Creed laughed. He was dangerous in ways she didn’t understand. Growing up with criminals had prepared her for a lot of things, but not this. She felt the urge to flee just as she had the first time she’d seen a mountain lion in the woods.
However, she knew enough to know how to protect herself a little. The fae were known to stand by their word—their literal word, but still, it was better than humanity, which could be treacherous for so many foolish, selfish reasons.
“Do you mean me harm, Creed Morrison?” she asked. It wasn’t a perfect request, but she’d spoken his name as she knew it, and the intent was there. She’d never attempted to elicit a fae bargain before because of the risks of exposure, but he already knew what she was.
Creed’s eyes glimmered in approval. “On my blood, I do not.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he spoke over her. “And do you, Lilywhite Abernathy, daughter of Iana, mean me harm?”
They were alone in the garden. There were no witnesses, no one to hear her words or his. She sat down on the ground.
He matched her movements.
Slowly, not looking away from him, she spread her hands out over the ground. Tendrils of vines snapped to her like whips. They curled around her from wrists to biceps. It wasn’t the extent of her relationship with the things that lived within the soil, but it was enough to point out that she wasn’t defenseless even in their isolation. The knife in her pocket and the one strapped to her leg were a secret, and she opted to keep it that way. Her affinity with the earth she would admit, partly because her fae-blood nature wasn’t a secret from him and partly because she needed the touch of earth.
“I mean you no harm on this day and until such time as you mean harm to me or mine,” she vowed.
“Thorough,” he said mildly.
“Contracts and negotiations are familiar territory. My father is a crime lord.”
“The crime lord,” he corrected.
Lily shrugged. She’d reached her limit of admissions for the moment. The vines on her wrists slithered away, and she stroked her fingers over the soil, not lingering long enough that the plants would share their most recent memories. Seeing the full image of a naked Creed Morrison was a tempting idea, but definitely not a good one. Her memory flashed back to the photos with the blurred sections.
After a moment when it felt like the air became perfectly still, he sang, “Deadly girl. All I’ve ever wanted was a girl like you, a girl who kills me a little more every day.” His words touched her skin with each breath, despite how far apart they sat. “Sun-kissed skin and bloodstained heart. All I ever wanted was you.”
She shivered.
“All I need is a deadly girl, a—”
“So air,” she interrupted. “Your affinity is for the air.”
“It is,” he agreed.
Without meaning to, she lifted her hand to touch her skin where she’d felt his words. A small voice reminded her that Erik could never do what Creed just did, that choosing to be with a human would mean sacrificing parts of herself. Logic silenced that voice quickly. Her life was already going to be risky enough without adding the dangers of being with another fae-blood.
Creed watched her like he was counting the beats of her heart. Maybe he was. She wasn’t as familiar with the aspects of working with the air. It didn’t come to her easily so far.
He sang softly, “Knife-tipped fingers and rose-petal kisses. All I need is—”
“Stop.” She pushed the air back toward him as forcefully as she could. Her eyes fell closed and she concentrated on not calling soil or stone to her defense.
After several moments, Creed asked, “I thought you liked my singing, Lily?”
She wasn’t going to lie, but she wasn’t going to listen to him as his voice brushed against the skin low on her throat either. Lily opened her eyes and said, “You know it wasn’t your singing that I was stopping.”
“I’ve never done that with anyone else,” he said, his voice casual. “Not on purpose at least. Not until you.”
She wasn’t even sure she believed him. He’d already proven that he was capable of overcoming the fae aversion to lying. Everyone was very clear that fae-blood couldn’t do so, and she’d always wondered if she was less fae-blood because she herself could lie. Then again, the fact that she had multiple affinities, strong ones, made her suspect that she was actually of purer lineage rather than being less fae.
She wasn’t sure what to say, but before she could figure it out, Creed said, “No one knows I met you.” He kept his voice emotionless.
Lily stared at him. He kept tossing her things that she didn’t know how to catch. Sure, they’d had a spark when they met, and yes, she’d had a tabloid crush on him for years. That shouldn’t mean that they dive headfirst into disaster. “Why are you telling me this?”
He sprawled out on the ground. “It will matter later. If it was about my reputation, I’d have found a way to get pictures out to the media. I didn’t tell anyone though. And I’m glad I didn’t. There are . . . others to consider.”
It was easy to figure out who Creed meant. The welcome-to-Belfoure bombing was a pretty big clue. The kiss was another. And if there were any doubts, Zephyr’s own admissions vanquished those.
“I met him today,” she said, sinking to her knees on the ground to face Creed. “Zephyr. That’s who you meant, right?”
She watched Creed as she said it, but he wasn’t as easy to read as she’d like. For someone whose every emotion appeared to be on his face in the hundreds of pictures that cropped up everywhere, Creed’s expressions one-to-one were implacable. She wondered how much of his media persona was cultivated. How much of the careless charm was his, and how much was a persona?
When he remained silent, Lily added, “I met him a couple hours ago in town.”
All he said in reply to her announcement was, “I know.”
She paused, hoping things weren’t going to get more awkward. If Creed knew that she’d met Zephyr, that meant that Zephyr would’ve had to have seen Creed immediately after meeting her.
“So you know what happened? Between us?”
Creed nodded. “Why do I think there was more to the story than what Zephyr told me?”
“Claimed he was waiting for me. Explosion. No one hurt. I pulled a knife. He kissed me. Accused me of being Seelie,” she summarized bluntly. It was a tactic she’d seen her father use to great effect: state the facts and move on.
“Zephyr left out the kiss,” Creed said flatly. “And the knife.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “I was taught never to be unarmed. Using weapons helps me keep from drawing on an affinity and revealing myself.”
“And the kiss?”
“. . . is not the important point,” she said.
They stared at each other, and she felt the bizarre urge to apologize. They weren’t a couple. Creed had been hired by her father to sing to her. They’d talked. They weren’t even friends. They’d flirted . . . and then he went on to be photographed with no less than four girls between that day and now.