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Chapter Seventy-Nine

CARMINE

Through the liminal, I carry Luna into my house. Nunzio’s at the top of the stairs.

“What happened?” he asks with alarm.

“Run a hot bath.”

He does as he’s told. I sit her on a living room chair and kneel before her so I can remove her shoes.

She sniffs, wringing her fingers like laundry.

The wedding scars across her knuckles go white.

Her shoulders and chest rise and fall with every sharp, shallow breath.

And her toes curl as if she’s trying to bend them into little fists.

What just happened caused her deep distress.

My body reacts by mirroring hers. My breaths get sharper.

A lump rises in my throat. Heat rises to the surface of my skin.

“Thank you for coming for me,” she says wetly.

“Thank you, Luna. Snowbird. Beautiful little Strega. For pulling me out of the water.”

“I thought you were going to die.”

She wasn’t scared of ravenous vampires, or the double-ringed Bourbon, or the strange physics of the liminal. She wasn’t scared of anything for herself. She was scared for me.

Without thinking, I put my hand on hers, meeting her eyes. She sniffs, and my nose tickles. A teardrop hangs on her eyelash, and I feel my own eyes swell. When she smiles and squeezes the end of my finger, the weight of worry that slides off her also slides away from me.

The need to comfort her is physical. I don’t have the power to deny it.

“You will never have to save me ever again.”

She blinks, then laughs, kissing my cheek as if her sorrow broke like a fever.

“My Luna. I am going to make sure your mother is found. The vampires Charles tortured in that lake will tear him to shreds, and if they don’t—if he just leads them away or escapes—I will break him myself.

His head will be separated from his body.

His heart will be thrown to the flame. He will be erased.

I’ve let him go too long. Then when your mother is found, we will find Laro.

He will not get away with just being cast out. He will be?—”

“No.”

“No?”

“Don’t hurt him again,” she says.

“You’d let him live? After this?”

“I can’t bear it. It’s too much. I know you’re you and I’m me and you do what you want and I do what you say, but please don’t.”

Her shoes slip off. I’ve called fire into my hands, moved men without touching them, and hunted with the silence of a tiger. But I have never felt so powerful.

“A word from your lips is all I need. I am at your service, always.”

Nunzio comes halfway down the stairs. “That bath isn’t getting any hotter.”

“Thank you.” I dismiss him with a gesture then get my arms under her so I can carry her upstairs.