Page 23 of A Bond in Flames

We were close, too goddamn close.

“Nice work,” he said, looking down at me.

I cleared my throat. “I’m glad you approve. My cousin’s potions are vicious.” I stepped back, and his hand, still resting on my back, slipped away.

He seemed to lean forward, his eyes darkening.

“So now what?”

His chest expanded sharply. “Now we walk. Stay close.”

I had to power walk to keep up with him, and every now and then, he’d tilt his head and listen for anything else following us. The terrain changed as we went, the rocks becoming even more sparse now, and I’d spotted the odd vine of an ivy-like plant curling around boulders and crawling along the ground.

Lightning flashed over us, forking through the dark sky, followed closely by ground-shaking thunder that felt as if it rolled right through me. “Is it always dark here?”

“It never used to be, but it is now.”

“Because of your mother?”

“Yes.”

“When will we reach her realm?”

“In a few days,” he said, scanning our surroundings.

“Will we see her while we’re there?”

“Not if I can help it.” When he spoke about her, the shadows instantly gathered around him.

Ahead were trees; they were sparse, but as we got closer, I could see they shimmered, like they’d been sprinkled with fairy dust. “It’s beautiful.”

“Don’t touch anything unless I do, and definitely don’t eat anything,” Death said.

Awesome.The vines I’d seen were thicker here, and some had grown up the tree trunks. I rushed to keep up with Death, who hadn’t stopped. As we traveled deeper, I realized the vines had flowers, and they unfurled, opening and closing as we got close, like stars blinking in the sky. “What are these?”

“They’re deadly,” Death said, “like most things here. The Outer Realm should be more of a no-man’s-land, relatively safe to move through and ruled by no god, but over centuries, Nox has been slowly claiming it for herself. Now it’s like an extension of the Night Realm—always dark, the lightning, the plants and trees, and now crawling with her demons and other creatures. It used to be all rocks here, like the ones we ran through, but my mother is greedy, and she knows taking the only buffer that exists between us will anger me.”

Based on the way Death had described his mother, it seemed Nox had created a world as toxic as she was. “She sounds bored. Time to get a life.”

Death’s gaze sliced to me, and his eyes did that brightening thing they did sometimes. “Yes, it is.”

We carried on walking, and the trees went from sparse to a dense forest. I stayed close to Death. It was impossible to avoid everything with how thick the forest had become, and my leathers were the only thing protecting me from the noxious plants around us.

A weird hooting sound came from above, and Death stilled immediately. One moment, I was beside him; the next, he’d pulled me in close to him, and we were surrounded by darkness, by shadows. His cloak had settled around us.

“Be still,” he rasped.

I blinked up at him, trying to breathe with his arms around me again, with him so impossibly close, and with those blue eyes glowing down at me in a face that now looked like a skull. The shadows hadn’t just covered us; they’d gathered around his face, turning him into the god he was. Again, I tried to breathe, but being this close to him while he looked like that? Yeah, I was having some trouble.

The hooting came again, closer this time.

One of his large, tattooed hands came up, and he took hold of my jaw. He dipped closer, his face only a couple of inches from mine, and shook his head, telling me to be quiet. My heart smacked against my ribs with force. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t drag in the oxygen I needed. What I felt coming off him… it was nothing like I’d ever experienced—the darkness, the anguish, the rage, and all that banked power, locked down against his will, unable to be accessed. It wasn’t gone, though. No, it was still very much there, writhing under the surface.

And alarmingly, it wasn’t just fear I was feeling all of a sudden. My nipples tightened, and a pulse throbbed between my thighs.

The hoot came a third time, but it was in the distance now.

“Breathe,” he said huskily.

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