She’s holding a chipped mug that saysCats Are People, Too. Without a word, she brushes past me, heads to my sink, fills the mug with water, and chugs it like she’s been lost in a desert for a week. It pours down her chin, splashing across her bare legs, which just makes me realize how bare they are.
Legs. Bare legs. Where the hell are her pants?
My gaze jerks upward. She’s in nothing but underwear and a silk pajama top that swallows her small frame while simultaneously hugging to every detail. I can see her nipples peeking through the fabric, and my mouth goes dry.
“Rey?” My voice cracks. “Rey, wake up. Seriously. I don’t want to die in my sleep, and neither do you. Just…go back to your room.”
She doesn’t listen. Just pushes at my chest with the mug still in her hand, shoving me back toward the bed. Is this some sort of weird side effect of unlocking the third rune? Before I can react, she crawls in beside me, dragging me with her, pinning me to the wall.
“Rey,” I warn. I’d agreed that, for a while at least, we could be on the same side. I didn’t mean the same side of the fucking bed.
Don’t think about her legs. This is one complication we don’tneed to add to the mix. “Don’t make me carry you—”
She throws a leg over me, anchoring me in place.
And suddenly I’m calm.
So calm.
Just like I was when she kissed me in Sigurd’s office, when she tried to get me to stop reacting. Just like I was when we touched the third rune.
What if we just let ourselves?
To rest like this with her.
To drown in the quiet she brings amid the chaos. Her weight against me is steady, grounding, like the storm in my blood is finally silent—not just silent, at peace.
Her breath feathers against my neck. “Just five minutes,” she whispers, voice thick with sleep.
And Gods help me, my eyes grow heavy.
Maybe death would be worth whatever sleep follows this.
The last thing I think of is a home I don’t even know, with trees so tall they blot out the sun. Branches tangled in silver frost that never melts. Jagged icy mountains rise in the distance with their peaks swallowed up by storm clouds. The air smells like iron and snow, yet beneath it lingers the warmth of pine smoke, like a fire burning just out of reach. Like the warm feeling of the sunrays—like the warm touch of Rey.
I jerk awake when my alarm goes off, and two things happen at once. Rey looks up at me from the bed and screams, while simultaneously punching me in the face.
“Son of a bitch!” I roar. “What the actual fuck, woman. It’s too early for this shit! Get out of my room!”
She stumbles out of the bed, collapsing on the ground before getting up and shouting again. “Why am Iinyour room? Yourbed!” she roars back. Okay, so she was definitely sleepwalking, then.
I rub my sore eye. “Right, it definitely tracks that I just wentover to your room, picked your lock, grabbed your feisty little body, careful not to forget the very un-Rey-Stjerne-like cat mug, and decided to use you as a teddy bear. Do I look like I want to sleep with a prickly, knife-wielding cactus?”
She retreats toward the door, opening it slightly to leave, but then turns back. “I happen tolikethat cat mug, thank you very much. And why am I a cactus? And they don’t carry knives, Aric! They have…pointy things that, you know—Shit, what are their names again? It’s early. Why am I here, why am I here withyou,why am I not—”
“You should wear pants to sleep, Rey. Seriously.”
Wrong thing to say. Her eyes immediately darken like she’s going to stab me with her knife after all.
She jumps a foot when a knock sounds at the door. Then someone pushes it the rest of the way open.
Reeve waltzes in with a coffee in hand and then stops dead in his tracks, his head swiveling back and forth between us. His mouth opens.
“Say. Nothing,” I hiss, voice heavy with sleep and annoyance. Where are the storms now? One would think lightning would strike right between us in this moment.
He holds up his coffee. “I didn’t. My breath was bated, but I have the restraint of a much older man. So what, did she crawl out of a coffin to come and murder you, or was this a…planned event?”
I shoot him a glare. “I was sleeping in peace when Stalker Stjerne—”
