Page 58 of Guarded By the Nightmare

“That was before.”

“I’d ask before what, but I think I know.” Her lips curved into a soft smile and for a moment time stopped—not because of me, but because of her, because she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Statistically, it should’ve been impossible, but it was still true. “But you have to go into work, don’t you.”

“I do, I’m afraid.”

“Can I go with you?”

“I would rather you stay here.” But it didn’t seem safe to leave her. If they’d been watching us take Nolan, surely they would already know about her, by now.

“I already knowwhatit is you do—so why?” she asked, pushing herself up in bed.

I slowed time at once.

She deserved an answer, but I needed time to think.

Why would I hesitate? I wasn’t ashamed of what I was—or what I enjoyed doing.

And she and I both knew that eventually I would kill her.

But . . .

I found that until then I did not want her to shy away from my hand, not when her submission was so sweet. And if she saw what I was truly capable of, within her human frame ofmorals,how could she grant me any grace?

From here, though, I was only a blink away from seeing the threads of fate that bound us together, and now that I was no longer covering her, I could see even more of them than there’d been before, so many streamers of our future, sewing us together—I brought myself back to her reality, still undecided, when she said, “Don’t be afraid,” and then laughed at herself. “I’m like an angel!”

“Are you?” I asked her. “I have never met one.” That only made her laugh more.

“No, silly. Definitely not. But—if you think I’m about to give up that,” she said, pointing back toward her bathroom, “you have another think coming.”

Her motion made the hourglass mark on her arm visible. Our time was limited, I did not want to leave her alone again, ever—it was decided.

“Put on clothing you do not care about, then. And sturdy shoes,” I said, and she was out of her bed in an instant.

A few minuteslater I took her to the dimension where I’d left Nolan. She was wearing jeans, a loose navy sweatshirt, and the boots she seemed to favor.

Nothing else had happened to Nolan in the interim, because I’d surrounded the perimeter for our activities, but I was surprised that none of his magical brethren had made an attempt at rescue.

“So what do you see when you look at him?” Mina asked quietly, when we wound up behind the magical cage I’d left him in. It pulsed like a glowing heartbeat in the dark.

“The same kind of power that binds you and I. Only I believe his threads link him to Ella, after your story.”

“Is threads what you call them?” Mina asked, gesturing at her chest.

“What did they look like to you?”

“More like . . . a map. Or a circulatory system.”

“Ahh. Well, all three of those things can be true. The point is the connection between one choice to the next, one person to the next, not so much the symbology.”

“Who’s there!” Nolan shouted, returning from whatever shock-ridden place he’d been, suddenly realizing he wasn’t alone.

I felt dangerous things inside me start to soar at the sound of his voice. To think that this human man had hurt my queen—then I felt Mina’s hand on my arm. “Easy there,” she whispered, before walking straight up to Nolan’s cage. “Good morning, motherfucker.”

The boy looked between us both, stunned. “Make him let me go, Mina!”

“How do we fix Ella?” she asked, ignoring him, squatting down on both her heels so that her head was even with his, as he was sitting on the ground.

He looked between us in panic again. “I can’t. They’ll kill me.”

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