Page 66 of Veil of Night & Flames

Chase meets my eyes, then nods. “Bottom line, if we can’t stop it, we’ll see hell on Earth. And in every other realm, too.”

Chapter

Nineteen

We’re sitting on Tia’s bed—me cross-legged with her purple throw pulled over my lap, her against the headboard with a mug of coffee in both hands—and I tell her everything.

Ev-er-y-thing.

The closet. Chase barging in. The fight that wasn’t quite a fight. The spur-of-the-moment meeting in the dorm. The barriers. The keystone. And the freaky-ass bond between the brothers.

It’s one hell of a mind dump, but she listens without interrupting. And since Tia interrupts all the freaking time, that’s one humongous clue as to how serious all this is.

When I finish word-vomiting, she sets her mug on her nightstand and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” I repeat.

She shrugs. “Well, yeah.”

“But I should be freaking out, right? Why am I not freaking out? For that matter, why aren’t you freaking out?”

She leans over and takes my hands. “We can freak out later. Right now, I think we just have to deal.”

She’s not wrong.

“We deal with the important shit first,” she says.

I nod, fully expecting her to jump onto the barrier problem and what’s happening at the Widow Maker. Instead, she says, “Adric and Chase really agreed to share you? Because that is the wildest thing I have ever heard.” She looks me up and down. “Are you really that amazing in bed? Because I’m happy to let you take a test drive to see if you like girls…”

I throw a pillow at her, but mostly to hide my laugh. “Tempting. Except we both know Riley would hunt me down and kill me. But thanks.”

“For the ridiculous jolt of absurdity in the face of deep peril? No problem.” She leans back. “Seriously, are you okay? I mean, barriers and boyfriends and psychic sexy times. It’s a lot.”

I think about it. Really think about it. I haven’t slept much. My body still hums in the places Adric put his hands, and the whole Chase-can-feel-me-when-I’m-with-Adric and vice-versa thing is beyond weird. But all I say is, “Yeah. I think I’m okay. For now. Later, who knows? We might all three kill each other. But first, we have to save the world.”

“Sucks when the fate of the world takes precedence over your sex life.”

“Right? I mean, what was the universe thinking?” I catch her eye, and we both burst out laughing. Because sometimes, that’s all you can do to keep your head from exploding.

“Okay,” she says when we’ve settled. “Now what?”

“Now we figure out why the Widow Maker’s getting rumbly and make it stop. Because, from what Chase and Adric say, if that puppy comes loose, the entire universe is pretty much screwed.

“So we research,” she says. “We find the answer.”

“I am completely down with that plan. How?”

She grimaces. “I’ve got nothing. Except books.”

“Great,” I grumble. “Do you really think we can find something that Chase or Adric don’t already know?”

“Since you said they don’t know how to stop it, then yeah. I think we can. Because, you know, we pretty much have to.”

She has a point. “Fine,” I say with a sigh. “Books it is. Which books, exactly?”

“Scholarly stuff…and old. The kind of stuff that got lost over time. But there’s got to be something. I’m certain of it.”

“Yeah? Why?”