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I stared at her with unchecked terror bleeding from me. She’d killed us both. In one flick of her wrist, we were lost.
“I’m scaring you, am I? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I’m sorry. I... Caleb, something was wrong with that scarf. I know it was special to you—”
“Special to me? Sunday, that wasn’t a fecking scarf. It was Death’s Shroud, and it was the only goddamned thing keeping you safe. No one could find you so long as that remained by our door.”
Standing, I worked to keep my limbs from shaking as anger and fear coiled like a snake ready to strike. We had no weapons, no methods of defense against the beings that were sure to find us now. I paced the floor, my brain working on overdrive as I tried to find some solution to this disaster we found ourselves in.
“What are you talking about? It was just an old ratty piece of fabric.” She reached for me, but I flinched away. I regretted the move instantly, especially once I looked into her eyes and saw the hurt there.
“No, Sunday. It wasn’t. It was a magical relic that was the only thing standing between you and the hordes of creatures looking to kill you and our child. With it intact, it would conceal your whereabouts from any means of investigation. Without it... ” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence. Without it we were fucked. End of story.
“You were using magic to hide me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Until recently, you wanted nothing more than to get away from me. You can’t honestly tell me if you’d known, you would have left it.”
“So that’s why they didn’t come for me...” she mused, more to herself than me.
I knew exactly whotheywere. Kingston. Alek. Thorne.
“I wasn’t trying to keep you from them,” I said, my voice softer now. “It was everyone else.”
She stared at me, her face unreadable for a second before it gentled. “I know. I understand you felt it was your only choice. That you were putting my safety above everything.”
Including her happiness.She didn’t say it; she didn’t need to. The implication was heavy in her words. Damning. I’d gone from her husband back to her kidnapper in one fell swoop. Some wedding night this was shaping up to be.
“What do we do now?”
Taking a harsh breath, I raked my hand through my damp hair and stared into the fire, the ashes of our one means of protection mocking me. “We wait. They’ll be coming for us. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Then let them fucking come.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I absolutely do. I am so damn tired of just sitting here being scared all the time. If they’re going to come, let them. At least then we can fight.”
“Sunday, you can barely put on shoes by yourself right now. How can you be expected to fight in your condition?”
Her eyes went hard. “Don’t underestimate me, Caleb. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
I moved to her, taking her hands in mine. “I know you will. But there is one of you and legions of them. No matter how fierce you are, my darling one, it will not be enough. Why do you think I went to the literal ends of the earth to keep them from finding you?”
She opened her mouth, her protest notched and ready to be unleashed, but before she could take aim, the power went out, cloaking us in darkness. But this was no natural outage. The fire, which had been blazing beside us, was little more than smoldering embers in an instant.
My stomach dropped. I thought we’d have a little more time. Hoped we could prepare. Instead I was crippled with fear.
“They’re here.”
The sound of glass shattering from the bedroom had me blurring to her, placing myself in front of the most important thing in my world. It was all I’d needed to slip into the role of her protector. The role I’d been born for.
We may not survive this fight, but I’d be damned if we weren’t going to take every last one of them with us.
“Sunday, stay here. Do not breathe a word.”
“Cal—”
I spun, gripping her face and kissing her with all the intensity in my blackened heart. “For once in your fecking life, Sunday, do as I say.”
