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I shrugged. “It wasn’t perfect, I know. It still isn’t for what was in you at the end of that.”
“No. But now I have a base. Something to build off of. Something to trust about what this power that is inside of me is. All of that was something I’d never dared to do before—and only you could have given me exactly what I needed.”
“It sounds like I’ll be rewarded for my bizarre idea.”
She laughed, baring her teeth and nipping the line of my jaw. “You will be when I recover from what you just did to my body. Anything you want. However you want it. Want me. Whatever you think is just reward.”
Oh. Fuck me.
My mind was already in a thousand different scenarios I hadn’t dared to spring on her yet. But I would, eventually, visit them all. For if I knew one thing about Ada, it was that she would always surprise me, always be ready to explore boundaries with me. Because she trusted me. And I trusted her.
In that instant, peace like I never knew it surged through my veins.
This was it. And this was forever.
No doubt that someday, long from here, we would eventually sink down to the earth in death, only to rise to the stars together.
Forever entwined.
Chapter34
{ Ada }
Isat in the middle of the labyrinth at Netherstone, the snow falling gently around me. Tiny flakes drifting through the air like their descent to the ground was one grand production and each and every one of them was the star of the show.
The air on the mountain was still for a change. With winter, drafts from the winds that whipped about the mountain had found their way into the corridors of Netherstone. Not that I minded. It was a castle after all, and to be expected, even if it was build 2.0.
Such gentle snow landing on my shoulders, it was almost foreboding—the calm before a storm that I needed to brace myself against. But I couldn’t allow myself such pessimism, not when so much was right in my world.
We’d been back at Netherstone for three months now. Three months that had convinced me that I truly was pregnant. Turned out, panthenites were not immune to morning sickness.
Nor to lunch sickness or dinner sickness.
Nor to walking down the hall and catching a whiff of what Cookie had left in the corner because it was too cold for him to go outside.
Cookie was the dog Damen had gotten me two weeks ago.
Damen had found me in the library puttering about, announced it was going to be a long six months if I didn’t have something to take care of, and disappeared out the door.
He’d reappeared with a fluffy black-and-white puppy with a red bow around his neck. Damen had stared at me as he held it out to me, anxiety shining in his amber eyes on whether I would like the gift or not.
I did.
I named the pup Cookie, mostly because Damen had scrunched his nose when I suggested the name, and I thought it’d be fun to let the name echo through the castle’s corridors and into Damen’s study when he was working.
In secret, when he thought I couldn’t hear him, Damen called the puppy Brutus. Apparently, Damen had already given him a name before he’d handed him off to me. A name fit for the dog he was to turn into. Cookie-Brutus was chosen from a long line of the fiercest guard dogs, and was going to get big, eventually, his sole job to protect me and the baby.
Until then, he’d be my fluffy little Cookie. Hell, he’d always be my little black-and-white Cookie, no matter how big he got.
I couldn’t argue with Damen about my inherent need to take care of something, for the castle without Venetia had been especially hollow. I missed her salty spirit. Missed teaching her things. Missed laughing with her.
I could have been “translating genius” via video chats with my students at the Academy, but sadly, that was technology that was never going to be allowed there. No contact for the students with the outside, no matter what was going down in the real world.
With my background at the Academy, Triaten had suggested I spearhead a program for counseling trauma-laden panthenites via an online portal—because, hell—weren’t we all trauma-ladened? He was having the infrastructure set up. But there were a lot of nuances to think through—what with keeping panthenite privacy and knowledge of panthenite activities secure while I was living in the heart of the malefic world.
Still, we would get there.
Until then, there was a big hole to fill—entertaining me—for poor little Cookie. But he seemed rather up to the task. Always happy to tangle in my feet, take walks up the mountainside with me, and bark at Damen when we were out on the training ground clashing swords.
