Maybe we were there together. Even if the words written there didn’t make sense.
Because there were so many variables, so much that could go so horribly wrong.
In all likelihood, deathwouldfind a way to claim me—a way Grim wasn’t going to be able to stop. Maybe that would happen before The Few caught wise to Grim’s involvement with me, and maybe not.
There was still the problem of Cedric, too.
Grim and his friends, his family, couldn’t keep the wizard locked in a lantern for eternity… could they?
A mystery man had involved himself in our affairs, too.
I broke the kiss.
“What about the note?” I asked in a whisper. “Did you find out who left it?”
Grim pressed his forehead to mine, his hair brushing my cheek.
“Another Fated,” he said, and I gasped again. “Sir White came to personally escort the soul, so I didn’t get a chance to find out why. Cedric, the note, the involvement of another Fated—it’s all tied together, though I can’t figure out how. My guess is that someone’s got it out for me—someone besides Cedric. But I don’t know who,and I have no way of finding out. Not until whoever is responsible tries making another move. Seeing you again, though, holding you again, makes me realize… how much I don’t care anymore. Not about anything I can’t change anyway. My enemies are coming for me regardless. And now we know for sure, fate is coming for you, too. So all I can do anymore is hold us down until the worst.”
“The worst,” I repeated. “When you didn’t come back, I thought the worst had happened—to you. I couldn’t bear the thought you might be somewhere awful. At least that’s what I thought when I wasn’t thinking you just… didn’t want me. Didn’t care for me the way I’d come to care for you.”
“I was trying to protect you,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt you, Helena. I’d made such a mess by bringing this all down on you.”
“Promise you won’t do that again,” I said. “Leave me to wonder.”
“Whatever happens,” he said, “wherever I am, I promise that no matter what, I love you. And will forever.”
His way of softening the blow—of telling me he wasn’t going to make vows he might not be able to keep. All while promising the most beautiful thing of all.
Then he kissed me again—before I could argue—and I found it harder to process everything he’d told me up to that point, or to think rationally about any of the problems that this change of plans, this total annihilation of our original plan, did nothing to solve.
Maybe, though, Grim was right. That we were trying to solve a conundrum that, because of how we felt about one another, had officially becomeunsolvable.
No matter how you looked at it… it seemed there was no winning now. Not for either of us.
And the only thing left to do was to dance among the flames and in each other’s arms, drinking one another up as much as we could while the world blazed around us, our enemies—whoever they were—closed in, and this doomed ship we occupied together gradually sank.
EvenIhad to admit how, when it came down to it… that approach was, like Grim himself—likeus—pretty metal.
“Does this mean,” I said as I again broke the kiss, tilting my head back while Grim assailed my throat next with trailing caresses, “that… you reallyaremy boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend,” he growled into me, a low, underscoring rumble of his monster’s voice backing his human one. “I’m about to be your whole fucking world.”
I sighed, a rush of euphoria sweeping over me, the sensation heightened and amplified by the press of his skeletal hand sweeping under my blouse and scaling up my rib cage before bypassing my bra entirely, burrowing underneath before clamping around my breast.
A needy moan escaped my lips the moment he squeezed, the soft cry echoing in our tight quarters.
“And you, librarian,” he said, that thumb circling my hardening nipple, sending a rush of heat through my limbs—and between my legs, “are about to bemine.”
42GRIM
Three weeks away from her. That brief, agonizing scrap of time.
It made the centuries that had come before seem like a day.
The things she did to me. The way she dismantled and reorganized me, somehow making me simultaneously more human…andless.
When it came down to it, between the two of us,Iwas the one who was truly doomed.
