Page 87 of All Hallows Fate

“I think I like this kind of distraction,” she said after a while, her eyes opening as she smirked up at me, as self-satisfied as a queen. No, as the goddess she was. “But I still know you’re up to something.”

“I just wanted to spoil my wife. Didn’t I promise you books, with spicy parts we’d recreate at home?”

Her gaze softened as she looked beyond me at the bookshop, its walls hidden by books stacked to the ceiling. “Oh god, we just desecrated their window. What if the bookseller saw us?”

“No one saw,” I promised, kissing the crown of her head, indulging my weirdo compulsions and taking a long inhale of her hair. Peaches, cream, and the floral shampoo she’d used this morning. “I checked.”

The line of her shoulders softened, the anxiety leaving her face. I traced her cheek with my thumb, unable to stop touching her even as she turned to push on the door.

“Oh.” Her shoulders dropped. “It’s closed.”

In no world could I keep the grin off my face as I held up the dull brass key. Cat’s eyes brightened, her mouth parted.

“Tor,” she said. Only that.

“Yes, my beautiful wife?”

She shook her head. Seemed lost for words. Then: “You bought a bookshop?”

I shrugged. “My wife likes books.”

I’d always be addicted to those two words. My. Wife.

“Get this door open right now,” she ordered in a tone that sent a thrill down my spine. “Now, Tor.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I smirked as I unlocked the door and Cat swept inside. But when I had it shut, instead of finding the nearest flat surface to splay across, she made me lose my damn mind by dropping to her knees before me.

If this was what our future looked like—books and mind-blowing sex—I would fight down Nightmare, Cruelty, and Violence all over again. To see her smirk with sly happiness, no shadow of fear or stress on her features… yeah. I’d do it all again.

But because I was a lucky bastard, I didn’t have to.

EPILOGUE 4

Death

The gates cast shadows across the courtyard, the moon high in the sky as I watched them from the third floor window, the castle dark around us, everything quiet except for Tor’s soft snoring behind me. The town at the bottom of the hill had been rebuilt, almost exactly the same as it had been, and the few lights that shone from windows were reassuring.

We survived. We won. Everything is back the way it should be.

I jumped when arms snuck around my waist, a kiss pressing to my bare back. “Nothing has changed,” Cat said in a quiet, velvet-soft voice. “We’re okay, Death. We’re safe.”

“I know,” I agreed, but I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop double checking, triple checking. The gates were secure. The domain’s magic wasn’t just secure; it was healthy. Stronger than it had been in a year. “I know, but…”

Her thumb stroked circles on my stomach. “But you can’t help thinking something else is going to go wrong, someone else will attack us, and the gates will fall again.”

“I know it’s foolish—”

“It’s not, because I keep thinking the same. We’ve been unsafe for so long, this peace feels… fake. But it’s not. It’s real. No one’s coming to take this from us.” Another kiss, this time to my shoulder blade. “But if anyone even thinks about trying, I’ll use my scales to rip them apart.”

Her bloodthirstiness brought a smile to my face, and I angled myself so I could pull her into my side, dropping a kiss on the crown of her head. “You do realise I’m strong enough to eviscerate them myself now?”

“I know.” There was a sparkle in her eye when she looked up at me, no trace of the death mask from the Halloween curse on her face now, only a simple kind of beauty that knocked the breath from my lungs every time I saw her. “But I quite enjoyed heroically protecting you as my damsel.”

My smile grew, and for once the compulsion to scan the gates, the realm, faded into the background. “Who am I to rob you of a treasured hobby? By all means, make me your damsel.”

She assessed me candidly. “At the very least, you should flutter your lashes.”

I did as requested. “Like so?”