AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?”
“She wants your blood, not mine. I can get the map and meet you outside.”
“She may not be the only dangerous thing in here.” His eyes burned me with their intensity. “I’m not leaving you. We need to keep our guard up.”
He started circling around the statue. The bhoot wanted Sai’s blood because he was a man in love. A man in love with me. I wasn’t sure I understood my feelings for him, but I suddenly felt foolish and stubborn. Sai had been nothing but gracious to me since the moment we’d met. I’d dragged him into my schemes against his will, and still he’d offered to help me.
He was my Atalla.
Even though I didn’t know the word, I was thinking I had an idea because if that bhoot came back I would end my life before I’d let her harm Sai. The encounter had left me too shaken to discuss anything. We needed to get the map and get the hell out of this temple, then we’d talk.
It was with those thoughts that I rejoined him, our footsteps echoing together in that temple full of curses and darkness.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
NEIA
Jessamine ledus past craggy land and across a sandbar swallowed by fog. I looked back at the temple which seemed to sink into the clouds, then I shifted to watching for merfolk. My fingers curled tighter around Elisa’s. She squeezed my palm back but remained quiet. Her hair still hung in damp ringlets against her outfit, and I wanted to quit this mission or start a new one that involved taking vengeance out on the damned merfolk. May they rot in hell. If reincarnation was real, I hoped they came back as plants that flooded beneath monsoon rains then froze in winter.
Anger flared through me, but I knew it was really a shield to cover the fear that drummed like a heartbeat. For a moment, Elisa had slipped out of my grip. That fucking creature had dragged her down and nearly drowned her.
I could have lost her.
Elisa noticed my attention. Her lips brushed my cheek with a feather-softness, and I stopped walking so we trailed behind the group. “God, Lis, I’m so sorry.”
She gave me an impish grin despite the heaviness that remained in her eyes. “You set the merfolk on me?”
“What? No.”
She widened the smirk, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. And I’m okay.”
“Perhaps we should back out. Maybe your gut feeling about quitting has been right all along.”
“Or maybe your loyalty is what’s right. That’s what saved me, after all. Sai and anyone on our team wouldn’t hesitate to help me. It terrified me. For a minute,”—she paused and tucked damp hair back over her shoulder—“I thought that was it. But it reminded me that this group is more than a job. It’s our family, Nei, and we can’t quit them.”
I heaved a breath. “I don’t know how I’d survive if something happened to you. You’re… you’re everything to me.”
She stretched up on her tiptoes and rested her forehead against mine. “Then let’s hold each other close through this.”
She kissed me, and I let our lips linger, tasted the sweetness of her mouth, and pressed my hand against the small of her back. Fuck. I couldn’t lose this woman. It would rip me apart. Now I was terrified of what may lie ahead in a way I’d never been before. Sai and I were the brazen ones of the group, jumping into impossible situations and facing monsters. Elisa always slipped through shadows, worked on locks. She’d never been in imminent danger like that before, and I wasn’t sure I’d recover from it.
Orman looked back over his shoulder and groaned. “Haven’t you two been together for a hundred years? You act like you just met.”
“Leave them alone,” Luz said.
Orman rolled his eyes but returned to walking behind Jessamine as Luz slowed. When we caught up to them, Luz’s brows pinched. “Are you sure about this Jessamine?”
“I can’t say.” I threaded my fingers between Elisa’s. “She must have been with Sai before I knew him.”
“Her emotions don't feel right to me. I can’t pinpoint what’s off… but something is. She’s afraid, nervous, and worried. Those all make sense in light of a dangerous mission, but something about the tint of the feelings…”
The fear I felt for Elisa grew. I was responsible for our entire group with Sai away. Not just our group, but our family as Elisa has aptly called them. If anything went wrong on this job, it fell on me. It didn’t help that Elisa’s brush with death had me distracted. I’d told Sai that Elisa and I shouldn’t go on missions together because it hindered our focus. I couldn’t ask her to stay back, though. Even if she would agree—which I doubted—it would leave her exposed to the merfolk or other wild fae.
“Sai doesn’t believe she’s trustworthy.”
Luz gave their head a shake so that their braid slipped behind their shoulder. “That’s why I was hoping Sai may have mentioned something about her to you before.”
“Sai doesn’t talk about all of his bedmates.”
