Far more dangerous than fury.
"I should prepare for tomorrow." Though part of him wanted to keep her here, keep this unexpected honesty flowing between them. Keep her near enough to touch. "We're visiting the other courts. They won't be as forthcoming."
She held his gaze for another heartbeat, her chin lifting slightly. Defiance or decision, he couldn't tell. His shadows tightened fractionally around her wrist, possessive.
Then she pulled back, and the loss of contact felt like tearing.
"Try to get some rest, Reaper." She paused at the threshold and glanced back. "You look like you haven't slept in decades."
His lips twitched. "More like centuries."
Her answering smile was brief but genuine before she disappeared from view.
He watched the empty doorway, his shadows reaching after her.Unable to accept the increasing distance, unable to retreat to the isolation that had kept him safe.
XXXII.
BRYNN
Brynn found Dante in his private study before dawn. He stood hunched over his desk, surrounded by maps and intelligence reports spread across every available surface. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing forearms corded with muscle as he moved documents around.
Her steps faltered.
Black gloves still covered his hands, but something about seeing him like this, shirt pushed back, absorbed in work, made her pulse do something inconvenient. She'd seen him unleash his power. Watched him command an entire court with a single word. But this felt more intimate somehow. The Reaper doing paperwork. The most feared Death Lord in existence, frowning at supply reports like they'd personally offended him.
She had bigger problems today than his forearms.
She paused in the doorway. The maps showed a territory she didn't recognize. Desert stretches broken by mountain ranges, scarred dunes, fortress cities carved into cliffsides. Red markers dotted the landscape like blood drops.
"We're visiting Seraphina today." He didn't look up. "Her court feeds on violence. Everyone there died brutal deaths. War, murder, accidents. They'll see you as a weakness to exploit."
That rough tone stirred irritation and something less convenient inside her.
"I can handle myself, Reaper."
He went still. Papers stopped moving under his hands. When he looked up, those dark eyes held an edge that hadn't been there yesterday.
"Not there." Weight pressed into each word.
Brynn stepped into the study. His shadows shifted as she approached, darkness bunching around his boots like muscles tensing for a fight. One tendril curled toward her ankle before snapping back to his side.
Even his shadows couldn't decide what to do with her.
"Then explain instead of issuing orders."
His fingers curled into the parchment, crumpling the edges. The muscle along his jaw tightened.
"Seraphina believes strength is the only thing that matters. She's been hostile to cooperation between courts from the beginning." He straightened to his full height, and the room shrank. "Recent ward failures near her territory give us reason to investigate, but she won't welcome scrutiny."
Brynn studied the tension in his shoulders. The way he held his body like a blade angled toward the door. There was history here. Conflicts that predated her by eons.
"Hostile how?"
He gathered several reports into a neat stack, movements sharper than necessary. "She believes the old ways were better. Each court isolated, ruling through strength alone." He tapped one of the red markers. "She'll use anything she can find to drive a wedge between us. To prove that cooperation makes me weak."
The way he said it, the weight on certain words, pauses where there should have been none, made her wonder what he wasn't telling her.
"What aren't you telling me?"
