Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
Iwake up to Chase’s hand on my hip and his mouth at the back of my neck, and I am very, very okay with this development.
“Hey,” I mumble into the pillow.
“Hey,” he says against my skin, low and rough, and his hand slides up under the T-shirt of his I’d stolen to sleep in. His fingers spread over my breast like he’s checking to make sure all his favorite parts came back.
“Anything missing?”
“Mm. So far so good.” His mouth moves to the spot under my ear that sends electric shocks to the most delicious places. “But I’m being thorough.”
On a laugh, I roll over to face him. The morning light’s coming through his window in long bars of gold, painting his shoulders and the line of his jaw. For a moment, I just bask, drinking him in.
“Welcome home,” he says, then kisses me.
It’s not a good-morning peck. It’s the kind of kiss that’s meant to be savored. And I push up to meet him, my hands fisting in his hair, kissing him back with every ounce of want and need in my body.
His hands are already pushing my shirt up, and he rolls on top of me, his cock hard against my belly. We don’t talk, but our bodies say everything, and when he tugs my shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it across the room, I let out a laugh of pure delight.
Then the laugh dies as his mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, my breast, slow and deliberate and a little rough, and I’m gasping his name even before his tongue finds my clit.
“Chase—” His name is barely a gasp, and I lose myself in the pleasure of his mouth teasing my core. Of his hands, sure and firm on my hips to hold me still as he tastes and teases and works me until I’m begging and my hands are in his hair, and I’m saying his name like a prayer.
That’s when he takes me over, slow and certain, and holds me there until I’m boneless and shaking under his mouth.
When he rises over me, his eyes are molten gold, and I sigh as his hand finds mine on the pillow, and he twines our fingers together.
“I love you,” he says, and I can feel my smile in my cheekbones. “Me, too,” I say, then brush his lips with mine. “I think you really need to show me how much.”
“Baby, you read my mind,” he whispers as he pushes into me with one slow thrust. I lift my hips, meeting his thrust, then lock my legs around his hips as his body moves in a wild, sensual rhythm that makes everything else fall away—the barriers, the keystone, the Widow Maker. Even Adric.
There’s only Chase. This man deep inside me, his thrusts sending starbursts of pleasure rolling through me like a thunderstorm crackling with lightning and waiting for that one, massive thunderbolt that finally, blissfully, crashes over me, tearing me apart as it shakes the heavens.
He follows me over, his whole body going taut, his breath shuddering out of him against my hair.
For a long minute, neither of us moves, then he whispers, “Hi,” against my neck, making me giggle.
“Hello to you, too.”
“We’re going to do that more often,” he says.
I laugh, delighted. “I approve of that plan.”
He brushes a kiss over my temple, then rolls us both so I’m tucked against his chest, and I close my eyes and revel in the feel of his body spooned against mine.
And then—for five glorious heartbeats—I let myself believe the barriers will hold, that there are no nightmarish monsters out there pounding at the gate, and that everything beyond these walls can wait.
We’re getting dressed after a particularly invigorating shower when there’s a pounding at the front door.
“Yo!” Tia calls. “Chase! Cora! We come bearing breakfast and info. And since Chase was idiot enough to give me a key, I’m using it.”
“Please don’t be naked,” Riley adds.
“Or be as naked as you want,” Tia shouts.
“Clothes,” I say to Chase. “I’m the only one with looking privileges.”
He lifts a pretend glass. “Right back at you.”
And as the key turns in the lock a few moments later, I’m zipping up my jeans, Chase is tying up the waistband of his sweats, and all is right with the world.
For the time being, anyway.
“Oh, thank god,” Tia says, managing to hug me even though she has a paper bag in one hand and her laptop bag in the other.
“I was so worried you’d come back depressed because Adric’s about to destroy the world.
” She puts the bag on the table and turns back to look at me.
“You talked him down, right? There’s no apocalypse on the horizon? ”
I grimace, then shrug. “The jury’s still out. But we’re cool for the time being.”
“Oh.” She makes a face. “Well, that’s not entirely ideal.”
“Right there with you,” I say. “And I’ll give you the full scoop later,” I promise.
I get a thumbs-up from both of them, then Riley heads for the kitchen, presumably to make coffee.
Ten minutes later, I’m on my way to being fully caffeinated, Tia’s laid out a spread of bagels, Riley’s cracked her laptop, Chase is reviewing the documents he’d fallen asleep with, and we’re a team again.
“How’s Whistler?” I ask, settling into a chair. “Is he on solid food yet? And how’s Griff holding up with him?”
