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I nod, and a heartbeat later he takes my hand and pulls me forward through an effortlessly summoned portal.

We’re back in the mountain cabin.

Only, tonight everything is different. The dust is cleared away, new furniture has been placed around the room, and the whole place feels so wonderfully cozy and lived in and strangelyhuman,that for a second I think I might start crying again.

It feels like a home.

“What is all this?” I ask, staring in wonder around the room.

When I turn back to him, he looks a little sheepish. “I wanted this place to feel like it used to. I thought it could be a retreat of sorts, like it was while I was growing up. I’ve always loved it here, and wanted to share that with you.”

It’s clear that a ton of time and effort must have gone into getting all of this cleaned up in just a few days. The idea that he would have considered all of this, been so thoughtful, gone out of his way to make it happen when he’s had so much else to occupy his thoughts, it puts a lump back into my throat.

“You said your family used to come here?” I ask him, reaching for anything that will keep me from starting up the waterworks again.

“Yes,” he says, looking around the room with a smile filled with memories. “It is my hope… it is my hope that one day you and I will share those same memories with our own family.”

Well, so much for that.

Seeing my tears, he rushes back to me and folds me into a hug. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“I want that,” I tell him with a ferocity I didn’t know I still had enough left in me to summon. “With you. Our life. A family. I want all of it.”

Eren rumbles low and possessive and pleased in his chest. “You’ll have all of it.”

Burrowing into him with a wobbly smile and a long, shaky exhale, I let my body say what I can’t. I don’t doubt for a moment that he would give me anything I wanted. Anything in his power, it’s mine.

But that’s not what I’m worried about.

All of it is inmypower now. My power to succeed or fail tomorrow. My power that will reforge the bargain or see it fall apart completely.

Chapter 41

Allie

Evening falls on the night of the full moon with a sense of utter finality.

The realm has been strangely quiet today, and though Eren’s had to step away from the cabin a few times throughout the day to deal with court stuff, we’ve been left mostly in peace to rest and cuddle and just enjoy each other’s company for a few final hours.

No. Not final. This won’t be all the time we have. It can’t be.

As we dress and prepare to head back to the Veil, neither one of us puts the fears and the potential disasters hanging over our heads into words. We don’t have to. Even though I might not sense him through the bond like he can sense me, I can still read my demon’s tight, worried features and the tension in his posture. I know him, and can see my own anxieties echoed back at me even without words.

“Ready?” I ask him, coming down the stairs a few minutes later to find him waiting in the entryway.

“Not even remotely,” he says with a small smile.

I take the hand he offers. When we step out of the cabin and Eren opens up a portal back to the woods outside the Veil, a sense of grim determination settles over me. No matter what happens tonight, we’ll have an answer, and there’s a certain amount of peace in that.

Standing in the woods just beyond the Veil, hand-in-hand with Eren, I stare into its swirling depths. Like the rest of this day has been, it’s almost suspiciously quiet.

Behind us, members of the court have gotten word of what’s happening here tonight and have come to watch the spectacle. Felix, Vayla and Sylas, Crowley and a few council members, along with a handful of others. I glance at them for just a moment before turning back to the Veil, peering into its depths like I could see through to the coven elders on the other side.

“We should talk to them first,” I tell Eren. “The coven. They’ll be getting ready to start whatever they have in mind to seal the Veil.”

He nods, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze before turning back to face the demons waiting at the forest’s edge.

“If Allison and I don’t return,” he says, deep voice carrying across the space between. “Felix is named regent in my stead.”