Wicked Lovely (Wicked Lovely 1)

Olivia shook her head. “If I am to stay, you must get used to starlight.”

“Stay?” he repeated.

“You require me. I waited until you decided, but you knew”—she pointed at the glass— “that you were accepting me. . . . Didn’t you?”

Rabbit nodded. “I knew I was accepting something with you.”

Olivia turned to look at the doorway. “I will need the house grown larger and my studio brought here.”

Rabbit looked to the empty doorway as Ani started, “I can call Dev—”

The door opened, and Devlin walked in.

“What . . .” Devlin took in the small group. In a blink, he took the glass from Ani. “Don’t drink that.”

“Why?”

“It’s not for us.” Devlin upended the glass, pouring the contents back into the pitcher. “We cannot drink starlight.”

“I forget that you are only in the now, not in the later. I’m sorry.” Olivia smiled at Devlin and Ani. “My studio should be here by this time. You arrive, and then you bring my studio. I think that is now, not before-now. Is that right?” She looked at Devlin, and when he nodded she bowed her head to the Shadow King and Queen. “Give the other queen my greetings.”

Rabbit watched them with a growing sense of peace. This was the family that would be his. It wasn’t the Hunt or the Dark Court, but he was with his sister and the faery who loved her. He was with a faery who made him feel closer to normal than he expected. They were in his home—which might have just become Olivia’s home too.

“You may come to my studio,” Olivia told Rabbit, and then she walked toward a door that hadn’t been there before. It opened as she approached it, lengthening into a hallway.

For a moment he hesitated, but it was only a moment. “Did Olivia just move in with me?”

“It appears so,” Devlin murmured.

After Rabbit was gone, Devlin turned to Ani and gently suggested, “We ought to leave them.”

/> “What if she hurts—”

“Ani?” Devlin took her hand in his and pulled her toward the door. “Olivia wouldn’t hurt Rabbit.”

“She might not mean to, but—”

“No,” he interrupted. “She wouldn’t hurt him. I’m not sure she could now.” Devlin leaned in close to Ani. “She fed him starlight, and it didn’t injure him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She gave her some of her energy, her peace, herself.” Devlin trailed his fingertips over Ani’s jawline and onto her throat. “They are both being nourished by the starlight that is her essence. She will protect your brother above all others.”

“Why?” Ani’s gaze darted to the doorway that now led to Olivia’s studio. “I’m glad, but why?”

Devlin traced the edge of Ani’s collarbone. “Why do you nourish me? Why do I feed you?”

At that, Ani stared up at him. “So they . . .”

“Are together,” Devlin finished.

“Together,” Ani echoed. “Is that what we are?”

“No.” He brought his fingertips back up the path they’d traced, along her collarbone and to her throat. He paused there. “We are much, much more than merely together. You”—he felt her pulse speed under his fingers—“are the faery who gives me strength, who gives me reason to wake in the mornings, who infuriates me, who enrages me, who enthralls me.”

“Oh.”

He leaned down and kissed her throat. “You are my passion, my fury, and my soul.”