“Whistler crossed back to the Realm of the Others last night,” Chase says, glancing up from checking his phone. “He wanted to meet with his team. Said he was strong enough for the trip, and Solenne agreed. He’s doing well, and he’ll be back in a couple of days.”
Relief floods through me. “That’s fabulous. And Griff?”
Chase sets the phone down. “I almost texted him to come over this morning. Then I remembered what today is.”
I mentally run through holidays, but none land. “Okay, I give up. What day is it?”
“Helen,” he says quietly.
It takes me a beat, and then it lands. Helen. Griff’s wife. A Hunter, like he was. Killed by a mare long before I met Mr. Griffin.
“It’s the anniversary,” Chase says. “He’s walking the beach. That was their thing.”
“Oh,” I say. “Does he want company?”
Chase shakes his head. “I’m having a drink with him later. I’ll catch him up then.”
I nod and blink back tears. “Okay,” I say. “Tell him I love him.”
Chase just nods. But under the table, he takes my hand and squeezes.
Tia wipes cream cheese off her chin as she points to me. “And even when it sucks, life goes on. Nightmare Realm,” she says. “Tell us what happened.”
“Right,” I say, then take them through all the high—and low—points of the trip, then landing hard on how I left it. Either Adric moves the cross-hairs off the Real, or I’m no longer part of Adric’s life.
“Good for you,” Tia says. “And potentially you,” she adds, with a nod toward Chase as I roll my eyes.
“What about Kali?” Riley asks.
“He said her camp was abandoned by the time his people got there. Stripped clean. So she knows he’s hunting her. And he says she’s actively helping the barriers weaken.”
Tia’s gone very still. “Seriously?”
“His words.”
“So Adric forces cracks, and Kali’s in the cracks, turning them into holes.”
“Pretty much.”
Riley sets her cup down. “Which means we don’t actually have weeks. We have however long it takes her to finish drilling her holes.”
“Right.”
Tia drags a hand through her hair. “And Adric’s solution to that is to go off hunting Kali and just maybe, possibly look for an alternative to the barriers coming down in his free time?”
“He didn't promise that,” I say. “But maybe now he'll actually think about it. Honestly, though? I don’t know if he’ll find anything. He’s been at this for an age. If there was a way, he says he would have already found it.”
“Bullshit,” Tia says. “He’s never really looked. Why would he? But now he’s looking for you.”
“Actually, he kinda said that, too.”
“Well, okay,” Tia says. “That’s something.” She plants her elbows on the table and goes into Project Manager mode, which I’ve learned is her default response to existential threats. “Then we work it from our side. And we try to get it done before the king pulls a rabbit out of a hat.”
“Agreed,” Chase says, settling on the arm of my chair. “What do you want to do?”
“That’s the thing.” Tia looks at me. “I’ve been digging through the Liber Tenebris and the gloss and the older Guardian stuff.
There’s a lot in there about how the barriers were built.
But almost nothing about how to patch them.
Whoever was writing this stuff didn’t even look at the possibility that the barriers would ever come apart. Hubris, probably.”
“Or they had a way to fix things and just didn’t write it down,” Riley says. “Maybe the knowledge was handed down. Father to son. Mother to daughter. The kind of thing you don’t commit to paper because the wrong person could read it.”
I open my mouth to agree, then stop, because something has just gone very quiet inside me.
“Cora?” Tia’s watching me.
“Maybe it wasn’t knowledge,” I say slowly, feeling my way along it. “Maybe what got handed down was the thing itself. Not something you learned, but something you were.”
For a second, nobody says anything.
Then, very slowly, Tia’s mouth drops. “Oh my god. You. Your bloodline.”
“What?” I say.
She smacks her own forehead. “I’m an idiot. He told us. He actually told us.”
I look between her and Riley, then focus on Chase. “Am I crazy? Or is Tia losing it?”
“The meeting. At the party. Remember? Vance specifically said that some bloodlines have the power to shore up the barriers.”
I turn toward Chase. “She’s right.”
“He didn’t say the Imperial bloodline specifically,” Tia points out. “Maybe there’s some other stop-the-apocalypse bloodline out there.”
I just shake my head. “No. This is it. It’s why the Oneiroi want me on their team.”
“And it all fits,” Riley says. “It explains why so little was written about it. Because it didn’t need to be.
The power was there in the line.” Her gaze sweeps over all of us, and she looks as excited as a kid at Christmas.
“That actually fits the gaps. Why nothing’s written.
If the answer is a person instead of a procedure, nobody needs an instruction manual. There’d be nothing to write.”
Tia looks straight at me. “Tag,” she says. “You’re it.”