Page 53 of Cinder's Trial
Babies?
Poor Levi looked just as shocked by the idea.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he stammered.
To save him, I reminded him of his duty. “We really should get back to Prince Killian.”
“Yes, we should.” He stiffened, and the warrior expression returned. “Seeing as how I can’t give Cinder breath for the lengthy route you always make me take, we’ll need a shortcut she can survive.”
“In return for what?” Nicola asked with a sly look.
When it appeared as if Levi would explode, I extended an offer. “I shall name my firstborn daughter Nicola. And if a son, Nicholas.”
“Done!” The Nixie beamed and, at the same time, surged, her body morphing into a wave that pushed us into the lake.
I might have yelled but for the water. I held my breath as I clung tight to Levi, my solid rock in the undertow that carried us down that deep well. The cold chilled me to the bone, but Levi’s grip offered warmth and reassurance.
When the current abated and my head popped out of the water, I parted my lips for a deep breath before I opened my eyes to see us bobbing in the pool.
Back at the hotel. Alive. Uninjured. Together… But was Levi happy? Not according to his expression.
“We made it,” I chirped.
“Mmph.” His grunt as he stroked to the edge of the pool and hoisted me out.
I stood and shook like a wet dog before grabbing the towel Hannah left behind. Two of them. One for me and another for Levi.
I dried and cast a glance at my grumpy Knight. “You seem pissed.”
“I’m fine.” A curt reply.
“Nicola is quite the interesting character.”
He snorted. “That’s an understatement.”
“Does she always kidnap your lovers?”
“This is the first time and the last,” he snapped. “I don’t know what she was thinking.”
“She cares.” An odd thing to say given the situation. When I’d originally heard the abbreviated story of him being given to the Nixie, I’d assumed the worst. I mean he was given over as a baby without a care by his father. His biological mother died in childbirth. I expected to hear of a childhood of abuse. Yet it seemed instead she’d nurtured and, in doing so, became a mother that Levi still kept in contact with.
“She was meddling,” he grumbled.
“You should be glad she is concerned about your well-being,” I huffed to her defense. “I would have given anything growing up for someone to give a hoot about me. It was always ‘Cinder, clean this.’ ‘Cinder, go away.’ I slept in the basement by the cat litter. Got leftovers for my meals. My clothing, the worst of the hand-me-downs, and I only got those because child services stepped in after the school lodged a complaint about my ill-fitting rags.”
He paused in his drying to stare at me. “They abused you.”
I shrugged. “They did. Not really a surprise, as it’s part of the Little Ash curse.”
His lips pinched. “Doesn’t make it right. And before you think I had it easy, Nicola wasn’t exactly a warm parental figure. She cared for me but in a tough-love kind of way.”
“You obviously don’t hate her for it, though. You keep in contact.”
He rolled his big shoulders before tugging on his shirt. “She did her best, which is commendable given she lost her humanity early on in the Grimm Effect.”
I pulled on the robe I’d worn to get to the pool before murmuring, “I still can’t believe you came for me.”
“Of course, I did. She had no right to take you.”