Page 76 of A Hunt Bound in Blood

I shook my head. “Dragon senses are no better than any other animal’s, according to Sy. I don’t think even they can breathe through stone. If they could, I doubt the fury would have been able to hide here for so many years. My guess is it just left to hunt.”

She breathed out sharply. “Well, let’s be grateful we’re not the prey. For now. Shall we continue?”

The question came out with the faintest hesitation. As though, if I were to suggest we set up camp and linger for a while, she wouldn’t argue with me.

But according to the map, we still had a few days to travel under this mountain, and I didn’t want us to extend our time in the darkness any longer than we had to. Glory’s pale skin would look pallid by the time we saw the sun again… and I couldn’t say I looked forward to another round of trembling mountain when the dragon returned.

We stopped long enough to grab some snacks out of our bag and ate on our way.

But the energy between us had shifted. I found myself walking closer to Glory. My hand brushed against hers more often, our gazes found each other more than they had, and always that waft of longing hovered in the air. It did more to sate my hunger than the bits of dried meat and apple I chewed on, but I didn’t comment on it, not wanting to make her self-conscious or uncomfortable. Because underneath the longing was a mess of confusion that neither of us were ready to pick apart.

It saddened me that she had no idea just how incredible she was, just as she was. The longer I spent in her company and the more I fed off her various emotions, the more difficult I found it to consider feeding off anyone else.

A terrifying thought, but one I couldn’t ignore. I didn’t even have the excuse of the vampiric bond to blame for the fantasies that played through my head.

When trying to fight them off proved fruitless, I shifted my attention to our goal. I’d been hired to keep Glory safe from any threats and to lend her my expertise in tracking down a lost and mythical treasure. My sole purpose was to carry out that duty.

Thinking of what came after was looking too far into the future. First, we had to survive this mission.

Step one, find the amulet and return to Evaniel.

Step two, get Glory her research closet.

Step three, move on with my life.

As simple as that.

Once we left this mountain, we would have dangers to face—dragons, mutts, my siblings, whatever other tortures Tersey had come up with—but until then… until then, I had Glory.

Glory

XXXIII

My heart refused to settle. The tremor in the mountain had made me fear I was about to face my last moments, and instead of being terrified that I was about to die, all I could think about was that, if I had to go, at least it would be with Cammon’s large, muscular body covering mine.

He had crawled under my skin, and I didn’t know how to pry him out. Even more confusing was that I wasn’t sure I wanted to. On the contrary, I was horrified to realize I wanted him to burrow deeper. I wanted to get lost in his courage, his freedom, his touch of recklessness. I wanted him so far inside me that if I tried to tell the difference between us, I wouldn’t be able to.

Which was madness. He was a demon prince, I was a vampiric tempest mage. There was no way we were compatible enough for that kind of merger to work in the real world. A world not made up of constant surprises, adventures, and near-death experiences. A world where I needed to remain inconspicuous.

But that unreachable future was all I could think about as we wound our way along this dark tunnel, without any change of view or indicator of the passage of time. The light of our enchanted lantern was our only companion, and the occasional shake of stone when the dragons left or returned was the only change of pace.

Over time, my legs grew tired and I found myself slowing. Cammon stayed close beside me, every once in a while offering an encouraging nudge to keep me moving. In response, I found myself slowing more, pausing more often. As though he realized why, he rested his hand on my lower back and kept it there. I soaked in the heat of him, the warmth not necessary in the stuffy, dry swelter of life under a dragon’s roost but appreciated nonetheless.

We carried on like that for another stretch of time, never breaking contact, until finally not even Cammon’s sturdy presence was enough to distract me from the cramps in my legs.

I drew to a stop, set the lantern down, and pulled out the map again. It was difficult to tell where we were in these tunnels with the uninterrupted, unchanging walls of rock, but by matching the curve of our path to the curve on the map, I guessed we were somewhere past the halfway point. Barring the mountain crumbling in on us, we would see the sun in another few days. Although the temptation was there to press on so we could reach freedom that much sooner, to the hells with my legs, I knew what we would face once we left the relative safety of these tunnels. We needed to be well rested.

“Let’s get dinner ready,” Cammon said before I had a chance to share my thoughts with him. “If we don’t stop soon, I’ll never be able to get going again tomorrow.”

I didn’t know if he meant it or if he was projecting for my benefit, but I was grateful for the excuse to rest.

I threw down my bedroll and sighed in relief after sinking onto it. The joy of having my weight off my feet dragged a moan from me, and Cammon flashed me a grin that threatened to turn the nature of that moan into something entirely different.

The darkening of his eyes told me he knew it, but he said nothing as we shared a feast of apples, grapes, and some kind of meat wrapped in a floury pastry.

“I don’t suppose they gave us extra water, did they?” I asked.

He searched deeper in his bag. “They stuffed a lot of extras in here. Couldn’t stand the idea of us roughing it, I guess.” He pawed through the new blankets and cooking supplies, then stopped with a furrowed brow. “What the…” With a barked laugh, he pulled out a strip of white silk. “Any ideas?”