Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
The training room feels smaller tonight, like the walls are protesting this venture into the nightmare realm and are leaning in. The air’s thick, oozing tension and fear, though maybe that’s just me.
Tia stands beside me, twisting the hem of her T-shirt. And though she says nothing, I know she’s scared for me. Not surprising—I’m scared for me too. Or, more accurately, for my uncle.
“She used the phone,” Tia says, her voice a low whisper. “I mean, she just used a regular freaking phone.”
Chase looks up, his brow furrowed in confusion. But I understand exactly why that grates. It’s one more encroachment into this realm. Not just mares loose in the streets, but a resident of the dreamscape is actually using human tools and devices for dream-related dirty work.
I frown as the realization hits me, so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t catch it before. “She was here,” I say, looking up to meet Chase’s eyes, before remembering and quickly looking away. “She was here,” I say to the floor. “She came physically into this realm, just like you do.”
“Yes,” Chase says, and even though it’s only one word, I can hear the plea in it. A plea for me. For us.
But I’m not ready to hear it.
“I thought she was stuck at that castle,” Tia says.
Chase shakes his head. “Adric is bound to the castle and its grounds. Kali is not.”
“Well, that sucks,” Tia says, demonstrating her profound skill at stating the obvious.
“It makes sense,” Chase says. “My brother would hardly be without someone who can move about in the world. Who can do his bidding. Mete out his punishments.”
“It may not be his bidding,” I say, earning me a harsh look from Chase. As if he has any right to look at me that way after slaughtering my ancestors.
I turn away, only to find Whistler standing beside me. He hands me a curved blade with a golden hilt studded with lapis lazuli, just like the ring that still refuses to come off my finger.
“What’s this for?” I ask. “I can’t take a knife in with me.”
“Today you can,” Chase says. “It’s the mate of that ring, and those stones are protective. If you insist on doing this, you’re taking the blade.”
“Couldn’t have been too protective,” I say flatly. “My mother’s dead.”
“No protection is perfect,” he says. One beat passes, then another before he meets my eyes and adds, “Nor is any person or creature in any of the five realms.”
Griffin meets my eyes, then looks purposefully at Chase. The message is clear—fight with Chase after Finn is safe. For now, just get the fuck over it.
Not a message I want, but I suppose it’s one I need to hear. Even so, I’m scowling when I hold up the blade. “So how do I get the blade into the Nightmare Realm? I mean, my body stays here, right? Do blades have essence?” I ask the question of Griffin, but it’s Chase who answers.
“Kali took Finn to the Nightmare Realm in corporeal form,” he says. “So that is how we will go in as well.” His attention turns fully to me. “Today, you will learn to enter the realm as I do. It’s more difficult to achieve, but you have more agency once you reach your destination.”
Fear crests over me, and I want to protest that this is not the time to be learning new tricks, but instead I hear myself say in a voice thick with tears, “I don’t know how.”
“Cora,” Chase says, my name somehow holding both infinite regret and the tiniest hint of a plea.
He reaches for my hand, and though I want to yank it away, I also want the comfort.
For now. For the rescue. Once we have Finn back, I can hate him again.
Right now, I need him. Because even though I want to curl up and cry for weeks because of what he’s done, he’s also the one I want holding me close and telling me that everything will be okay.
He killed the Brides. He killed my mother.
How can we possibly get past that?
He comes toward me a few minutes later when I’m sharpening my blade on the far side of the training room. I look up, intending to tell him to please just let me have some space.
Then I see his face.
He looks shattered but strong. A man who hates what he’s done but is absolutely certain that he’s done the right thing.
“You killed them all,” I whisper, forcing the words past a knot of tears in my throat.
He takes a tentative step toward me, as if I’m a kitten he’s trying not to spook.
“I did.” He draws a breath, then exhales, his shoulders dropping like a man letting go of a heavy burden.
“I killed them because I had to. Because letting them live would very likely have led to the utter desecration of the Realm of the Real. You’ve met Adric.
If he dragged them into marriage, we both know it would be consummated. ”
I lift my chin, trying to ignore the way the others in the room are looking at us. “And yet here I am,” I say, my voice clogged with tears. “Alive and well.”
“Yes. Here you are.”
“Why?”
He tilts his head, looking me up and down. My attention is entirely on him, but in my peripheral vision, I see Tia and Mr. Griffin exchange a glance. “Because I fell in love with you.”
