Page 53 of Hellfire to Come
Chester stepped forward, his grin softer now. “She told Dominic she’d wait. No violence. No threats. Just words.”
I swallowed hard. “That’s not her way.” I eyed him although he was very blurry, like he had grown a second head. “We are talking about Brooklyn, right? You’ve met the girl.”
“That should tell you how bad you were if she was willing to put blades and fangs aside just to get help,” he said.
I lay back against the pillows, trembling, my muscles aching with exhaustion. I could feel the remnants of the spell like soot in my lungs, but I could also feelher. Brooklyn. Not just a memory or a name but something warm threaded through the wreckage of me. Like a bond lit from within.
She’d bargained with the shaman; I knew it as well as I knew my name. I didn’t know what the price was that she had to pay, but I knew it would never be light.
I closed my eyes, letting tears fall freely now. Not because I was weak. But because I wasalive. And because she had to sacrifice something to bring me back to the world of the living. I was tired of being a burden, a liability to her. Despite all my shortcomings, there she went again.
She’d saved me.
Again.
And when she returned, gods help whoever tried to stop me from savingherright back. I was going to pluck Laughing Crow’s hair one by one until she undid whatever she did to my friend.
After that I was going to sleep.
And eat something.
Not necessarily in that order.
Chapter Twenty-One
BROOKLYN
Every muscle in my body trembled so violently, I half expected to rattle apart. Twitching, aching, burning with the weight of what I had just given, what had been taken, my limbs jerked in uncontrollable spasms. You’d think I’d sprinted across the continent in a single day. And honestly, even for someone like me, supernatural or not, that would be a feat beyond comprehension.
And yet there I was, shivering like a fevered leaf in the eye of a storm.
Dominic held me as if I were made of glass and sacred fire. His arms, iron-wrapped velvet. His heartbeat, steady, strong, unyielding, thundered against my ribs like a war drum laced with comfort. Ever the calm inside my chaos, my mate stood like a sentry between me and the consequences of my bargain. A wall of devotion in the aftermath of what I’d unleashed.
He hadn’t waited. Not for permission, not for protocol, not for sense. The moment the protective barrier of the ritual circle had flickered out, he was there. Storming forward like a predator denied its mate for too long, scooping me into his arms without a second glance toward the others.
Laughing Crow had protested. Loudly. Unapologetically. She had barked some demand about leaving the circle intact for spiritual equilibrium or residual reading. I couldn’t track the exact words through the fog in my head, but Dominic was deaf to it. His snarl at the shaman had rattled through my chest like the growl of thunder rolling in after lightning. I felt it more than heard it.
He cradled me close, pressing his lips to my temple, breathing me in like he was reassuring himself I was still here, still breathing.
I was,but only barely.
I could feel something inside me unspooling still, slow and irreversible. Not breaking. Not burning. But… shifting. Re-aligning into something new.
And I didn’t want to speak of it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“She needs to rest,” the shaman snapped from somewhere near my shoulder. “There are still variables in motion. You’ll stay. I must monitor her for anomalies in her energy, her mind. What she opened tonight wasn’t clean magic. The spirits always take their due.”
“Get away from her, you deranged human,” Dominic growled, and I winced at the rawness in his tone. I could feel the fury coursing through him like a storm with no place to land. “You’ve done enough.”
I wanted to hush him, to soothe the ache behind his eyes, but I didn’t have the strength. Not when each breath still carried echoes of fire and bone-deep fatigue. So instead, I buried my face in the curve of his neck, the scent of him grounding me, filling my nostrils with cedar smoke, heat, and the faintest trace of blood still clinging to him after our ordeal at the cages.
Laughing Crow, to her credit, didn’t flinch at his tone. Didn’t cower before the beast he held barely in check.
“If she hadn’t come to me,” she countered coolly, “your precious Alice would be dead. You think you could’ve undone that curse on your own,cat?”
Her smirk was infuriating.
Dominic’s chest rumbled beneath me. “Our Alice,” he corrected, biting off each word. “Don’t you meanyourAlice too? She carries blood from your people, does she not? Or do you reserve your loyalty for only the convenient children of your bloodline?”
