I suspect it will always pull me onward.
It will always pull me to her, and there’s no force in any of the thirteen realms that could stop it.
Not even Seren and her insistence that the two of us need not work together.
I won’t interrupt her hunt for the bounty. I won’t get in her way. But nor will I let her fall prey to the degenerates in it with her.
My star is a hunter. Her magick obviously gives her some sort of advantage, some reason to think she’ll beat the best fortune hunters the realms have to offer.
My skills are less intrinsic, more hard-won. I track. I study. I use my years of experience following criminals and smugglers and some of the very worst sorts of beings from one side of the Veil to the other.
But now it seems the Goddess has given me an advantage, too.
Some part of me still aches to seek the bounty in earnest, to use it to break my contract with Myron and pay the debts that need to be paid. To pay the debts that would free me.
But if it’s a choice between keeping Seren safe and leaving her on her own to be devoured by these monsters… really, there’s no choice at all.
She’ll have me at her back. Whether she wants it or not. Whether she even knows I’m there or not.
Whether it makes a single bit of goddessdamned sense or not.
Seren’s in my blood now. In my bones.
And I’d travel to any corner of any realm, face down any of those monsters to make sure she doesn’t go it alone.
11
Seren
“What do you know about Faerie?”
The wielder sitting across from me in the low-lit, rundown little dive bar on the outskirts of Boston regards me warily. He takes a long draw of his beer, and the watered-down, sour smell of it makes me ache for a tavern and an actual ale.
“I thought this was a date,” Gavin says, “not an interrogation.”
“Interrogation? We’re just having a friendly chat. Didn’t Mira tell you that I—”
“Seren.” He reaches across the space between us and lays his hand over mine where it rests on the table. “Come on, now. We’ve been doing this dance long enough to be honest with each other, haven’t we?”
My skin crawls. I fight down a wave of bile threatening to climb the back of my throat and a sharp pinch behind my sternum.
Fuck. Is this how it’s going to be now?
Because of some goddessdamned whim of fate, I’m going to feel this incredible disgust every time I’m touched by someone who’s not…
No. That’s not what this is.
Gavin has always been a bit of a slimeball. I’d feel the same way about him, regardless of having a brand spanking new m—
Again. No. Not going there.
I withdraw my hand slowly, while giving him what I hope is a flirtatious smile. It feels more like a grimace, but Gavin doesn’t immediately get up and leave, so maybe I’m in the clear.
“But you’ve got to admit, I’m a fun dancing partner, aren’t I?” Another smile, this one a little more believable, and he returns it.
Wehavebeen dancing around each other for the last few years, but not in the way he thinks.
Gavin’s a wielder—what male magickal practitioners have taken to calling themselves since ‘witch’ is too girly for them—and he always seems to have his ear to the ground for odd jobs and inter-realm drama. The wielders have been coming up with elaborate ways to get past coven wards for years, and have been traveling the Veil long before Allie’s new bargain with the demon king loosened up restrictions for moving between realms.
