Hudson must feel the same way, because his arms tighten around me and he’s lifting me up, up, up, until our faces are on the same level and we’re pressed together from shoulder to hip to thigh.

“Hi,” I whisper as his mouth hovers inches away from my own.

“Hi,” he answers as I instinctively lock my legs around his hips.

He shudders, his eyes darkening—his pupils blown out—until I can barely see the blue at all.

“The whole world disappears when you’re near me, Hudson,” I whisper on a shaky breath. “Are we alone?”

He growls low in his throat at my question, at the aching need trembling between us. “Not yet.”

Everything inside me goes quiet all at once, like my whole being is holding its breath, waiting to see what he’ll do next.

And just like that, we start to move, fading through the air, down the access ramp, then up the stairs to my room, in that quiet, perfect space between one breath and the next.

93

Existential Crises

Aren’t All They’re

Cracked Up to Be

The next morning, the six of us spend the day in New York out of necessity rather than a desire to hang around and give Nuri a chance to take another swipe at us. But Luca and Hudson have both been imbibing human blood since we got here—Hudson more than Luca, obviously—and that means we can’t travel until it gets dark.

Eden and Macy take advantage of the time by riding Eden’s new Ecosse all over the city while Flint and Luca have a command performance with Aiden and Nuri—the king and queen want to check out the new boyfriend one-on-one, which seems fair.

That leaves Hudson and me to hang in my room all day, watching movies and talking about anything and everything. In my life before Katmere, I was a huge reader—I haven’t had time to read much of anything since half the paranormal world painted a target on my back—but it’s nice to lay in bed and argue with Hudson about Hemingway (total misogynist, I don’t care what he says), Shelley (Percy, not Mary: it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are if you’re also a total asshole), and Hudson’s undying love for the French existentialists (nothing could possibly be as bad as they think everything is).

“Seriously, if nothing matters, why do they have to spend so much time whining about it?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it whining,” Hudson tells me, and I can tell I’ve struck a nerve. This is the boy who passive-aggressively read No Exit when he was trapped in my head and angry with me for kissing his brother.

But I’m not about to give in on this one. “‘Anything, Anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough,’” I tell him, quoting Sartre with a roll of my eyes.

“Okay, so maybe that one is a little whiny.” He laughs. “But they aren’t all like that.”

“‘It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish’?” I shoot back. “Keep defending him. I can do this all day.”

Hudson holds his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. “You win. Maybe I just had a lot to be whiny about before.”

“Before what?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, just kind of shakes his head. But he’s watching me with soft eyes, and I know exactly what he’s not saying. Before me.

And I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. I just lean over and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, until Flint knocks on the door an hour later and says that it’s time to go.

My stomach twists, and I feel my familiar anxiety returning. We’ve been living on borrowed time, and it’s finally catching up with us. Hudson and I decided not to ruin anyone’s time in New York with discussions of prison or the Crone. We’d finally told everyone what Nuri had shared while eating dinner before heading back to Katmere.

So why did I have a gnawing pit in my stomach, thinking that we’d waited too long?

We’ve barely walked through the door back at Katmere before Jaxon jumps down four flight of stairs and lands at our feet.

“Dramatic much?” Hudson asks as Mekhi comes down the stairs at a much more sedate pace.

Jaxon just bares his teeth in a not very close facsimile of a smile. “I talked to Delilah for you, but if you’d rather not hear what she has to say, I can go back to my room.”

“I’d rather not hear,” I mutter under my breath.

But there is no under your breath when vampires are around, and Hudson gives me a look. “Don’t judge her until you know everything.”

“What she’s endured,” Jaxon mocks—which is essentially what I’m thinking, but not about to say.

Hudson ignores him, speaking to me instead. “I won’t defend her. She made her bed when she chose Cyrus. She couldn’t leave, but she protected me as best she could. She’s endured a lot more than you’ll ever know.”

