Callum - Two Months Later
“Witch,” I growl, rounding on my mate. “What happened to following the plan?”
Seren laughs, the sound like starlight in the midnight forest surrounding us. “I improvised.”
“Improvised? Is that what you call what you did back there?”
She props a hand on her hip. “Yeah. I would. What would you call it?”
“Reckless.” I take a stalking step forward. “Dangerous.” Her eyes glint. She takes a step away. “Liable to take a decade off my life, star.”
She only gets three good strides running away from me before I catch her.
Arms around her waist, I toss her over my shoulder. She struggles, but she’s not going anywhere.
“Hey!” she protests from where she dangles beneath my wing. “We got the sword back, didn’t we?”
I shift said sword where I affixed its scabbard hastily to my belt. “Aye. But at what cost?”
She gives a littlehumph. “Barely a cost. Unless you count your gray hairs, and you know how much I like those.”
To emphasize her point, she reaches a hand up to tug at the disheveled length of my hair.
It needs a cut, but my witch likes it long, so who am I to deny her the pleasure of running her clever little fingers through it?
When she’s had enough of reminding me about my ever-graying hair, she takes that hand and finds the curve of my wing.
Wicked thing.
Seren is more than aware just where she needs to touch me to—
“Witch.” I swing her forward and set her on her feet.
She barely has time to take half a breath before my mouth is on hers. I kiss her deep and thorough, fangs scraping against her lip in retaliation for her teasing.
When we pull back, we’re both breathless.
“Next time, can you at least pause long enough to tell me when you’re going to dive headfirst into a bottomless cavern?”
Anotherhumph. “It wasn’t bottomless. And you caught me, didn’t you? Besides, it was either that or get eaten by the bog adder that was chasing—”
“Witch,” I say again. “Next time, you’ll tell me.”
Her eyes scan my face, and her expression softens. “Alright. Next time, I’ll tell you.” She hefts her bag over her shoulder and nods to the sword at my hip. “Although next time I’d also like a job with a little less… excitement. Maybe serving someone a warrant or something. Collecting a parking ticket. Give us a little breathing room, you know?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I take her hand and open us a portal back to the Veil.
We’re in a realm known simply as the Dusk. A land of perpetual twilight filled with the sort of creepy, crawly things that would best be left in nightmares, I was none too keen to take this assignment.
But Seren’s got an insatiable hunger to see as many of the thirteen realms as she can, and on paper it didn’t sound all that complicated.
A stolen sword stashed away. An elven family who would pay highly to see their heirloom returned to them.
I just didn’t account for the adders.
My witch is right, though. We made do and got away, and even though my heart is still pounding as we step through the portal, the adrenaline rush isn’t all bad.
Especially because of what it does to my star.
