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He saw it too, I realized, his body growing tense around mine.

“That’s not normal, right?” I asked, watching as people descended upon a distant building, like ants filing back to their home.

“No,” he said, hard as steel. “It’s not.”

Chapter 12

Reyna

Before I could even blink, Adrian had ripped us through a portal and down into a shadowed corner of the street.

“We’re going to go look, aren’t we?” I asked Adrian breathlessly.

“Iam going to look,” he corrected, his tone leaving no room for disagreement. “Youwill be going home the second one of my spies comes to get you.”

Like hell, I’d be doing that.

I slipped out of his hold, using his surprise to my advantage. Ignoring the low growl jumping out of Adrian, I rounded the corner on the main street, my eyes finding two people with sleeves pushed down to their wrists.

It had been clear from our view on the hill that there was a gathering happening. And the fact that everyone was heading to the same spot, wearing long sleeves on an uncommonly warm fall afternoon made it clear that we’d just stumbled onto something related to theconspiracy.

I could feel Adrian at my back moments later, the warm heat of him sending shivers of awareness down my spine.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t throw you over my shoulder and drag you somewhere safe,” Adrian said, crowding me.

“Because then people would think you are a brute and that would be the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve with this relationship,” I supplied casually, not stopping in my pursuit of the two traitors.

One man and one woman, who I’d never seen in my life, and yet I already had intense, somewhat harmful feelings towards them.

Served them right, to be a part of this insane plan to undermine Adrian.

Adrian didn’t fight my reasoning. Because he knew I was right. But he tensed. And I knew if I looked back, he’d be sporting a wicked frown.

“We won’t do anything stupid,” I said, remembering how hard, how blanched his expression had gone when we discussed putting Avery on my security detail. “But we should follow them. People saw us outside your temple. It won’t be that odd that we came down here.”

Adrian breathed deep, then grabbed my hand in a borderline bruising grip. “Fine. But keep close.”

“Not to worry,” I said, “I can follow orders.”

I would likely have to add hallucinations to the long list of ailments associating with Adrian seemed to cause me, because I could haveswornhis steps faltered. But when I looked at him, his stride was as confident and steady as ever, impossible to rattle.

We followed the couple in front of us, making forcedsmall talk that still somehow felt natural as they weaved through the side streets with a clear destination in mind.

After one turn, down a street that was more alley than anything, Adrian pulled my hand back. I knew what he was doing.

We’d just lost the veil of the crowd, not that we wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb anyway. But it was too quiet to keep following them.

It was the logical thing to do, to stop. But I was always weak to resist impulse, to not hunt something down when I could see it running from me.

I stepped out of Adrian’s hold and scurried after them, keeping to the shadowed side of the street, darkened with the fading light of the sunset.

Adrian was probably on the verge of wringing my neck, but I wanted answers. And when I inched around a corner, coming up behind a column, I got them.

“Motherfucker,” Adrian cursed low from behind me, clearly having followed.

The couple we were following had obviously taken a more beaten path, allowing us to inch this close to their target without discovery by the mass of other people descending on this building.

To the untrained eye, it was nothing special. Another storefront pressed between identical homes, weathered with years of use from Rome’s storied history.