Page 113 of Veil of Night & Flames

“Cora—”

“You’re the oldest, strongest thing in five realms. If there’s a way to do it, you’re the guy. But you haven’t even tried, dammit.”

For a long moment, he’s simply quiet. Then he says, “Very well. I will look again. But hear me, my love. I do not believe there is a way. I have lived inside this problem longer than you can imagine, and I have never found one. But I have never looked for you.”

He dips his head, just slightly, then looks straight at me. “So I will do as you ask and look. I will not promise what I cannot give. But I will look on this, I give you my word.”

I draw a stuttering breath. “Thank you,” I say, and he inclines his head.

I take his hand. “I’m going home.”

For a moment, he looks like he’s going to argue. Instead, he says, “There’s something you should know. A warning.” He waits until I meet his eyes. “My people found the place Kali held your friend. A camp at the edge of my territory, well hidden. By the time we reached it, it was abandoned, stripped and empty. They have moved on, and I have not yet found where.”

“She knows you’re hunting her.”

“She knows. And there is more. Everything we found there tells me she is not merely raiding the weak places in the barriers. She has a hand in the weakening itself. She is helping it along.” His jaw tightens. “Which is why I cannot come with you tonight. I have to find her.”

“I get it,” I say, and I do. But it doesn’t make the leaving easier. “Just find her. And be careful. She held Whistler for a long time, and we never knew.”

“Go home, Beloved,” he says. “I will begin tonight. Both things—barriers and bitches.”

I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Then I take one final glance at this man I love despite everything.

And then, before I can change my mind, I take a long step out of the Nightmare Realm and into Chase’s apartment.

He’s asleep on the sofa bed, the covers twisted around him, printouts from the Widow Maker cameras scattered across the mattress where he must have fallen asleep going through them.

I don’t wake him on purpose. But he’s a Hunter, and he’s awake the second the air shifts. He takes one look at me standing there wrung out and hollow, and he doesn’t ask a single question. He just lifts the edge of the blanket.

I gather up the papers and leave them on the floor, then climb in, and his arms go around me before I’ve even settled, pulling me into the warm, solid line of him. I sigh, then press a gentle kiss to the chest of the other man I love.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into my hair, already half-asleep again. “Sleep.”

And I do.

Chapter

Thirty-Four

Iwake up to Chase’s hand on my hip and his mouth at the back of my neck, and I am very, very okay with this development.

“Hey,” I mumble into the pillow.

“Hey,” he says against my skin, low and rough, and his hand slides up under the T-shirt of his I’d stolen to sleep in. His fingers spread over my breast like he’s checking to make sure all his favorite parts came back.

“Anything missing?”

“Mm. So far so good.” His mouth moves to the spot under my ear that sends electric shocks to the most delicious places. “But I’m being thorough.”

On a laugh, I roll over to face him. The morning light’s coming through his window in long bars of gold, painting his shoulders and the line of his jaw. For a moment, I just bask, drinking him in.

“Welcome home,” he says, then kisses me.

It’s not a good-morning peck. It’s the kind of kiss that’s meant to be savored. And I push up to meet him, my hands fisting in his hair, kissing him back with every ounce of want and need in my body.

His hands are already pushing my shirt up, and he rolls on top of me, his cock hard against my belly. We don’t talk, but our bodies say everything, and when he tugs my shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it across the room, I let out a laugh of pure delight.

Then the laugh dies as his mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, my breast, slow and deliberate and a little rough, and I’m gasping his name even before his tongue finds my clit.