Page 626 of Shadowblood Souls
“Right now, and it’s a surprise. Get dressed, something it makes you happy to wear. We’re taking care of the rest.”
Curiosity itches at me while I peruse my closet. It sounded like this was more of a date sort of thing than a work thing or a saving the world thing. I pick out a casual knee-length dress in green cotton that always leaves me smiling and not self-conscious when I glance in the mirror. Then I slip on a pair of ballet flats and head out.
The guys have all dressed up a little too, confirming my suspicions. They haven’t gone full tux like when Andreas arranged his fancy party for me years ago, but even Zian has a collared shirt on and his short, spiky hair tamed with gel.
“You’re not even going to give me a hint?” I ask.
“That’d ruin the fun,” Andreas says in the cajoling tone I can never say no to. “Just come with us, Tink! It’s a bit of a trek, but we promise it’ll be totally worth it.”
He isn’t lying about the trek part. The taxi takes us to the usual private airfield, where a jet one of the guys must have talked Rollick into lending carries us for a couple of hours across the country.
The guys put a new rom-com I’ve secretly been wanting to watch on the cabin’s screen and lay out all my favorite snacks along with a bunch of their own. When I make more attempts to pry about where we’re headed, they always manage to change the subject. So after a few tries, I sit back in the cushy seat and enjoy my chips and flick.
Once the plane has touched down, the atmosphere in the jet shifts. Dominic takes my hand, and Jacob comes up at my other side to rest his fingers on the small of my back.
Griffin catches my gaze with an unusual intensity in his eyes. “This is going to seem a little strange at first, but it’ll all make sense soon. Do you trust us?”
Does he really need to ask?
“Always,” I say automatically.
When we step outside, the reason for the question becomes clear. The forest around the air strip sends a prickle of instinctive apprehension through my nerves. The trees, the scents drifting through the air—they’re uncomfortably familiar.
It feels almost like…
I can’t bring myself to focus on that thought to its conclusion. But as the guys lead me along an overgrown path through the brush, my heart keeps thumping faster.
When I spot the metal fence through a gap in the trees, my legs stall in their tracks. “Why are wehere?”
Dom squeezes my hand. None of the guys argue, so I must be right.
We’re back at the facility—the first one I really remember, the one where we spent almost all of our years in captivity together. Where the guardians forced us into tests and experiments that stretched our bodies and powers to their uncomfortable limits.
The one we tried to escape from twice: the first time ending in failure and Griffin’s apparent death, the second a success except for the venom my guys aimed at me afterward.
We haven’t been back here since our confrontation with the rogue shadowbloods several years ago. At least, I haven’t.
“It’s where we started,” Andreas says in a low voice. “Where we grew up together. Where we fell in love for the first time. There are a lot of good memories from those days mixed in with the bad, aren’t there?”
“Yeah, but we can remember them withoutbeinghere.”
Zian ducks his head, looking so adorably awkward that the pressure on my lungs eases a little. “We wanted to make this as meaningful as possible.”
I drag in a breath. “Makewhatmeaningful?”
Jacob tips his face toward mine, his nose grazing my temple. “Come with us, and you’ll find out. There’s nothing that can hurt any of us here now, Wildcat.”
Girding myself, I push onward between them.
It only takes a few more steps before the gate comes into view—wide open and draped with flowers. My jaw goes slack, letting a thicker waft of the rosy perfume fill my lungs. “What...?”
Andreas’s sly smile comes back. “You’ll see.”
We walk together through the gates and along a strip of silk that’s been laid out all the way to the burnt shell of the old ground-level building. Sorsha consumed most of the structure in her phoenix-fire, but somehow the charred ruin looks almost… beautiful.
More roses and other flowers dapple the grass on either side of our pathway and hang from nooks in the broken walls. Past the doorway where the door fell from melted hinges, more silk covers the warped floor tiles, sprinkled with so many rose petals you could stuff a pillow with them. Candles in fancy sticks glow all around the edges of the scorched room.
Someone must have stopped by a little ahead of us to make the final preparations.
