Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Iwake in Chase’s bed the next morning feeling deliciously sore, more than a little tired, and wildly happy.
I’m also starving, though my gut clenches when I look around and can’t find Adric.
Thankfully, the Adric part of the equation solves itself fast—there’s a bouquet of white daisies on the side table and a folded note propped against the lamp.
I slide out from under Chase’s arm, careful not to wake him, and carry both to the kitchenette—water for the flowers, a can of cold brew for me, because I need caffeine and I’m too impatient to wait for Mr. Coffee to do his thing.
The daisies go in a giant mug, because apparently Chase is exactly as much of a guy as I’d figured and doesn’t own a vase.
Then I unfold the note and read it in Adric’s careful, old-fashioned script.
Beloved, you are lovely when you sleep, and I would happily watch for hours. But realm business calls, and I have stayed too long already. Come when you can.
PS—I would not trade last night for anything.
I read it twice, grinning like an idiot, and that’s when I notice the thing that flicks cold through all the warmth. Nowhere in that lovely note does Adric say a single word about the barriers. Or the keystone. Or the dead zone eating its way across my campus.
Realm business. His realm.
Not mine.
I push the thought down before it can take root, because I refuse to let it ruin the best morning of my life. So what if Adric didn’t mention the Real? He had to leave before dawn, and you don’t fit the apocalypse into a love note. That’s all it is.
Except of course, that’s not all it is…
I grimace, then fold the worry up small and tuck it away with the note. Then I take a swallow of cold brew and turn around to find Chase pushed up on one elbow, watching me with a sleepy expression I can’t quite read.
Then his eyes cut to the empty side of the bed, and he jolts up, now fully awake and, apparently, remembering last night in all its glorious detail.
Please, please, please don’t let him regret it.
The words are loud in my head, and for one cold second, I’m sure that’s exactly what’s coming. And how freaking fitting would that be? Adric off in his realm, not seeing the danger, and Chase pulling away because of second thoughts about what the three of us did.
I’m seriously considering spiraling down into panic when a slow grin touches his lips, and he extends his hand to me. I hurry to his side, hope building in my chest.
“I either had one hell of a dream,” he says, pulling me onto the mattress and tucking his arm around me. “Or last night was extremely real.”
“Real good?” I ask. “Or real bad?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Are you telling me you regret it?”
“No.” I bite my lower lip and talk to my fingernails. “I really don’t. Do you?”
“You’d think I would,” he says slowly, his finger under my chin lifting my head so that his eyes meet mine. “But I don’t, either.”
The relief that cuts through me is so huge it’s embarrassing. “Really?”
“Trust me,” he says with a wry grin. “I’m the most surprised of all of us.” He glances around, his brow furrowed. “Don’t tell me Adric’s the one who had a problem with last night.”
I can’t help my laugh. “If he did, he should win an Oscar. No, he had to go deal with stuff. The weight of being king.”
Chase smiles. “Well, isn’t that convenient?”
“What?”
“Just that while I truly enjoyed last night,” he begins, flipping me onto my back as I squeal, “right now, I wouldn’t say no to some traditional one-on-one time.”
“Tempting,” I say. “But shouldn’t we go see Whistler?”
“Don’t worry,” he says with a tease in his eyes. “We’ll be quick.”
The walk to the Griffin’s Nest is twenty minutes of brilliant Florida sun defying the dark clouds that hover over the ocean in the distance.
Chase keeps his hand at the small of my back, half-watching traffic, half-watching me, and while I don’t regret last night at all, I have to admit I love the ordinariness of simply walking across campus with my boyfriend.
Once through the door, I say hello to a few of the regular customers who buy coffee and study amidst the books.
Griffin isn’t at the register, but a new hire named Amy tells me that he’s running errands, and I picture him out buying more coffee beans, because despite being a bookstore, this place gives all the other coffee bars a run for their money.
In other words, everything seems perfectly normal here at the Griffin’s Nest.
That, however, is an illusion that shatters once we reach the training room. Except it doesn’t shatter. Not really.
I look around the room. At Solenne changing one of Whistler’s bandages. At my onyx-eyed friend from another realm, gaunt and crooked-grinned, smiling at me from where he sits on the table. At the various screens and graphs and photos that Tia and Riley have hung all over the walls.
Not ordinary at all to most people. But to me, it is.
I guess I’m the one who’s not ordinary anymore. And, frankly, I’m okay with that.
“You look good,” I tell Whistler, meeting his smile.
“I’m alive,” he says. “Anything beyond that is a gift.”
