Page 45 of Valkyrie Unknown

Three years ago,if anyone told me pursuing the prophecies would be the most stable thing I could do with my life, I would’ve laughed them out of the room.

I tried to laugh at my reflection, instead, as I stuffed runaway strands of red into a messy bun and smoothed out my button-down shirt. It didn’t matter how I hung my clothes or how often I ironed them, they were always wrinkled when I walked out the door in the morning.

Davyn and I had been across the country and back multiple times, talking to prophecy experts he knew, getting my driving to a place where his foot didn’t hit the floorboards every time I was supposed to use the brakes, and sparring.

Now we were back in Salt Lake.

The apartment was both too quiet and too loud, with the sound of morning traffic building outside the window of the downtown building. I glanced at Davyn’s bedroom door, as I headed into the living room. He’d be back in a couple of days, and that would help with this cloud ofmeh, but he couldn’t wipe it away.

I grabbed my things from the table near the front door, gave the place that had been home for almost three months another glance, and left for work.

Well, first breakfast and coffee, andthenwork. I hated that I’d fallen into a routine—it wasn’t just boring, it was also dangerous for me to be this complacent—but the job I had was good, and sticking to a schedule was the best way for me to keep up with the grind.

I skipped the elevator and took the stairs down four stories. When I stepped outside, warm air mingled with exhaust and washed over me. The dry air wasn’t bad in early May, but in the next couple of months, we would reachsuck the moisture from my lipstemps.

I fell in with the flow of pedestrian traffic and let the wave carry me toward the bagel shop. Were any of these people a threat? The question was always there, though recently, it felt ridiculous and paranoid. Did any of them realize I was carrying knives? That I was more than a sloppily dressed woman slogging along with the rest of them?

“You’re all the reason Davyn left,” I muttered to no one, despite the fact that it wasn’t completely true.

The image of him, pacing in the living room, flashed in my mind and overlapped with a similar memory and another, until I was reliving some weird sort of collage of moments where I experienced firsthand the meaning of the phraselike a caged beast.

“Go,” I’d said to him.

“Where? I’m not leaving you.”

I crossed the street to the bagel shop.

“Wherever you can let the bear out. You’re notleaving me; you’re taking care of your sanity.” Despite my attempts to remind him that I’d survived for more than two decades without him in sniffing distance, he slid into the role of protector when we came here.

I stepped up to the counter, and the weekday girl smiled warmly. “Hey, Abbey. Your usual?”

“Yes.” I returned the grin. Wholegrain bagel toasted with cream cheese and slices of tomato and cheese. Plus a large coffee, which would get generous helpings of cream and sugar. One of these mornings, I’d mix things up and try a different item on the menu, but I liked this one. It had yet to let me down.

Maybe when Davyn got back, it was time for us to move on.

Or maybe I needed to get laid. It’d been so long, the simple thought caused a pulse of want between my thighs.

Davyn and I hadn’t come close to the kiss we shared in the woods, the day the shadows attacked.Hands offhad been exactly that. Worse, I hated the idea of fucking someone else or of masturbating in the room next to his, knowing he couldsmellthe sex on me.

Not that I wanted to take my physical relationship with Davyn from sparring to sex. He was still hot, we still had a lot of fun, and my giving into temptation and riding that forearm of a cock would fuck up a good thing. He’d become part of my life.

The thought was as terrifying as it was soothing.

“Abbey, your order’s ready.”

Even my walking up to the counter, to retrieve my food and drink, was the same as always. Next, I’d walk across the street and into another building. I’d take the stairs four stories up, to the modeling agency at the end of the hall, I’d sit in the break room, and I’d eat.

I was grateful to Tori for hooking me up with longer-term work at a place that rented booth babes to companies with displays at whatever convention was happening at The Salt Palace. The occasional scuffle when someone got too friendly with one of the models broke up the monotony in my day, and at least once a week, I got to hear?—

“God, I wish I could eat like that.” Sylith, one of the models I worked with fell into step beside me, as we headed toward said office building.

I held up the bag. “You can have half.”

She seemed to consider it. “Probably shouldn’t.”

Not that she had anything to worry about. With dark hair that always fell perfectly, and impossible curves on a thin frame, she had the kind of ethereal beauty that made me wonder what kind of magic she was hiding. A glance in her direction showed she was wearing a shirt that saidSpit. Preworkout. In my. Mouth.

I snorted and shook my head. “Nice shirt.”

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