She nods.
"I'll reach him tonight," she says. "I make no promises about how quickly his people can cross."
She stands and walks deeper into the garden.
Maximus watches her go. Then he turns to me.
"You're pale."
"I'm always pale. I'm a vampire."
"Paler than that."
I lean back against the garden wall. The stone is cold through my shirt, rough against my shoulder blades. Adrenaline kept me upright through the fight, through the casualties, through the calls. It's gone now, and whatever has replaced it is worse, because at least running on fumes keeps you moving.
"Long night," I say.
He sits beside me on the bench. Close enough that his shoulder presses against mine. Solid. Warm. He doesn't ask me to explain. He doesn't tell me to rest. He just sits there, and what reaches me from him isn't strategy or the tension I felt from himearlier. Just presence. Just the quiet of a man who knows when not to talk.
That's enough. That's actually enough.
I lean into him. His arm comes around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. The fabric of his shirt is cool against my cheek. He smells like the fight still, copper and plaster dust, and underneath it, him. The nausea rolls through once more, low and heavy. I'm too tired to assign it a reason.
His hand finds mine where it rests on the bench between us. His palm is warm and his fingers curl around my knuckles.
Above us, the oaks creak in a wind I can't feel. The garden smells like rain that hasn't come yet.
The cold from the stone is seeping through my jeans. His shoulder against mine is solid.
I close my eyes.
The crescent marks pulse between us. Two hearts. In sync.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
She falls asleep on the garden bench with her hand in mine and the crescent marks pulsing between us. I carry her inside. She settles against my chest without waking, her face pressed to my shoulder, and her skin carries that warmth I've been cataloging. Steady and building. Warmer than any turned body should be.
I lay her in our bed and draw the blanket to her shoulder.
I sit in the chair beside the bed. I watch her breathe.
The light changes. Dawn. Gray through the eastern windows.
Her wrist rests above the blanket. A vein moves beneath the skin. I watch it pulse.
Seraphina knocks. I open the door. Her face is drawn, the lines deeper than they were yesterday. She looks like she hasn't slept. She probably hasn't tried. Her fist is closed around something small.
"Adrienne scried the wards during the night," she says. "She found my message inside the lattice. I felt her signature pass through, and she left something at the ward boundary."
She opens her hand.
A bracelet. Thin woven cord with a single glass bead, blue. The kind a child makes at a craft table and a mother keeps on her wrist for years.
"She tucked it into the stones where the eastern wards anchor," Seraphina says. "She's giving us what I asked for. Something the daughter wore."
I take it from her palm. The cord is frayed at the clasp. The bead has a chip on one edge, the kind of wear that comes from years on a small wrist.
