“How many?” I whispered as he drove us toward the town.
He didn’t bother to act clueless. Good, because my patience was waning. “Invites? I believe about a thousand. Confirmations to date? Six hundred.”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. It was my own fault. I’d made it clear I just wanted to diva my way to this wedding. No decisions, no stress, just turn up on the day and look pretty.
“Breathe, Cora. The impending apocalypse is causing less of a reaction than our wedding, which is concerning.”
I didn’t even know where to start with that factual observation. “I want to be your wife, I just?—”
“Don’t want the big song and dance,” he finished. “I know, I know.” He tangled his fingers with mine and kissed the back of my hand. “It will be over soon. The factions will unite for a brief moment to understand that love pulls us together more than your grandmother can tear us apart.”
“You want me to see our wedding as part of our battle plan?”
“If it helps to reframe it that way, then yes.”
It did help. I turned to study his profile while he concentrated on the road. He filled the car with his presence and energy, but I no longer found it suffocating. It was, I realized, home. He was my home.
“You have long eyelashes,” I grumbled.
His lips twitched as he pulled into the convenience store parking lot. “Jealous?”
“Absolutely.”
He put the car in park, unclipped both seatbelts, and grabbed my hips, pulling me over to straddle his lap. “It’s the middle of the day,” I said, glancing around. There was no one watching us. Yet. While I could tell everyone to mind their own business on my property, the middle of town was a different matter.
“I’m not doing anything but reminding my mate about the real purpose of the wedding,” he said, punctuating it with a kiss under my chin.
“Which is?”
“To start the rest of our lives together.”
“You always know what to say.”
“There was a time not too long ago that I fucked up every other sentence when it came to you.”
“And look how that worked out.”
He snorted and cupped my cheeks. “I know you don’t want the big wedding or the fuss. But remember, you are never alone.We are in this together. If it helps, I made them book the latest ceremony time possible.”
I frowned. “Why would that help? So I have all day to twist myself up in knots?”
“No, so you have the least amount of time spent in the public eye before it’s socially acceptable for me to whisk my new bride off to be ravished.”
Oh, that made sense.
Hudson leaned in, his mouth brushing mine. Awareness swept up my spine, and I pulled away to glance out the window. Pressure squeezed my skull. Hudson cursed and shook his head. “What is that?”
The car shuddered, and the glass creaked. I threw the door open and leaped from his lap. He didn’t ask questions but dove out after me seconds before the sides of the car dented as if an invisible boulder was crushing it.
The windows spider-webbed with cracks, and the wards connecting me to my home screamed in my head. They were under attack. No, wait. I spun in a circle. They weren’t the house wards; they were my personal ones. The ones all elementals learned to build from childhood to protect them from pushy mind readers. But this wasn’t a push or a request—it was a declaration, and the kiss of inky power was both strange and familiar.
“She’s here,” I ground out between clenched teeth as I clutched his arm.
Hudson spun, already shifting his stance, power rolling off him in a lethal wave while he scanned the parking lot. He didn’t need clarification. There was only one “she” who would cause this visceral reaction.
Figures emerged from the edges of the parking lot, stepping through time and space like they commanded it. Eight elementals arranged themselves in a loose crescent. Their magicwas wrong, twisted, threaded with something that made my teeth ache. Something ancient they had no right to, nor the capacity to wield. Like Eloise, it was rotting them from the inside out.
And at the center of it all stood my grandmother.
