Page 35 of Monsters of Midnight

I took a deep breath. “Is talking to him going to make the pain worse or better?” I asked. I was staring at the shadows the last thing on my mind being the desire for greater pain. I wanted to remove the pain, not have it get any worse by getting closer to it.

“I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” Thrain sad. “We don’t get a lot of visitors here. We only get transitory guests. Ryder is here by permission of the president of the DGC. In order for him to have rights to come in and go out, he must’ve gotten a pretty high-level permission from both sides of the divide. He must have people.”

“I don’t have people,” I muttered.

“Indeed, you do,” Thrain said. “You’re fae. In fact, that’s where you’ll be going when your time here is up. When the moon passes, we will go to Faente A’tun.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The home of the fae.”

“From everything I have read,” I pointed out, “the land of the fae was a dying land, where they were all trying to get away from. That was how they ended up on earth.

“The stories can be an inaccurate. They’ve been on earth a long, long time. There is a place where Fae still dwell. That’s where their departed go to. They typically don’t go through here, unless they are half human or have some other dispensation,” Oren explained.

“Like being the ex-wife of a demigod?” I asked.

“You’re a double winner.” Thrain gave me a smile. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

I watched as Ryder stepped out of the shadows and approached us. I felt the pain in my heart lessen as if something was settling back in there. Moving in slowly and surely, curling up on the couch inside my heart, as if it always been there, but I only just noticed.

“No,” I said. “I’m going to be all right.”

I glanced over to Oren, who was moving up from the shadows. Clearly, she was going to keep Thrain occupied while I was talking to Ryder. I glanced at them for a moment, wondering if Oren was the one Thrain was in love with, but the two of them stood together, talking quietly in the fog. They didn’t have that vibe about them. They were definitely just a friend’s vibe.

Not how I was feeling with Ryder. Harsh shadows moved across his face as he stepped through the gray light.

“Caroline,” the word came out from him, raspy and deep, as if he was taking a long sip of water through a parched mouth.

I looked up at him, seeing the chiseled line of his jaw as he stared down at me, his body leaning toward me, as if he would scoop me up and hold me close. I wasn’t ready for that. I stood with my arms encircling my waist and hunched forward. The pain was slowly returning but now it felt more like an awkward, displaced uncomfortable feeling.

It wasn’t so painful as it was crowded in there.

All the feelings I had for Ryder had no place in this world, in Undirheim. They had no place where I was going to live with the fae. As I stared at him, I also had the feeling I couldn’t imagine any type of a future without him. It had been like that from the moment I had met him, even though the actual details of the meeting were a dead memory I couldn’t quite obtain.

“Ryder,” I responded, but my voice was cool and withdrawn. A tone that did not go unnoticed by the crestfallen expression that slid across Ryder’s face.

Chapter 20

RYDER

It didn’t matter how gray and dismal Undirheim was, Caroline would always be a shining light in whatever world I found myself in. Her presence in Undirheim brought me out of the dismal forest and into a soft clearing.

I could sense every part of her.

Her heart was muted. This was what I had heard of as being the transition phase. A moment every soul went through as they were cleansed of the human emotions and sent off into another experience.

Undirheim was the place where one could access all worlds.

It was the place where the demons ruled, and the Valkyrie submitted only with the assurance it was their choice to submit, and you did not actually win the right to rule over them. For a Valkyrie was truly the ruler of all they beheld. They were the purveyors of death. In fact, they were very similar to banshees and maybe that was why Caroline felt so comfortable here.

Or maybe it was the dark magic of Undirheim that made her feel so comfortable. Whatever it was, I could tell just by her relaxed nature that she was at peace here. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to interrupt that.

How could I not?

Just standing here staring at her, I wanted to wrap her in my arms and pull her close to me. I knew this was not allowed. My eyes shifted to Thrain. Ratchet was a hulk and demon, but Thrain, the demon lord, made Ratchet look almost like a teenage kid.

The last thing in the world I wanted was a fight with Thrain.

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