Page 190 of Love & Heart Braking

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I released Maligni’s hand, gaping at the daemon, who simply replied with a knowing expression.

Soleil snatched me away from him, patting me over in her search… for wounds, maybe? “You’re never going to the underworld again.”

Barren nothingness and molten lava through enormous splits in the ground. Yeah, I didn’t ever want to go back there, and I’d visited for all of five seconds as Maligni flashed in and out.

I looked at the daemon. “Am I free?”

“The curse will not have survived the journey.”

I was free of the curse?

What did that even mean?

That freedom changed so much that I was almost as afraid of exploring it as I’d been scared to push the curse. I could be with Devereaux. We could be a normal couple. I didn’t have to count the consequences or hold myself back. Having access to everything again was frightening. The possibilities were a burst of excitement, joy, and hope so strong that I shook with the emotional cocktail.

“Where’s Devereaux?” I stepped forward in the huge kitchen in my symbolic black heels that had a pearl clasp around the ankle.

“You guys will burn down Myrtle Manor with the amount of sex you’re about to have,” Soleil said in glee.

Devereaux and I had spent the last three days moving our stuff in with Bain and Soleil’s help. Well, I should say that I’d directed all the descendants with super strength to do the heavy lifting from my sun lounger in the garden.

Being back here was odd. Happy and sad at once. In time, Devereaux and I would fill it again with memories of our own. And this house had tons of rooms that were practically begging to be filled.

So I better get practicing, right?

Bain grimaced at Sol’s comment. “Let’s go, my queen. I don’t want to see Devereaux’s ass.”

I sure did.

Soleil placed her freshly manicured hand in his—turned out we’d only needed to cancel two appointments at Nails before Males. “Okay, but I just want to see a little.”

“Of what?” Bain demanded.

A door opened at the other end of the kitchen, past the drying rack containing hanging herbs and flowers and past the cellar that I’d made it my life’s mission to fill with wine.

Devereaux leaned against the frame.

And he was dressed in his baseball uniform.

His voice was low. “I could use some help getting out of this uniform, sweetheart.”

Soleil’s muffled squeal reached my ears.

I was doing some silent squealing of my own.

“Fucking gross,” Bain muttered, wheezing after a muted thud I could assume was Soleil punching him.

She declared, “We’re going now. Get out. Out, out! They’re going to have sex. Big sex. Move it!” Soleil stopped halfway out the door behind me, hissing, “I want all the details tomorrow morning. Grab a hire carriage if you can’t walk anymore.” Cackling to herself, she wrenched Maligni through the door, then slammed it shut.

I smoothed my soft pink off-the-shoulder top over my white jean shorts. “Hey, handsome.”

“You okay?” Devereaux walked over and tilted my chin upward.

“I’ve wanted the curse gone for so long, and now it’s here I don’t know what to feel.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

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