been using and her own unique lavender and sandalwood scent, Tharion allowed himself a second to breathe her in, before loosening his grip.
She pulled back, locking those emerald green eyes with his, and he kept a hand on her shoulder to help steady her, and guided her breathing.
“In for four, hold for four, out for six, okay?”
She nodded, and imitated him as they breathed together. Her eyes never left his, and Tharion could feel the intensity of her stare, the desperation and gratitude within it, as he breathed in time with her.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice dropping down to an octave that didn’t set off his sonar hearing. “How’d you know that would work?”
He gave her a pained look. “After my sister died, I was prone to panic attacks too. The breathing helped calm me down,” he admitted, even the memory of it still clamped around his heart. The images he’d never be able to forget.
“Oh gods, I’m sorry,” she pressed a hand on the one he kept resting on her shoulder. “Thank you for helping me,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “What are husbands for?”
She snorted a soft laugh, and damn if that wasn’t a lovely sound.
He was achingly aware of how close they were on that couch, knees touching, her hand over his. He could actually see her pulse beating beneath her tanned skin. It looked soft. Really soft.
His attention snagged on her lips and wouldn’t let go. The urge to kiss her rose slow and inevitable, like a tide he knew he wasn’t going to fight—and didn’t want to.
Partly because knowing he couldn’t gave him a weird thrill, but also because he simply wanted to. Not casually. Not just once. The wanting had weight to it, a gravity that pulled him in.
And for a fleeting moment, when her eyes dropped to his lips, and flicked back up again, any resolve he had wore painfully thin. Especially when she fluttered those thick, brown lashes, and pouted those full pink lips. Whether Sathia was aware of what she was doing or not, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Because just as he was about to take the damn risk, and be the reckless asshole he’d always been, the door creaked open, and Sathia’s face went wan with shock.
Tharion turned to shield her from whoever made her still in that chilling way the fae did when threatened, and saw exactly who it was. Standing in the doorway in a dirty, slate grey hoodie, dark blue jeans and scuffed black sneakers; with glazed over eyes and bruising shadows beneath them.
Colin fucking McCarthy.