Page 58 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

The grinding crack of the stone coffin’s lid is enormous. Pale gold light flares through the bars of the window—warm, resonant, the luminosity of a ward stone recognizing the truth that activated it. A sound like a long exhale moves through the walls, through the stone itself, as though the entire crypt has been waiting to breathe.

I am still not moving. The hound snaps its jaws two inches from my face. I take the full weight of its next lunge on both arms, and I do not look away from Vesper.

Something with a depth both mighty and wordless thunders in my chest.

The truth. She spoke the truth.

The scrape of stone from the coffin lid. Her hand closes around the ward stone, whole and awake and singing at a frequency I recognize from the deepest parts of what I am. A muttered ‘sorry, I’m so sorry’ directed at Elias Doran, the practical corpse, resting beneath it.

The hound swings its head toward the sound of her vaulting the iron fence. I wrench both its jaws sideways with the last of my available leverage. “Eyes on me,” I command, all my hellbent determination flaring with need to hold it here. I’ll take a fatal blow—as long as she is safe.

Vesper hits the ground beside us at a dead run. She slides to her knees and presses the stone against the hound’s flank. The sound it makes is not a yelp. Not a snarl. It is something merciless, a single high grinding note which moves through every frequency at once. And then it’s a tide going out. The moment it explodes, I dive for Vesper.

Bone to stone. Stone to dust. I cover her, blanketing her from the smithereens.

Finally…a fine scatter of grey settles slowly across the floor of the crypt and does not move again. Our heavy breaths tangle. My arms loosen, and I heave a sigh and lie on the cold stone and breathe.

Vesper’s arms close around me before I have fully registered that the fight is over. She presses her face into my neck with a fierceness entirely inconsistent with her usual reserved feelings. I feel her shoulders shaking once, unstoppable tremors releasing a long-held pressure.

I groan. Several places along my body currently hold significant grievances, and I cannot disguise them. But my arms go around her immediately, and I pull her in and press my face into her curls. I breathe her in. Cedar. Sage. Cold coastal air. Something warm and entirely hers.

“I may be bleeding like a stuck swine,” I express into her hair. “But for some reason, I feel no pain.”

She makes a strangled sound, not quite a laugh, almost a whimper. “I was so afraid. I was afraid I was going to lose you.”

I lie with her weight against my chest and stay here for a moment. Then I cup her face in both hands and tilt it up. Those emeralds are so bright, so fathomless; I do not yet have adequate language to describe it. The edges are wet. She does not cry. She is simply close to it. I am grateful she may cry in my presence. I wish to be a safe place for all her emotions. And the most recent…it is the strongest.

“I’m here, Vesper.” I hold her gaze. “And I am not going anywhere.” A beat. She does not blink. “You truly meant it. The truth vow.” I take a deep breath. “You are in love with me?”

She nods. A small nod, but no hesitation. Her lashes catch the dim light. “It makes no sense,” she says. “And it makes perfect sense. You make sense…to me, Valefar. You fit with Bethie, with my shop, with the life I fought so hard to build. Everything in my life wants you in it.” Her voice softens. “Me, most of all.” She stops, searching my face.

I lower my lips to her brow and hold them there. “If I may be equally honest, Mistress.” My voice comes out quieter than I intend. “I cannot fall in love with you.” A beat. Her lips part, but I go on, “For I already have. Unconditionally. Unequivocally. And eternally. I love you, Vesper Elizabeth Larson.”

Her arms tighten around me, straining my three existing wounds, but I do not mention any of them. “I heard you last night,” she admits, chewing on her inner cheek. “Right back at you, Big Guy. I love you, too.”

My tail instinctively slides along her spine, slow, a language it reserves for her specifically. When it slips below her shirt, she goes still. And then she squirms—and then she giggles, a sound of such pure involuntary delight, I will carry it for the rest of my existence.

“Apologies, Ves,” I say, with complete dignity. “It has a mind of its own, as you well know.”

“It’s fine.” She tilts her face up. Her color is high and lovely, and she is biting her lower lip, a gesture catastrophic to my self-regulation. “My body consents to be your tail’s playground whenever its mind wishes. And, um.” Her lashes lower. Warmth and mischief frolic there. “We have the stone.”

“Mmm. Indeed, we do.”

“And…it’s mostly private here.”

I glance around, taking stock of the environs. Whatever magic exists in this place has resealed the coffin with admirable discretion. No temperature changes. No dark presences.

There is something else in her voice, though. Something I have become intimately acquainted with over the past few months.

Before I can pursue it, her expression changes. Her gaze drops to my sweater. The fabric is torn through at my shoulder and along my side, blood drying around the shredded holes.

“Oh my God, Vale. I’m sorry. We need to—I have a first-aid kit in the car.”

She starts to pull away, but I catch her gently around the waist. “No, Vesper. I am healing.”

“You’re still bleeding.”

“Temporarily.” I draw her forward again, until she is stationed just above my waist. “And there is absolutely no chance I will permit you to leave such a flawless location without telling me what was responsible for that particular expression before you noticed the blood.”