Page 63 of Demon's Bane

I’m lost in those thoughts, trying to convince myself I’m only imagining the threat of danger in the shadows, over-thinking it all, when a tremor in Joan’s slight frame beside me puts all my instincts on high alert.

I pull her to me, wrap a protective wing around her, scan the surrounding forest for any sign of assailants, anything that might—

“What are you doing?” Joan asks, voice muffled from where I have her pressed into my chest.

“What did you see? Is someone following us?”

“What?” With a surprisingly forceful shove, she pushes away and looks up at me like I’ve lost my damned mind.

And maybe I have.

“Seriously, Rhett, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You… trembled. I thought you might have been afraid of something, that you might have seen…” I trail off, realizing how badly I overreacted.

Her confusion melts into understanding. “I didn’t see anything. I was just cold.”

Cold. Goddess damn me, of course she’s cold.

It’s still late summer, but the nights this far into the mountains always have a bite to them. Demons run warm, suiting us to this climate, but in her jeans and short-sleeved shirt I should have realized she would be affected by the temperature.

I scoop her into my arms, tucking her close to the warmth of my chest as I continue on toward my cabin. Like I might have guessed, though, my little mate has something to say about that.

“I said I was cold, not that I couldn’t walk.”

“I heard you. And are you not warmer now?”

She lets out a grumpy little grunt, but doesn’t argue as she ceases her squirming against me.

And thank the Goddess for that. Thank the Goddess I can do something, one single thing right for my mate, that I can give her something other than more of the misery she’s experienced since she arrived here.

Not that it’s likely to continue as I set her down just outside my front door and open it to let us in.

“This is my home.”

Joan doesn’t respond right away as we step inside. She looks around the room, no doubt noting the bare walls and sparse furniture, the lonely feeling that permeates the entire place.

“Did you just move in?” she asks.

“I… I’ve lived here for the better part of a year.”

The cabin was one of the few in the village uninhabited when I returned after my father’s death. In my fog of grief and pain, it hardly seemed necessary to furnish it beyond basic needs.

Now, though, its emptiness is undeniable. Barely a suitable place for me, much less somewhere I feel any pride in bringing my mate.

I turn back to Joan, and her face is blank, unreadable.

We step inside, and it’s one more failing to confront, one more way I’ve fallen short for her today. A disaster, this entire day, and with no way I can think to salvage it, I shut the door behind us.

20

Joan

In the quiet of Rhett’s cabin, the overwhelm of everything that happened today crashes over me.

Stepping through the Veil into a whole new realm. The suspicion of just about everyone in Rhett’s village. The horror of the cave-in and our dark walk through the mines. Seeing all that suspicion turn into outright anger when we got back.

Even this place, with how lonely and empty it feels, makes a sharp pain stick in my chest when I imagine Rhett living here all by himself.