“As have I,” Jaxon sneers at him, tilting his head so that his scar stands out in stark relief against his cheek. “And I don’t have time to think about everything she’s done for you. I’m too busy remembering how willing she was to destroy me because of you.”

Hudson’s eyes go to the scar, but he still looks like he wants to argue more. I put a hand on his elbow, hoping against hope that he won’t. In the end, though, all he says is, “What message did she send?”

“‘Appear weak when you are strong.’”

“Okay, thanks for that.” Hudson sighs as he wipes a tired hand down his face. “Can you just tell me what she wanted me to know so we can get to bed?”

“That’s it,” Jaxon says, and his eyes are nothing but black pits as he repeats, “that’s all she said.”

“That’s it? A quote from The Art of War was worth demanding your presence at Court?” Hudson asks.

And I have to laugh because he seems so astonished by the whole thing—not just that his mother sent him an odd quote but also at the very idea of deliberately appearing weak. I don’t think he could if he wanted to.

“I’m not impressed.” Hudson shrugs. “It seems a lot like a BS message to me.” His deliberately avoiding looking at Jaxon makes it obvious he thinks his brother is trolling him.

But I don’t believe Jaxon would do something like that. The fact that he’s gone to Court twice and dealt with his mother both times says everything about how much he wants to help Hudson, no matter what he says.

“I don’t think so,” I tell him, stepping between them in an effort to lower the tension emanating from them both. “I think maybe it means that she’s trying to look weak at the moment, so your father doesn’t realize that we’re all working against him—including her.”

I choke a little bit saying that last part, but maybe Hudson’s right about her. Maybe.

Jaxon snorts and Hudson narrows his eyes, but neither of them says anything to the other.

“Besides,” I continue, “if nothing else, you can ask her when she comes to graduation in a few days.”

As soon as I say the words, I know they’re a mistake. Even before Hudson’s eyes darken at the idea of his parents coming to Katmere—or, namely, his father.

Jaxon reacts just as badly, saying, “Lucky us,” then moves back toward the staircase. “Now that I’ve delivered the message, I’m going to sleep.”

“You can’t,” Luca pipes up for the first time. “We just came back to shower and get some food. We’re heading back out again in an hour—we’ve got to beat the sun.”

Jaxon narrows his eyes at him, like he’s thinking about what it would feel like to rip Luca limb from limb. Luca holds his gaze for a couple of seconds, then drops his eyes. I don’t blame him.

This Jaxon is impossible to defy.

But Mekhi steps forward after a few seconds and asks, “Where are you going this time?”

Now that the tension between the two brothers has been broken a little bit, the others move closer. “We have to see a witch about the prison,” Flint tells him. “My mom thinks she might be able to help Hudson escape.” Jaxon seems to not care much about freeing Hudson from prison, if the and? look he sends Flint is any indication. “Okay, so forget Hudson. I think we can all agree, we need the Crown now more than ever to stop Cyrus. The vampire queen is sending coded messages.” Flint’s eyebrows go up in a can shit get any weirder look.

Jaxon sighs and turns to me. “A witch? What witch?”

“Nuri called her the Crone,” I say. “She said no one had seen her in a really long time but that she helped build the prison and might have some advice for us.”

“And what, we’re just going to run off and trust some witch because Flint’s mom told us to?”

“Hey, it’s no more illogical to trust a witch than it is to trust a vampire!” Macy tells him indignantly.

He gives her a dark look. “Are you under some delusion that I trust vampires?”

“We’ve got to trust somebody,” I tell him.

“And you think someone called ‘the Crone’ is the one to start with?”

“You don’t have to come,” Hudson growls.

“Oh, I’m coming,” Jaxon snaps back. “God knows you’re going to need someone to save your asses when everything goes south.”

“Why do you think it’s going to go south?” Eden asks.

“I think the more appropriate question is, how the hell can you possibly think it won’t?”

94

All That’s Sugar

Is Not Sweet