Robin shook his head. “It’s just me, pet.” Then walking up to her, like one would a cornered, terrified animal, he kept whispering, “it’s just me.”
She shook her head when he grabbed her elbow. Not like she’d tried really hard to get away, but she knew what came next and it killed her to even consider it.
His thumb traced her quivering lower lip. “Robin, I…I…”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
She blinked. Can’t what? Can’t listen to her? Can’t let her say… “What? You can’t what?”
“I can’t let you go. I can’t make this wish.”
Her heart leaped into her throat. Though she hardly recognized his face, his touch and his smell, was all him. All Robin Hood. Her body turned to liquid in his arms. “But Crispin? What about—”
“He can rot in Hell for all I care. We’ll figure out a way, my beautiful dark genie, nothing says when I have to make my next wish. I can wait until the final moment of your curse to do it. But I cannot lose you.”
He’d called her beautiful before, but the way he said it now, the way it rolled off his tongue with his strange, wonderful accent, like he was fully claiming her, it made her body spark like a flame.
This could work. It was crazy, and ridiculous, but he was right, there was no time limit on a wish. This could work. Where before there’d been an overwhelming feeling of pain and loss, now there was the euphoria of blinding joy, it almost made her want to dance with it.
“For the next twenty years, we can’t be together. Could you really live with that?”
He pressed her tight to his chest, flattening her breasts almost to the point of pain, but she didn’t care. Not even a little. She wanted his touch all over her. Wanted his hands. His body. Whichever way she could take it. She wanted him, all of him, forever.
The breeze picked up. No longer soft and balmy, it whipped and gathered around them, coiling in a tight band, just as it had the first time they’d met. Like all of Kingdom waited with bated breath for them to make their vows.
And only three words kept echoing in Nixie’s head.
This. Is. Legend.
“If the alternative is losing you forever. Then aye, I can wait.” He lowered his face, lips moving in slowly, and it was like watching a movie in slow motion.
She closed her eyes and wet her lips, waiting for the first brush of him.
“Genie.” The word was spat out like a humorous slur.
Immediately Robin shoved Nixie behind him and rushed up to his brother, shoving a knee into his spine as he made to rise.
“So this was the plan, then, eh, brother? Oh, it was a good one. How many wishes did you use to get to me?”
“Shut up!” Robin roared, yanking a fistful of Crispin’s hair into his hands before shoving his face back into the dirt. “You do not even look upon her. Do not think about her.”
But Crispin didn’t sound afraid.
Nixie felt trapped, captured in the gaze of a man who looked so much like the one she was falling madly in love with. But the evil spilling off his tongue, the malevolence of his gaze, it was not Robin at all.
Her skin prickled with fear as she rubbed a hand down her arm.
“Go ahead then, wish me gone.”
Robin sneered. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
Nixie knew Robin wanted to go for his blade, wanted to rip it out and drive it through his brother’s heart. She sensed the barely checked violence brewing inside him, saw the tension lining his shoulders. The rigid posture of his body and the glowering set of his jaw.
“But I’ll not be using that final wish. I know exactly where to put you.”
Crispin’s grin was huge, and though his fate was sealed, he didn’t seem scared. “Go ahead then. Lock me up in a tower. I’ll only escape. Without the power of a final wish behind you, you know I’ll get out. And when I do, it won’t be you I’m going after. To the ends of the Earth, breather.” There was a strange inflection to the way Crispin said brother, one Robin had noted immediately, because all the blood drained from his face when he’d heard it. “Oh, aye, you thought yourself immune from me, but bonds of blood reach deep.” His lips curled even higher. “But you’re wrong. For I am stronger than you. I always was. Make your wish and see me gone, or I shall never stop.”
Pain glinted through Robin’s eyes as he stared at her and all the joy she’d felt only moments ago vanished.
“It’s okay, Robin.” A tear slid down her face. “We both knew this could never really happen.” She clutched her chest.
He shook his head as his throat worked violently, and finally he whispered in a shattered, broken voice, “He’ll never stop. And I could not do that to you.”
“I know.” Her grin—that she did not feel—wobbled precariously.
“I promise you. I promise you, this will not be the end. I’ll find you, Nixie. I’ll never stop searching.”