Page 112 of Realm of Dreams & Shadows

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.