“She wouldna stop asking questions about you. Apparently I didna satisfy her, because she’s demanding to see that you’re all right, despite my telling her that you were.”
Warrick smiled. He wasn’t surprised by Darcy’s words. She might be angry, but she held a great amount of empathy within her. “Is that so?”
“Aye. Go to her, mate, because I willna be going back without you.”
“Is she scared?”
Thorn’s eyes grew large in agitation. “Scared? Did you no’ just hear what I told you?”
“Mortals sometimes mask their true feelings with others.”
“Is that so?”
Warrick leaned back against the building once more. Damn. Had he let too much slip? His brethren wouldn’t understand his fascination with the mortals. “Or so I’ve been told.”
“By who?” Thorn asked. “You doona like being around anyone. Except, apparently, Darcy. It seems you’re content to remain with her for hours.”
“We’re here to protect her.”
“That we are, but you usually want to take the position farthest away from everyone. No’ so this time.”
Warrick shrugged. “She’s interesting.”
“And quite pretty. That explains why you want to remain around her, but you’ve still no’ said how you know so much about the humans.”
No matter what Warrick said, Thorn wasn’t going to stop questioning him until he was satisfied with the answer. There wasn’t time for that kind of debate, and Warrick wasn’t keen to sit there that long either.
“You’ve always been riveted by them.”
Warrick’s head swung to Thorn. “What?”
“It’s no’ a secret, War. You tried to hide it, sure, but we saw how you watched them.”
“You’ve been asleep,” Warrick said, disgruntled that he hadn’t kept his interests to himself as he originally thought.
Thorn glanced out to the street. “For only three centuries. You liked your solitude, but that didna mean the rest of us didna look out for you.”
“I know,” he answered roughly. He wasn’t comfortable talking about such things. The way Thorn wouldn’t meet his gaze, said he wasn’t happy about it either. “We look out for each other.”
“Aye, but you forget that when you go off by yourself.”
“I doona,” Warrick argued. “I stay to myself because I’m never sure of what to say, and when I do talk, most times I say the wrong thing.”
Thorn turned his head back to him. “I’m no’ condemning you for your choices.”
There was more to his words, the meaning going much deeper than Warrick’s choices. He wondered what Thorn was alluding to, but he knew better than to prod. Thorn would never reveal anything.
It was odd to realize that other Kings knew what he had been about. Warrick had assumed they didn’t care when he went off by himself. It seems he was wrong about a great many things.
“Aye, I find the mortals interesting. Their choices, their stupidity, their brilliance. All of it intrigues me.”
Thorn’s dark eyes held no censure. “You’ve been studying them a long time. How is it you didna hold the hate within you as most of us did?”
“I doona know. Every time I tried, the humans would do something miraculous or malicious, and I would need to know why.”
Thorn ran a hand through his long, wet hair. “Your knowledge may be what gets us out of this bugger of a situation. So, War. Tell me how I get the humans’ attention away from this area so you can get Darcy to her flat.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Darcy looked at the food delivered by Thorn and wasn’t sure if she could eat. She was in knots after what happened, and not even Thorn’s assurances that Warrick was fine helped.
Of course Thorn would tell her Warrick was all right. But if Warrick wasn’t hurt, why didn’t he bring the food?
“Because you told him to leave, that’s why. Idiot,” Darcy told herself.
She swiped a hand to shove the hair back from her face and sighed. She had taken her hair down twice. Now she was alone again. Not completely alone. Warrick and Thorn were near, but Warrick wasn’t with her. All because she’d let her anger get the better of her.
Darcy brought the food into her office and placed it on the desk. She couldn’t sit. She had to occupy her body somehow to keep her mind off what had occurred.
With nothing else to do, she made her way into the back and tended to her plants. It did nothing to help as it usually did. Her hands were working but with tasks she could do in her sleep. Which left her mind free to wander.
And all she could think about was her words to Warrick, him walking out, and then the Dark arriving. She grew ill recalling how they had surrounded him.
Darcy finished with the plants and returned to the front. The rain had yet to let up, and the spray was getting into the store. She tried to lift the door, but it was too heavy for her. Undeterred, she released just enough magic to help her not just right the door, but set it in place. It wouldn’t close, but it kept most of the water out.