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I was vaguely aware of the pure smugness in Wane's soul, the dark possessiveness in Wyn's and the shock bleeding into lust from Kai.
"Damn, Wane," Kai huffed, stealing into my pleasant floatiness when he crossed the kitchen and moulded himself to my back. "No wonder you made her pass out that time."
Wane snorted, but he was pleased. He loved Kai being impressed by him.4
"I look like I pissed myself," I mumbled, resting my head on Wane's shoulder and pulling his sweet scent into my lungs.
"I'd still think you were beautiful if you did," he assured me, kissing the side of my head.
"Maybe the kitchen wouldn't be the best place for it," Wynvail drawled, sending a brush down my soul that made me sigh, my eyelids fluttering again. At least until I realised that beneath the lust and envy in Wyn and Kai's souls there was a common thread of unease.
I straightened, forcing my heavy eyelids to fully open, pointedly not looking at the dark stain on my stolen sweatpants. "What?" When they were silent, I gave them matching hard looks, the last buzz of my orgasm clearing. "Kai. Wyn. What is it?"
"You're happy right now," Kai sighed, reaching up to graze my jaw with a knuckle. "Don't make me ruin that, my rose."
I felt his stubbornness set in and transferred my stare to Wyn. "If you don't tell me, I'll keep these sweatpants forever. The first thing I'll do is wash them. Twice."
It was insane; this would never work. There's no way he'd care so much about—
"Fine," he muttered, nostrils flaring. "But take them off now and hand them over. We'll exchange goods at the same time. I don't trust you not to renege on the deal. Sorry, honey."
I snorted but stepped away from Wane and shimmied the grey pants down my legs. I blinked when Wyn pulled a newspaper from his back pocket, handed it over in exchange for the pants and—immediately brought them to his nose.
"You are very not normal," I told him, giving him a strange look before I unfolded the paper and—
UK SET FOR TWENTY DAYS OF DARKNESS the headline yelled in bold, black all-caps.
"Abnormal," Wyn corrected, not a single fuck given.
I swallowed, speed-reading the article, my stomach knotting tighter with every word. Wane wrapped his arms tighter around me, gripping a little fiercely as he read over my shoulder.
"Shit," he breathed when he reached the end.
Yeah.
Every weather expert in the country was studying the strange darkness. No one knew the origins. Certainly no one knew it came from a titan with a deadly agenda. Global warming causing strange weather patterns seemed to be the general consensus, which made zero sense. Most experts agreed on one thing: the darkness wasn't going anywhere, and the sun wasn't rising for weeks. A shadow had moved across the Earth and blacked out the sun, and my heart beat faster as I realised—it wouldn't end. Cronus would get the power he wanted, he'd take over the world, and there'd never be sunlight ever again.
"Wane," I breathed, turning to wrap my arms and wings around him, my heart breaking.
"It's fine," he insisted, but it wasn't.
He and Harvey had been raised in darkness, never seeing the sun for twenty fucking years. Harvey had been locked in the tunnels of Alphaven for so long that his sun soul twisted into a shadow beast. I swallowed hard, fighting tears of rage. It wasn't okay.
I promised Harvey we were done with gods and battles—and that included revenge, too. It was better to live our whole lives in the dark than live no lives at all.
So I kissed Wane's cheek and swallowed back all the words I wanted to say.
CHAPTER 14
WANE
There was a tight, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it refused to leave. The house blazed with light from two dozen lamps and lights, but the darkness lurked right outside, and every time I looked at it, I was back in the tunnels under the Damned Realm, festering, broken. One time the titan had ordered me to return to my room and forbidden Andryas to guide me through the warren of tunnels. He'd just snapped my horns off, and I could barely move without screaming and wanting to curl into a tight ball. I was forced to crawl the whole way back. That was the first day I wanted to die.
I didn't want to go back there—not just to that putrid room, but to that headspace. I cast a look over Haley—aggressively polishing her knife collection on the sofa, her legs thrown over Kai's lap—and rose from the armchair I'd been sitting in.
I loved my mate more than life itself, but sometimes it was hard to talk to her without burdening her, too. She had enough stress, even if we were supposed to be, and I quote, living happily ever after.
It might have been happy if the world wasn't under complete darkness. Or if we didn't know the titan who made my life a living hell for the last century was behind it. He killed me over and over and over, dragged me back to life as many times, and I couldn't shut down my terror that he'd do it again, and not just to me.
