Page 71 of The Rebel Seer

Brendan gives a bark, and his sister throws him a treat before giving me a thumbs-up. “We got you, and also I do look more like I’m a young twenty.”

“I mean she kind of does,” Lee attempts.

“She does not, and everyone needs to understand that I am in charge. This is Shy’s mission, but I am the commanding officer here.” Rhys’s eyes narrow, and I swear I can see a storm there as he puts his hands on my shoulders. “I will not lose you, and if you run there would be no place I could not find you.”

My poor baby god is overstimulated. It’s been a rough day for him. For all of us, but this is his worst nightmare. He always has to be in control, and he is simply not now. This is my mission, and losing me is everything he has tried to avoid since the moment we met.

It’s funny how I worried about this before and now it seems so simple. We’re stuck here for the night, in a version of the temple where he would be married.

Where we will be married.

Maybe I should think more, but I don’t want to. I know we’re on the run and should focus on what’s going to happen tomorrow, but we need something sweet tonight. We’re as safe as we can be and have no idea what dawn will bring.

Our fears are often silly in the face of our love. I worried the temple would reject me somehow or that I would feel uncomfortable in it. It all goes back to my greatest fear. That I will not ever belong.

The marble hums beneath my feet. A soft wind caresses my cheek. Like a kiss of welcome. Like a hug from family long unseen.

I do belong here in the temple. This temple is our home. Part of it. We will always go back to the Earth plane. Rhys is the priest of those the Fae left behind. One day—when the war is done and peace lay like a blanket over the plane—we will build our temple there and offer what we are. Life. Death. The beginning of souls turning. Love. We will offer ourselves and our gifts, our magic and our work to our people.

But tonight I have something else to offer him.

“I would never run from you.” I go up on my toes and kiss his lush lips. “Show me our temple.”

This is my wedding night.

Chapter Eighteen

Sasha

The man formerly known as Oleg Federov followed Lee Quinn through the deepest part of the temple, his mind racing all the while.

Marta.

She had been ten feet from him and he hadn’t been able to save her, hadn’t been able to put his hands on her, to step in front of her and take whatever pain came her way.

And yet he felt like he was failing as he got further and further from Rhys and Shy and Cassie and Brendan.

Lee stopped in front of a seemingly solid brick wall and tapped on it, three times at the top and then three at the bottom. He turned and looked so much like the child Sasha had raised on the run. The boy had become a man and the man a soldier and the soldier a vampire king. “We have to wait for a few minutes. Someone has to open this door from the other side. From here you can either leave the grounds or get back into the palace, but you’ll go in via the servants’ entrances. You’re on your own from there. Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”

He wasn’t sure of anything except the fact that half his soul was here on this plane, and he had to get to her. The kids he raised were old enough to take care of themselves now, but Marta…

He would never forget the way that beautiful goddess had raised her hand and cursed him if he did not come for her host. Oh, she hadn’t put it that way, but a Russian knew a curse when it was sent his way.

You owe her.

He owed her everything.

“I have to get to the dungeon,” he said slowly, trying to find that calm he’d learned over the many years as an intelligence operative.

“Well, the dungeon is going to be guarded,” Lee said, leaning against the wall like he was settling in.

Sasha felt his fangs in his mouth, felt the talons his fingers could spring at a moment’s notice. “Then I will make it unguarded.”

“I know that sounds like a good time, but it won’t simply be Fae guards you’re up against,” Lee said. “You’re up against all the wards and traps the wizard has placed there. Do you think I haven’t tried to get in? He takes my soldiers there when he captures them. I’ve tried to rescue them before and lost more men and in horrific ways.”

Sasha’s heart felt too tight in his chest. He should have stayed and fought. He shouldn’t have allowed them to take her away.

“You would have died.” Lee’s expression was grim. “And no, I’m not reading your mind. It’s a pretty easy bet what you’re thinking. So she was your wife and you died, but you didn’t die and she actually died. That’s a fucked-up story.”

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