Page 20
Heat floods my face, and I don’t look at Kieran. I don’t need to. Because his heat signature spikes ten degrees in the space of a single breath, and the blades at his hips start vibrating again.
Great. Just great. I came to New Orleans to find the Amazons, negotiate with a smuggler, and chase down a divine prophecy. But standing in Lenore Aldridge’s sitting room with my face on fire and Kieran’s heat signature burning through every wall I’ve built, the only variables I can process are one room, one bed, and an entire night alone with the man who pressed me into the moss of a moonlit spring and pulled away like letting go of me was the hardest thing he’s ever done.
10
JADE
Cold slams into my skin the second the fire around me dies.
My lungs lock up, and I stagger forward on frozen, solid ground that’s very much not the deck of a stolen ship. Logan’s hand catches my elbow before I face-plant, and electricity jumps between our skin—one bright pop that fades into the dark.
His grip tightens, a sharp breath pulling through his teeth as the current rushes out of me and into him. Then his thumb’s tracing a slow line across the inside of my elbow, and I’m about two seconds away from doing something deeply impractical when he lets go of my arm and steps back.
“There,” he says simply, tilting his head toward the tree line.
I follow his gaze and my brain just… stops.
They built walls. Wooden walls, tall enough that I have to crane my neck to see the top, stretching in both directions until they disappear into the forest. The whole thing—the wood, the posts, and the gate—glows with celestial light that pulses across every surface.
Above it all, a shimmering magical dome arches across the sky.
Apparently four goddesses looked at this tiny mountain town in upstate New York and said, here, have a force field. Then the people inside apparently said, cool, let’s also build walls, just to be safe.
“I didn’t picture—“ I stop, because I don’t know what I pictured. Cabins? Wolves frolicking in the woods? A quaint mountain village with a diner and a general store that sells homemade maple syrup? “Well, I don’t know what I pictured. But it wasn’t this.”
Darkness crosses over Logan’s eyes. “When you know what exists in the world, walls start seeming reasonable,” he says, and I step back, because he’s talking about himself and the Blood Coven.
I shiver at the thought, and to distract myself—because gods know I need to distract myself from the endless reminders that the man I love is the enemy—I return my focus to the town.
An entrance sits ahead in the wall—an arched gap reinforced with heavy timber, wide enough to let a large truck pass through. On either side of it, there are guards. They’re broad-shouldered, hyper-alert, and standing in the cold with the kind of easy intensity that says they’ve been doing this for hours and haven’t flinched once.
This is a terrible idea.
I’m about to walk a Revenant into a wolf sanctuary.
I’m about to bring the thing those walls were built to keep out through the front door, past shifter guards with heightened senses, into a town full of people who’ve spent two years fortifying their home specifically because creatures like Logan exist.
“You said the ankar token masks what you are.” I turn to face him, and his hand slides from my elbow to catch my fingers. Electricity pulses between our palms—steady and warm, the kind of contact that makes my brain buzz. “But those are divine wards. Four celestial goddesses made those. What if the token doesn’t hold against their magic?”
His gaze cuts to the guarded entrance, and he lifts his free hand, black fire spiraling up from his palm. It unfurls around us in a sphere, swallowing the glow of the wards and the moonlight until the only things that exist are me, him, and the steady pulse of electricity between our palms.
“We can’t risk anyone hearing,” he explains, and when he turns back to me, the fire’s black shadows dance across his eyes, darkening the gray. “But I promise you it’s going to be okay. The most powerful witches at the academy couldn’t see through the token. Neither could Circe, or Aeolus.”
“What about the Geryon?” I ask.
“The Geryon didn’t detect me. It read me. There’s a difference between a ward that scans for threats and a cosmic Seer that looks directly into your soul.”
I want to push further, but no logical argument comes to mind.
If Evie were here, she’d have one. But she’s not here, and she wouldn’t want to help me with this, anyway.
“Fine.” I cross my arms and release an irritated huff. “But if one of those shifter guards takes a sniff and decides you smell like a dead witch walking around in a reanimated body—”
“I have my time travel,” he says calmly, as if that’s the answer to everything. Which, honestly, it sort of is. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll go back and change it. That’s our safety net, Jade. It’s always been our safety net.”
Normally, hearing Logan say he can fix it by going back makes the knot in my stomach loosen. Because it means nothing is permanent. It means that if we screw up like we did multiple times with the hellhounds and with Oliver on the Crown, we get what no one else ever does—a do-over.
It’s the most unfair, overpowered, completely broken advantage any person has ever had… and it’s the reason I’ve trusted him with my life more times than I can count.
