Page 109 of Demon's Bane

The way it felt when he was inside me almost seemed like it was. Desperate, shattered, wild, like he knows just how impossible all of this is, too.

Maybe that’s what he was about to tell me.

A stiff breeze through the trees rips at my damp clothes, molding them to my body and sending another bone-rattling shudder through me. It’s enough to pull me out of my spiral and into the stark reality of the present.

I need to get a fucking grip.

It’s not about me right now. It’s not even about Rhett. Halla could be hurt, she could be…

I don’t take the thought any further than that, but I do make myself put my own stupid problems out of my mind as I trudge onwards.

Only, after another minute or so, I realize my surroundings don’t look familiar at all. In my distraction, I must have gone the wrong way, further from the village and Rhett’s cabin, in the opposite direction I should have taken when I left the grotto.

With a frustrated shake of my head, I look left and right, trying to orient myself in the darkness, before deciding the best choice is to go back the way I came and start again.

I’ve barely taken ten steps, though, when the flicker of a light through the forest catches my attention.

Right alongside a flare of magick.

Human magick.

Sharp and copper and unmistakable, I freeze in my tracks with the first whiff of it in my nose.

Voices carry through the trees right alongside the light and the flicker of magick—deep, masculine, furtive.

Heart pounding in my ears, I duck off the path and take a few tentative steps forward through the underbrush. It’s slow going as I do everything I can to remain silent and unseen, as low twigs and branches tear at my clothes and damp hair.

Part of me—the sane, rational part—is screaming to go back, or to stay right the hell where I am and wait for them to leave, but I’m not exactly listening to that part right now.

If this is who I think it is, it might be my chance to catch him red-handed, follow him to wherever it is he’s been hiding out, dosomethingto make myself useful.

What exactly I think I’m going to do if I’m right, I don’t know, but I crouch down and continue to pick my way through the trees, all the way to the edge of a small clearing where I finally get a look at the man holding the light.

My heart leaps into my throat.

It’s been years since I’ve seen him, but I’d know that sandy blond hair and tall, lanky build anywhere. That generically handsome face I’d once thought was so devastatingly attractive, at least until I met a demon who makes him look pale, gangly, forgettable.

David pauses at the other edge of the clearing, saying something low over his shoulder that I can’t hear from this distance.

I shift where I’m standing, all my muscles tightening in anticipation, ready to move—to go get help or to follow him or to step forward and confront him, I’m not really sure which it is—when a wave of icy dread washes over me.

David’s not alone.

Stepping out of the trees, surveying the clearing with narrowed, crimson eyes, is Tyvar.

34

Rhett

My thoughts are red-hazed and single-minded as Gorver and I portal ourselves from just outside the grotto to the entrance of the main mining tunnel.

Getting an accurate portal inside the caves is tricky—something about the crystals or the hulking weight of the mountain above messing with the ability to land precisely where we mean to—so as soon as we’re there, I turn to Gorver.

“Where is she?”

“This way.” He nods into the cave, and we take off at a sprint into the darkness.

There are lanterns strung above to light the way into the main body of the cavern where the latest cave-in took place, but we don’t follow them. Instead, he leads me down a side tunnel toward a series of smaller, narrower passages that haven’t been the focus of excavation for months.