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Dark wraps his arms around me and sighs happily. A sound of pure bliss. I grin sleepily.

We are snuggling. I’m lying in bed all tangled with him.

My greatest dream has finally come true.

Chapter 31

Just This

One Month Later

Felix and Dis’s house has never held this many people at once. But on the whole, it’s coping extremely well.

Someone from Felix’s coven has set up what appears to be a full tarot spread across the dining table. It would be perfectly civilised, except three members of the commune have gathered round it offering competing interpretations at increasing volume. Big Brian is attempting to explain his own theory about the Death card, involving goats, which nobody asked for and everybody’s getting anyway. In the front room, Morgana’s attempting to teach Adam a card game that appears to involve actual small explosions of coloured light every time someone loses a hand. Adam’s lost four times running, so the ceiling’s starting to look faintly singed. Magdalene has claimed the good armchair and is holding court to two coven members about the Book of Bunny’s ongoing revisions. Chapter three apparently needs a complete rewrite now that the prophecy’s gone and done something nobody predicted.

I sit on the arm of the sofa with a mug of tea I’m not drinking and try to look like a person having a perfectly normal evening. It’s a skill I’ve had rather a lot of practice at lately.

“You’re doing the smile,” Felix says, dropping down beside me, voice pitched low enough not to carry over the chaos. “The one where everything’s fine and you’re extremely happy about it.”

“I am extremely happy,” I say, and mean every word of it. That’s rather the whole problem. In about thirty minutes I might not be, not if the entire plan falls apart the second Fiend actually shows up and decides none of it’s worth his while.

“He won’t say no,” Felix says, with more confidence than I feel entitled to borrow, though I take it anyway.

I fold my arms. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’ve actually met him,” Felix says. “Twice. Both times, underneath all the dramatics, it was obvious he wants that crown so badly it’s practically a personality trait.”

Across the room, Hex catches my eye over the top of Adam’s head and gives the smallest possible nod. It’s apparently the signal. A moment later he’s steering Adam up off the floor with an arm round his waist, murmuring something about needing him for a minute. Dis extracts himself from a commune member’s questions about the correct disposal of used candle wax, with the particular formal grace he brings to escaping conversations he’s decided are beneath him.

Dark finds me last. He materialises at my shoulder, the way he still does even now that he’s allowed to simply walk through a door like anyone else. His hand finds mine, cool and steady, settling my nerves.

“Two days,” Felix says, apropos of nothing, “until you two actually move into the flat. I want it properly clean before you touch it, Bunny.”

I lean into Dark’s shoulder, watching Felix go. “I won’t have to worry about Hannah finding cold patches in the hallway anymore,” I say quietly, mostly to myself. “I spend rather a lot of nights bracing for the conversation.”

“I am careful,” Dark says mildly.

“I know you are,” I say. “I still brace for it.”

He follows me towards the door. The two of us fall into step behind Hex and Adam and Dis, out of the noise and into the quieter part of the house nobody else has claimed tonight.

Dis leads us down the hall to a door right at the end. He throws it open with the flourish of a man unveiling something he’s rather proud of.

“The Thinking Room,” he announces, chest visibly puffed with pride.

I peer inside. It’s empty apart from a single chair and a rug covering most of the floor. “The Thinking Room?” I repeat, entirely lost.

“Don’t ask,” Felix mutters, already stepping past me into it, in the tone of someone who’s had this exact conversation roughly a hundred times and lost every single one.

Felix crouches down and rolls the rug back in one smooth motion. There, chalked fresh into the floorboards, is a circle I recognise instantly. Careful curling lines and symbols I couldn’t read if my life depended on it. It’s exactly the sort of thing that means somebody spent considerable time preparing, well before tonight’s chaos even started.

“Oh, it’s ready,” I say.

“I drew it this morning,” Felix says, straightening, dusting chalk from his fingers. “Seemed sensible to have it ready rather than improvising in front of company.”

He steps to the edge of it and presses his palm flat against the nearest line. The air in the room changes at once. It’s that particular pressure drop I’ve felt before. Shadows gather and pool right in the centre of the circle with a speed that suggests whoever’s arriving isn’t remotely bothered about being shy.

Fiend appears mid-complaint, one hand lifted halfway through what is clearly the beginning of an elaborate plait. The rest of his hair hangs loose and glossy past his waist, black enough that it seems to swallow the room’s light. His face is the kind of unreasonable that makes you want to apologise for staring. I do stare, helplessly, entirely without the good grace to pretend otherwise. Nobody warned me a person could look like that, and I’m not sure I’d have believed them if they had.