Solenne sits in a chair beside him with a bag of herbs and a cup of something that steams. “He have little time before must sleep again. Sleep make better to heal.”
“I’m healed,” Whistler says, then holds his hands up in surrender when Solenne nails him with her narrowed eyes. “But extra rest never hurt anyone.”
“Is so,” she says, passing him a glass of water. “Drink. Soothe throat. Make strong. Then more rest.”
Chase is already at his side, his hand closing over Whistler’s good shoulder, and I can see the relief—and the respect—that flows between these two men as Whistler’s injured hand closes weakly over Chase’s wrist. Two fingers and a thumb, the others gone, and I blink back tears, not wanting to shed them in front of my friend.
“He is well—you see. Go now,” Solenne says. “He need more sleep. More heal.”
“Hang tight,” Whistler says, then turns to Chase. “Stuff to tell you.” His eyelids droop, and he shakes his head as if forcing himself to focus. “Something in the water,” he murmurs.
“Sleep good,” Solenne says. “Talk now. Hurry before sleep draught work.”
“I’m listening,” Chase says.
Whistler nods, his neck loose as the drug begins to work. “Kali. Training soldiers.” His eyes flick to the side as if he’s looking into the Nightmare Realm. “Hundreds. Maybe more.”
“No way,” I blurt. “Adric would never—”
“Not his. Secret.”
Chase goes very still. “Where?”
“South. Cloaked by magic.”
“From the Realm of Others?” Chase asks.
Whistler winces as he shakes his head. “No. Not sure where they’re from.”
Chase frowns. “She’s recruited an ally from somewhere,” Chase says, but I can tell by his expression that he doesn’t have even the remotest idea who.
I shudder, remembering the men who rebelled. The men who were executed. Men who probably have some pretty pissed-off friends.
Adric put his trust in Kali ages ago. She’d been his advisor, his consort. His right arm. I know he doesn’t love her, but he does trust her. And this is going to completely wreck him.
Not to mention putting all the realms at risk. And from what I know of Kali, her first target will be the Real, because we’re the weakest.
And because I’m here.
“The bitch never truly cared for him,” Chase says.
I shake my head. “She did. She loved him. In her own screwed-up way, she really loved him. Maybe still does.”
“Then why the hell would she do this?”
I look at him, thinking of all the years Adric watched me through a scrying pool. “Because at some point she realized that he didn’t love her. That he never would.” I shrug. “She had nothing left to lose, everything to gain, and could get her revenge in the process.”
Chase rubs his temple. “And he has no idea.” Then he tilts his head, his brow furrowing as he turns to Whistler. “Did you escape? Or did she let you go?”
Whistler shakes his head. “Not sure. I was out of it for a long time. But once I came back to myself, I started rattling the door each night. And one night, the bolt slipped. The bastards that shoveled the stuff that passed for food—I figured they didn’t latch it properly.”
“But it could have been on purpose,” Chase says, and Whistler nods, his face pale from exhaustion. His eyes flutter shut, and Solenne gestures for us to go. “He rest now,” she says, as Chase steers me to the stairs.
We don’t really talk on the walk back. We don’t have to. We both know that Whistler might be a lever in Kali’s trap. Or he might be our secret weapon, having clued us in ahead of Kali’s game.
Either way, Adric needs to know, which means a trip to the Nightmare Realm for me, and schoolwork once again abandoned.
That’s the way it has to be, of course, and honestly, I should probably just drop out this semester.
But I can’t seem to get my ass over to the admin office to do that.
Neither can Tia or Riley. We’re all sticking with it, for better or worse—the work, the war, the management of an apocalypse on a college schedule.
Which is why I’m not at all surprised to see Tia and Riley camped out at Chase’s kitchen table the moment we step through the door.
Riley’s busy on her laptop, and Tia has the Liber Tenebris Liminis open beside her, dozens of colorful scraps of paper marking pages in the book.
They both look up when we come in, but it’s Tia who catches my attention with her cocked head and very unsubtle raised eyebrows.
I’d texted her about my night of triple-the-fun debauchery, of course, and now she wants the deets.
I frown at her, then give the slightest shake of my head as she mouths, Later.
I nod, then mentally bang my head against the wall. The girl really needs to work on subtlety.
And speaking of, Riley isn’t looking too subtle, either. Only her look isn’t a sex look. It’s an I’m seeing scary shit on my computer look. And the glance she shares with Tia only underscores that conclusion.
“Oh, no,” I say, tightening my grip on Chase’s hand. “What now?”