He says the words simply, as if they are fundamental. As true and uncomplicated as two plus two equals four.
I want to shout that he can’t. Why would he? There’s nothing special about me.
I want to scream that he doesn’t really love me. I’m just the Bride who drew the short straw, and that he should have killed me a long time ago, because I’m not worth the risk that those damn barriers will fall.
A shiver runs up my spine, and for a heartbeat, I feel that familiar, sensual connection between us—heat and ache and beautiful unspoken things that may never be uttered, but that I still desperately want to hear.
I look away. I can’t afford to feel that right now. Not when Finn’s out there. Not when this whole thing might kill us.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Chase finally says, his voice so gentle that it takes all my effort not to throw myself on him and start pounding my fists against his chest in a futile effort to burn off all the damn emotions that keep rising and falling inside me like a seesaw—always moving but never actually getting anywhere.
Instead, I just blink away a fresh batch of tears.
“I mean it,” he says, as stoic as a statue. “You’re not ready. This is a rescue mission, not a training session. You’re not ready.”
“Fuck ready,” I snap. “I can handle whatever surprises you or that realm throws at me.”
I stare him down, not entirely sure what I’m arguing about at this point. Except he saved me. For some reason, this immortal man chose to break all the rules for me. To keep me alive despite his own rule, even knowing that might mean the destruction of the Realm of the Real and the creatures in it.
He handed Fate to me on a platter. Because at the end of the day, it’s about choices, and he chose to forsake a duty that had bound him since the beginning of time.
And if he’s wrong? If I don’t love him back? If I walk into Adric’s arms and accept my fate as his Bride?
By keeping me alive, Chase bet the world—hell, the universe—on loving me. On his hope that I loved him back. Or, at the very least, that I love this existence enough that I would never risk it. Would never wed Adric. Or if I did, that I would never willingly consummate that marriage.
Chase believes that.
And, dammit, I want to believe it too.
“You shouldn’t come,” Chase says again, pulling me from my dark thoughts.
“It’s not up for argument,” I say.
“You’ll be untethered, which means that if we get separated, you could get stuck in the Nightmare Realm. And, Cora, I don’t want to los—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” I snap the words out, my voice low and hard.
“You’re the one who turned me into Consummation Girl by keeping me alive.
Maybe you do love me. Or maybe you just got tired of killing my family, and I drew the lucky card.
I don’t know. But either way, you’re the person who put me here.
You’re the one who knocked down all the chess pieces until we ended up right here.
And if you lose me, it’s because that’s how you stacked the deck. ”
“Uh, that’s cards, not chess,” Tia says, then waves the words away when I shoot a glare at her. “But a great mixed metaphor.”
“Do you think I don’t understand what’s at stake?
” I shoot a killer glare at Chase. “This isn’t a destination wedding.
I’m not getting married. We’re going in to rescue Finn.
And then we’re getting the hell out of there.
As for the rest,” I say, rolling my shoulders as I stand up straighter, “well, I guess we’ll figure that out after we get my uncle away from Adric’s crazy girlfriend. ”
I look around the room, my question for all of them. “Deal?”
They all nod. I exhale, weirdly satisfied, and for the first time feeling like maybe we can win. And that maybe I have more cojones than I’d realized.
Without thinking, I glance at Chase and see something that might be pride reflected in his eyes.
I look away. Somehow, I don’t think the Chase thing can be fixed with a speech. Not when there would be so many bodies buried under all the pretty words.
“Question,” Tia says, shoving her hand high. “Is Finn just bait? Or do we think that Kali, well, you know.”
I look around the group, frowning at the realization that they all look decidedly uncomfortable. “What?” I say, feeling like the last marathoner to cross the tape.
“I mean, of course, you’d try to rescue him,” Tia says. “But, well, I mean, he’s your uncle.”
“And?”
She glances toward Chase as if for help.
“Same bloodline,” he says. “Long game.”
It takes me a second to get it, then I feel a little sick to my stomach. “Oh, god. You think she kidnapped him as, like, breeding stock?”
“No one’s growing any older in that realm, right?” Tia asks. “Or at least not quickly. So what if it takes a few tries—or even generations? Eventually he’ll have a daughter or great-grand-daughter or great-great-great-great—”
I hold up my hand. “Yeah. Got it.” I look to Chase, who nods, his expression grave.