Page 154 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“Wish you could be there, too,” he responds wistfully, and Chloe’s heart jumps, just a bit, at that. “Wish I could put you somewhere safe and not worry.”

“I’m not sure you’re physically capable of not worrying,” Chloe says, turning her head to him and lifting his chin off her shoulder. “And don’t you dare.”

His smile is tired, a hand coming up to cradle her cheek, before he presses a kiss to her.

It’s chaste, but anything but gentle, a hard demand of contact and of reassurance. That she’s there, that she’s with him, that she’s not disappearing on him.

She lifts her hand to his hair, kissing him right back. “You need to rest,” she mumbles against his lips, his exhaustion bleeding out of him, his breathing still uneven. “We can’t hit that base, we can’t…not like this.”

She does too, her ribs still aching and her head still pounding, now that the anxiety and adrenaline have faded.

“You have proximity alarms set up here, right?” she whispers, as he leans his forehead against hers, his lashes casting shadows on his cheekbones. “Seanna’s safe, she’s safe, you can rest.”

“If we can’t find the spirit fox, she might never be truly safe,” he whispers back, not breaking the touch.

On a better day, Chloe would transform something into luxurious bedding, would alchemy up some beautiful pillows and a better mattress, but as it is, just about everything inside her spent, she just lets Killian guide her down next to him on the bare mattress, her head in the crook of his shoulder and his arm tight around her waist.

And if they can’t get to the spirit fox before that man does, before they move her, she might never be able to get another lead.

38

When Chloe blinks herself awake, sun is streaming through the boarded-up windows, and Killian’s standing, silhouetted at the empty door frame, the wind tossing the curls on his hair.

Not shifting, she watches underneath her lashes as he exhales, his shoulders moving, and all at once power floods the little cabin. It warps over the floorboards, through every small crack in the sand-bitten walls, until it reaches Chloe, barely grazing over her cheek like a caress.

Killian startles, then turns, and the circles are gone from his eyes. “You slept for thirteen hours,” he informs her, and there’s a tenderness in his voice, like the mere act of her staying asleep is something to be celebrated. “No input from me, no manipulation.”

Chloe believes it, from the ache in her small back, so she stretches, pointing her toes and flexing her feet. Yesterday's battle echoes in her ribs, in the dull pounding of her head, in the stinging in her fingertips.

“Anything?” she asks, and her voice comes out in a rasp.

“The same man tried to break into the house,” Killian responds, coming back into the shack and sitting on the ground next to the mattress. “He hit your trap this time—nice work—broke it in thirteen minutes, then spent about an hour trying to see inside the windows.”

Chloe exhales, pushing herself up to sit, and sometime while she had been asleep Killian had obviously teleported to a sandwich shop and then back, with an energy drink and a bag of chips along with a sub waiting for her.

She doesn’t know when he would’ve observed it, but it’s her favorite type.

As well as a set of lockpicks, still in their plastic packaging.

They’re the cheap kind sold at hardware stores for hobbyist and delinquent teens, but it still brings the hint of tears to Chloe’s eyes as she unwraps them.

She cracks open the energy drink first thing, blinking out at the bright sunshine.

“He left a trail,” Killian says, and this time there’s a deep satisfaction in his tone, warring with some frustration she can’t quite scratch. “He left a trail and it goes back to the Auburn base.”

Where he said the fox was.

Chloe shuts her eyes against the brightness, swallowing down the immediate emotional reaction, the immediate terror, and Kilian’s hand closes around hers.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t push, just holds her hand.

It bodes poorly, and Killian practically vibrates from the tension.

And if that man gets his hands on the spirit fox…when he’s already able to block demon magic and wants to control a Terese Project…

“The protections from the Auburn base started to fall an hour ago,” Killian continues quietly, and Chloe had just been sleeping.

She swallows, then swallows again, taking a large determined swig of the energy drink, as if it could firm up the odd swell of shame and fear inside of her.

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