“We’re not staying here,” said Adrian.
Rand gestured to the darkening western sky. “You’re here for the night. This is their only free guesthouse. Where else you going to stay?”
Adrian and I exchanged brief glances. Staying overnight hadn’t come up in any of our planning. “Not here,” he said adamantly. “Not with you.”
“Dismiss me all you want, but I’ve made the best of what I’ve got,” Rand said angrily. “I never fit in, never played by their rules, and one by one they rejected me. That’ll happen to you, just wait. That’s the price of marrying her. You lost everything you could have had, could have been, as an Ivashkov. Soon you’ll see what it’s like, drifting from place to place.”
“We have to go check on my friends,” Adrian told him, taking my arm and steering me away. “Nice running into you.”
“You’re a terrible liar, boy,” Rand called after us.
“Is he right?” I asked quietly, once we’d put some distance between the guest cabin and us.
“That I’m a terrible liar? No. I’m a fantastic liar.”
I came to a halt, forcing him to as well. It was dark enough that our only light came from strategically placed lanterns along the camp’s main path. “Adrian, I mean what he said about me . . . did I really cost you all that? We always talk about me being on the run from humans, but you gave up the life of a royal to—”
“Sydney,” Adrian interrupted, cupping my face in his hands. “Never, ever think like that. I don’t regret anything we’ve faced. Being with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, the one perfect decision I’ve made in a lifetime of fumbling and poor judgment. I’d go through it all again to be by your side. Never doubt that. Never doubt how I feel about you.”
“Oh, Adrian,” I said, letting him wrap me in his arms, surprised at the bubble of emotion welling up within me.
He held me tightly. “I love you. If anything, I can’t believe you gave up everything you did to be with me. You changed your whole life for me.”
“My life didn’t even begin until I met you,” I told him fiercely.
Adrian pulled back and looked at me closely, shadows on his face. “When you see someone like him, like Uncle Rand, does it make you nervous? That I might turn out like that?”
I felt my eyes widen. “No,” I said adamantly. “You’re nothing like him.”
I could tell from Adrian’s face he wasn’t so certain and was in danger of falling into one of those terrible depressions of his. His recent spirit usage with Nina would only make him that much more vulnerable. Adrian might not have any doubts about me and our love, but the future Rand had predicted—us bouncing around with no place to live—might very well be a real one. That scared me, and it had to scare Adrian too. With great effort, I watched as he tried to force his dark thoughts away and put on a cheerier expression.
“Well, I guess on the bright side of all of this, I can celebrate a new family member.”
I’d nearly forgotten the startling revelation about him and Dimitri. “Is it really true? How could you have not known that?”
Adrian gave a rueful headshake and began walking again. “From what I’ve heard about Uncle Rand’s ‘activities,’ he might very well have dozens of illegitimate children around the world. Why not Dimitri?”
“It just seems weird Dimitri wouldn’t have said anything before this,” I remarked.
“That surprised me too,” admitted Adrian as Diana’s cabin came into view. “Though to be honest, I never thought of him having a father. He just seems like the kind of guy who sprung into being fully grown up. Or, if I was going to picture a dad for him, I guess I’d just go with a gray-haired version of him, complete with duster.”
I laughed at that and followed him up to the cabin’s porch. Someone called for us to enter when we knocked, and we found Rose and Dimitri sitting in the cabin’s little living room. Diana had apparently left. Olive was lying on a bare-bones sofa, looking pale. “Is he gone?” asked Dimitri. His tone clearly told us which he was being referred to.
Adrian and I sat down together on a wooden bench. “No,” I said. “He’s staying in their guesthouse and seemed to think we would too.”
“I can think of a dozen forms of torture I’d rather undergo than spend a night under the same roof as him,” said Dimitri, deadpan.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Adrian replied.
“Olive says we can stay here for the night,” Rose explained. “If you don’t mind making a bed on the floor.”
“Considering the alternative? No problem.” Adrian fixed his gaze on Dimitri. “When were you going to break the news that we’re one big happy family?”
A pained expression crossed Dimitri’s face. “I honestly didn’t know.”
Adrian threw up his hands. “Come on. You’ve got, what, two or three sisters? That guy was obviously around a lot. It never occurred to you that Rand Ivashkov might be related to another Ivashkov you knew?”
A smolder of anger shone in Dimitri’s eyes. “He never told us his full name. He was always just Randall. We knew he was an American royal who frequently came by on business. We never asked questions. My mother liked him . . . for a while.”
“He mentioned that they stopped getting along,” I noted. “He claimed he wasn’t appreciated.”
That smolder in Dimitri’s eyes turned into a flame. “Wasn’t appreciated? He shoved my mother around when he’d been drinking and didn’t get his way.”
Those words drew even Adrian up short. “Then what happened?” he asked softly.
Dimitri didn’t answer, but Rose did. “Dimitri shoved him back,” she replied.
Silence fell, broken only by Olive shifting on the couch. She’d been listening quietly, her face creased with discomfort. Adrian regarded her with a look I’d come to know by now, one that somehow managed to be both focused and distracted. He was viewing her aura. I’d tried chastising him about aura viewing for a while but had finally given up. It was so second nature to him, he didn’t even realize he was doing it half the time. It really did use only a little spirit, according to Sonya, so I tried to pick my battles over larger expenditures.
“Are you okay?” Adrian asked Olive with concern.