Ignoring the heated pain it takes, I breathe fire and set the fucking mic ablaze. The reporter yelps and drops it as I turn to glare at everyone else.
“That’s it. Sharing time is over, so get the fuck off Everbound property before you become dragon chow.”
The flashing lights go wild for a moment before the reporters scramble away, eager to get out of here alive with what little update they just got.
“Way to keep your cool,” Silas snorts as we stalk back into the castle.
How is she?I demand telepathically while the big double doors shut behind us and we hurry through the halls.
Still communing with the gods,Crypt manages to rasp.
He sounds like shit. Like…really weak shit. After Galene did whatever the hell she did to Maven, the incubus collapsed and I had to carry his ass back here.
When we step into our old quintet apartment and slip into Maven’s room, the Nightmare Prince looks just as feverish and exhausted as he did earlier. He’s lying beside Maven, gazing at her with sweat beaded on his brow. I’m not sure if he has any markings left, but he’s clearly in pain.
Everett is already in the room, too, sitting beside the bed and fidgeting nonstop with the reading glasses he holds in his hand. His attention sweeps to us and back to our keeper. “About time.”
My mate looks like she’s resting peacefully, but it’s bothering the hell out of me that her soul projection has been in Paradise for so long. If we didn’t still feel the bond thriving between the five of us, the world would be on fire right now.
“How did it go?” Silas asks Everett, but his red gaze stays on Maven.
“The town’s officially unfrozen,” Everett yawns.
None of us has slept since our little goddess went into this trance.
“What about your creepy-ass ice sculptures in the courtyards? You gonna unfreeze those, too?” I ask.
He shrugs, indifferent as he rubs his scarred face. “Maybe later. I can’t leave her again. It’s taking too damned long.”
I glance at Crypt, noting how ragged his breathing is. “Hey. Stalker Boy. You see anything in her subconscious?”
He reaches up to toy with a piece of her black hair. “She’s not asleep, so I cannot enter her subconscious. I can’t sense?—”
He breaks off and jerks away from Maven as a fit of coughing takes over. I wince when I see all the blood he’s coughing up, and then he struggles to catch his breath, his chest rattling.
Fuck. He’s in bad shape. I don’t even know how long he has.
“Want another injection?” Silas finally asks, solemn.
“Piss off, Crane,” Crypt groans, wiping his face and grimacing.
For a second, we’re all quiet, but then I tip my head when I hear the barest sound from outside the front door of our apartment. No one else in here hears it, but I swear my shifter hearing has only gotten stronger just like everything else since I was rebonded to Maven’s heart.
“Incoming,” I warn the others.
The others swear, irritated.
None of us is surprised to hear that someone else is approaching our apartment. The last almost twenty-four hours have been filled with nonstop visits from various members of the newly-formed Reformist Council—including Kenzie and her quintet, Harlow Carter, Asher Douglas, my mom and her quintet, and almost a dozen others.
I leave the bedroom and stride to the front door, ready to fling it open and tell whoever it is to fuck off. But when I open the door, I pause at the sight of a young woman with warm caramel colored hair, big brown eyes, and a pink splotchy birthmark thatcovers half of her face. She looks nervous as hell as she clutches some kind of amulet and clears her throat, glancing behind me.
“Oh. I didn’t realize this was such a bad time. Sorry. I can come back and talk to Everett later.”
I frown. Itisa bad time, but I didn’t say that, so how did she?—
Everett appears at my side in the doorway, and it looks like the world just dropped out from under him. He exhales sharply in shock.
“Heidi?”
