Page 17 of Rook
Vex pursed his lips, his arms crossed. “You acted rashly in going there alone. It’s unlike you. Why?” His gaze was a scalpel.
He wasn’t going to tell Vex about his meeting with the Royal Matchmaker, about Shade and her schemes. He’d never hear the end of it.
“I am doing my job,” he said after a long pause. “And I need to return to it.”
Vex didn’t press. His tone softened a fraction. “Don’t get killed, brother,” he said quietly.
Then he, too, faded out, the hologram collapsing into empty air. The woods felt too silent.
Rook sat back on a rock and groaned, pressing his knuckles into his knees.
Don’t get killed.
Easy to say.
All he had to do was find the fugitives, capture them, and return to Vemion, leaving Earth behind for good.
And never seeing Sasha again.
10
Van life looked cooler on TikTok.
Sasha hissed as her elbow slammed against the tiny counter that served as her kitchen, office, and dining room. She glared at the dented aluminum, rubbing the tender spot.
“Just great.” She wrenched open a sticky cabinet and fished out a stale granola bar, her third of the day. Eight months ago, the choice had seemed brilliant. Move in with three nightmare roommates or put her meager savings into sprucing up a van as old as she was.
The thrill of freedom and open highways had called to her. She’d told herself she was minimalist enough, frugal enough, independent enough.
Now she just missed her stuff. Her battered French press. The stack of paperback novels she’d hauled through five states. Socks that didn’t vanish into the void.
“Don’t worry about that,” Sasha said, her voice sharp. She focused on the small, familiar annoyances to avoid the bigger problem. To avoid thinking about who she’d left behind.
Rook.
Pain twisted in her chest. She told herself she wasn’t thinking about him, but her traitorous brain summoned him with every hot draft through the window, with every flicker of red-gold sunlight that reminded her of a dragon’s fire.
She definitely was thinking about him.
It had been two days. Not a word. No weird phone calls, no tall, broad-shouldered men with golden eyes knocking on her window, not even a note taped to the windshield. Nothing. The world trudged along as if it hadn’t split wide open to reveal that fire breathing monsters were very real.
The slavers hadn’t appeared. She scanned every shadow, every passing stranger, half expecting one of them to step out from behind the laundromat. Nothing. The campers at Rugged Trails Motorhome Lodge showed no signs of alarm.
Yesterday, the tour group that was due back radioed that the lower trail was flooded, so they were detouring and would be delayed another day. On paper, everything was normal.
Except now she knew what normal was hiding. Now she knew about dragons and aliens, and everything real felt dangerously fake.
She’d only known him for a few hours, yet it felt like she’d left a piece of herself with him in that forest. A wild, reckless piece she’d tried so hard to outgrow.
She flopped face down on the van’s tiny bed, clutching the pillow. “I need to get laid,” she grumbled into the mattress.
The thought was a lie, and her body knew it. It only brought her back to the kiss. The memory of it in the ruined cabin, Rook’s mouth hot and seeking on hers, his hands trembling where they gripped her waist. That kiss had felt like it could have been the beginning of something. Something reckless, world-ending. New. Then she remembered his fire display, the ribbon of gold and red that had danced in the air just for her.
And the second kiss, a goodbye that had stung more than she could have imagined.
Sitting in her van wasn’t helping, clearly.
Sasha swung her legs off the bed, pulled on her boots, and got out to stretch. She was parked in her usual spot, a patch of gravel at the back of a row of battered RVs. In the late afternoon, the place was alive with the bustle of arrival and return. Engines rumbled. Folding chairs scraped open. A neighbor’s barbecue sent the sharp smell of burning onions into the air.
