“Did he?” Sabre looks to Aowen, baffled.
“Yes,” Lachlan says, perfectly matter-of-fact. Then, in too incredulous of a tone for someone who could have waited untilmorning to “resume his duties,” asks, “Why are you all standing in the hallway in the middle of the night?”
As soon as he says it, the large clock in the foyer tolls.
One, two, three gongs.
“It’s a longer story than we have time to tell.” Aowen folds Lachlan’s and my hands together.
Four, five, six gongs.
If we don’t open the door soon, we’ll miss our window.
“Go with her,” Aowen says.
Seven, eight, nine gongs.
Lachlan merely nods and grips my hand tighter. He doesn’t ask where we’re going or why or what we’re doing.
On the tenth gong, I open the door.
On the eleventh, Sabre says, “May luck be on your side, Miss Fitzroy.”
On the twelfth, Lachlan and I step through the door.
Chapter
Forty-Four
We step out into a mausoleum.
Moonlight falling through stained glass paints the dusty floor in shades of ruby and emerald. On either side of us, sarcophagi are stacked three high within the cracked walls.
I know this place. It’s the Fitzroy family tomb. For the men, at least. Granny Maggie’s grave is in the cemetery outside. I wonder why the door opened here? Is it because I was thinking of her when I walked through? Did the ring deliver me to her final resting place?
I turn to Lachlan, who’s still clutching my hand. We stare at each other as dried leaves scuttle across the floor.
We’re both a little shy, I suppose. It’s been weeks since we were last together, naked and spent in a warm embrace. He’s quieter than I’m used to. The kind of quiet he reserves for strangers. Is that all I am to him now?
“So,” he asks, “perhaps you should explain what I’ve gotten myself into?”
I laugh, breaking the tension, and before I can get a word out, he’s kissing me. A hand spears into my hair while the other splays across my back to pull me close. He smells of wind and rain and the acrid, metal scent of Otherworld magic.
I lose myself in his kiss, his touch, if only for a moment. One we probably cannot spare.
“I missed you,” I attempt in between strokes of his tongue into my mouth.
“Charlotte, you have no idea.”
“Why didn’t you contact me through thediamrhán?”
“It doesn’t work that far away.”
“And you didn’t feel it pertinent to inform me of that before you left?” I’m half-ashamed of my neediness, but so thankful to be in his arms again that I hardly care.
“I’m sorry, I thought it would be easier on both of us that way, but I was—” He groans when I bite his lip ring, a punishment. He runs a hand down my body. “We should stop. I know we’ve done some wild things together, but fucking you on the floor in front of the dead feels a bit sacrilegious, even for me. Also, and I probably should have asked this before I stepped through that door, but … are we in the human realm?”
I pull back—absolute torture—and press a hand against his chest. Even through his leather breastplate, his heart pounds against my palm.
