Page 45 of Unleashing Chaos

Jace crosses his arms and sits back. He remains silent as the tension in the room grows. Every passing second adds to the weight of what I have to do. And it isn’t until my bones ache and it’s hard to breathe that he says, “I’m sorry if that visit didn’t go the way you hoped. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes. In fact, I need your help.”

Cautiously he says, “Let’s hear it, and I’ll see what I can do.”

I exhale slowly and wring my hands in my lap. “So remember when I told you that my dad was going to send one of my brothers to make sure I was making progress with finding a partner?”

Jace nods and then his eyes widen behind his glasses. “Oh. Oh. Lux was checking up on you.”

“Yes. And it’s time for me to go home to check in. And Dad expects me to bring home my boyfriend. In two days. And—” I inhale sharply. “Lux assumed that boyfriend is you.”

“And you told him I’m not. Right?” When I remain silent, he presses again. “Desideria, tell me you set him straight.”

I close my eyes for a moment and when I open them, he’s still staring right at me. “Jace, I tried. I tried to tell him we’re just friends, but he wouldn’t listen. He can te—”

Jace leans forward. “What? He can what?”

I thread my fingers through my curls and tug them at the roots. “I didn’t mean to say that,” I mumble. “Too late now, I guess. Lux is the prince of Lust. He can sense lust and sexual desire. He could smell it all over the place. And he knew who it belonged to. There was no convincing him differently. It’s his expertise.”

Jace removes his glasses and rubs his temples. “I consider myself an intelligent human being, but I need you to dumb this down for me. What did he smell?”

My entire body heats and my face turns scarlet. “I assume you know what pheromones are, yes?” He nods and I continue. “Well, he can detect them in the air. Not only can he detect them, he knows who they belong to and who they’re directed toward. Don’t ask me how. It’s like asking me how I can levitate the TV across the room. It’s inexplicable. It’s just the powers we were given. As far as what he smelled . . . the, uh, the blanket we slept with last night.”

Jace runs his hands over his face and falls back. “So because our bodies had a chemical response to being close, he thinks we slept together?”

I chew my bottom lip and adjust so I can bring my knees to my chest, tightening my core. “Actually, no. I panicked when he said he was going to tell our dad that I hadn’t made any progress, so I stopped trying to tell him we were just friends. I changed gears and instead told him that you know what I am. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone but the person I picked to be my eternal partner. So, yeah, there’s that.”

“So now your brother thinks you chose me. What happens when they find out I know about you and I’m not your eternal partner? Do I get cut into tiny pieces and become shark food?”

“My dad isn’t unreasonable. I’ll tell him I took a chance telling someone but they chose not to come with me in the end. I just needed to buy myself more time. I technically have sixty more days, but if I go home right now for this check-in with no one, my dad is going to make me come home for good and marry me off to a demon and it’s game over. This is just a stopgap measure. That’s it.”

Jace stands and paces the length of the living room. The only time I’ve seen him more out of sorts is when he had his panic attack. His reaction makes a lump grow in my throat and my heart sink. I should have thought this through, and I most definitely shouldn’t have put him in the middle of it. But here I am with my future in his hands.

“You know how much the other realm stuff freaks me out, Desi. How does that even work? Do I walk out in front of a car and then have one of those moments where I see the light at the end of a tunnel? Then we spend days in your realm until I hear a voice saying my time isn’t up. When I return, it’s only been seconds here and now I’ve had a near-death experience? I don’t know if I can do that after what I’ve been through.”

I stand and move in front of him, grasping his shoulders to stop his pacing. “Jace Wilder, you’ve seen one too many movies. It wouldn’t be like that at all. We’d go through a portal, come out in my realm, spend no longer than forty-eight hours there, get back in the portal, and come back here. Two days pass here, two days pass there. No space-time travel stuff.” I squeeze him in what I hope is a comforting gesture. “But I get it. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to or don’t feel comfortable. I completely understand.”

“Forty-eight hours?”

“That’s all the time a human can spend in Infernis or Pax while in their body. One visit in a lifetime, for no more than forty-eight hours. Any more time than that and you would become very sick. If you passed in a realm that wasn’t meant for your energy, it would be devastating. Once an energy has entered our realms, it can’t go back. It’s the reason that some energies stay here; they can’t make the choice between peace and chaos.”

“Ghosts,” he says. His face lights up when he realizes that ghosts are real.

“We consider them undecided energies.”

“Fuck,” he breathes and begins pacing again.

I need to convince him to help me. He’s my only shot at buying another two months in the human realm. There’s one thing I know—Jace is attracted to me. What I’m about to do will have an effect. Will it do what I need it to? I don’t know, but I have to try.

Grasping his wrist, I pull him to me and press my body against his, looking at him from under my lashes. “Jace, listen to me. Think of this as a mini vacation. All you have to do is act like my boyfriend for two days. There are some pretty amazing things to see in my realm, and it might be fun to play pretend, don’t you think? We did have a good time at the charity event.”

His voice is a deep, serious rumble as he says, “Playing pretend for an investor and dancing, Desideria. We’re talking about tricking the devil himself into believing we’re a couple.”

I grin and slide my arm around his waist and rest it on the small of his back. “My father isn’t the devil. He’s just Chaos. And my brother knows far more about lust than he does, and he’s already convinced that we’re hot for each other. He was certain that we were both two seconds away from coming undone, and that he’d interrupted some intense moment. This will be easy peasy.”

“No death?”

“None. You just slip through the portal with me and we’re there in the blink of an eye.”

---