I forget to yell at myself and focus on the huskiness of his voice.
“Anyway, you were a shitty dancer, but no one dared say anything about it. You were too intimidating, even then.” He chuckles. “Then we got to know each other, and I didn’t think youwere trouble anymore. Instead, you became this constant presence, squatting in my head, my heart—all of me, honestly. And I thought, if she lets me stick around, I’ll never be bored again.”
I smile and cradle his jaw in the dark. “I’m sorry, Luca,” I whisper. “I know you never wanted to come here.”
“Shh,” he whispers. “Alistair’s going to get stabby if you start apologizing again. I guess I wanted to tell you that past me was right about you. I haven’t been bored once since you walked through the door of the Fang. You make me feel alive, Celine—you always have.”
I kiss him. How can I not? The metal of his lip ring is ice-cold.
My wings turn back to feathers, and I wrap them around us before they can change their minds and decide to stop cooperating again. Malach mirrors me immediately. His wings are bigger than mine, reaching halfway around me.
Shivering, I hunch forward, relaxing incrementally as our collective heat builds.
Then the tree groans, and a frigid draft rushes through the holes in my sweatshirt. It’s crisp, piercing, and I don’t even want to know how it would feel to be caught outside in this.
“How long should we stay down here?” I ask. This position is painfully intimate.
“The eclipse won’t last long—three to five minutes at most,” Luca says. “But I think there’s only an hour of daylight left after this one. We should stay here until morning.”
“We’ll take turns sleeping,” Malach says. “I’ll keep watch first.”
“Wake me if you hear anything,” Ciprian adds. “If they’re close enough to be heard, they’re close enough for my magic to reach.”
I don’t know how I’ll sleep.
It’s too cold, too strange, too uncomfortable.
Despite the odds, my thoughts get heavy.
I snuggle into Luca, and he tucks my head into the spacebelow his chin. “Get some sleep, Celine. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn to keep watch.”
Something about his words is off, but I must be more tired than I realize. By the time I process the fact that Luca Saratelli told me a lie, it’s too late to call him on it—I’m already drifting off.
TWO
Monster Realm Survival Tip #5:
Listen to your gut.
LUCA
I track their breathing obsessively and brace myself for a long night.
I won’t wake any of them up to keep watch. There’s no point when I won’t be able to rest, anyway. Not on this realm. My basilisk is too alert. It’s been wired since the moment the gateway spat us out here instead of the celestial realm.
My joints ache, and I wish I could stretch out better. The shift fucking hurt. Worse than I ever imagined. The pain was endless, and when it finally stopped, I found myself drowning in new senses and disturbed by the missing ones.
It was hard to think.
If I shift again, will I be less overwhelmed?
The basilisk rattles angrily. It doesn’t approve of my “if.” Cooperating for now, it’s on guard, watching closely for threats.There will be plenty of them. From the tension in my bones, to the tingling in my gums and palms—I know we’re in danger the same way I know it’s fucking cold outside.
The monster realm. Normal shifters use it as a punch line, a curse, or a warning to keep kids from being shitheads, but it might as well be a strand of barbed wire braided into my DNA. My body knows this place because my ancestors evolved to survive it. Gods, my parents sacrificed everything to make sure I wasn’t born here.
I’ll be damned if I die here either.
It’s up to me to make sure we survive this. I gulp, swallowing a mouthful of venom-laced spit. Nauseating shame rolls around in my gut as fear skitters along my skin like thousands of spider legs. I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes.
