Jessa Slade - Forged of Shadows

He pressed her cold hand under his shirt, against his chest, closing the gap between them. He lowered his head to her parted lips.

So far away. He’d kept her at that distance, with his fear. Fear not just for the world but for his heart. She wasn’t merely lost to some metaphysical labyrinth—they’d been there and won through already—so he couldn’t rally his teshuva to the rescue this time.

This time, he’d have to go himself.

No enhanced senses, no amped strength. Just his need for her, spun through the shadows, seeking respite.

Every morning of his long-ago life, he’d breathed over the black coals of his cold forge, rousing them to the fiery intensity that had been his livelihood. To fail then had been to go hungry, which was nothing compared with what he risked now.

So he coaxed Jilly from the abyss, with his touch, with the words he’d feared to say.

“My weapon. My woman. My heart.”

Her lips warmed under his, and the breath she finally sucked down was his.

He pulled her up tight against him when she cried out, “Where—?”

“Hush. I’m here. I’m always here for you.”

She clutched him. “I was trapped. I didn’t think I’d find my way out.”

“Who better than a blacksmith to make the key? But now you’re stuck with me.”

She gazed up at him, and the frantic whirl of violet calmed.

“Forever.” He kissed her again, long and lingering. With eternity ahead of him, he vowed he would awaken her so every new morning. “Forever, if you will.”

She lifted her hand from where he’d still held it tucked against his chest, and drew his arm forward. Snug around his right bicep, a torque gleamed with twisting threads that matched the strange glow of her bracelet. “Looks like I already did.”

He rotated his elbow, admiring the seamless silvery flow that circled his arm. “The recoil when the hammer hit the djinni . . .”

“What a tangled web of soulflies, demon bits, and shattered hammer.”

She curved against him with a weary sigh, and he leaned close to shelter her from the rain. “Still,” he said, “the tenebraeternum armed me with a matching band, but it did not give me you.” He tilted her chin up to gaze into her honey-cinnamon eyes. An endless feast for his body and heart, yes, but only if she spoke the words.

After he did, of course. He was still the leader. Though it counted to him only if she was willing to follow. With her beside him, he could go on forever. “I do love you.”

He felt the shudder rip through her, and for a heart-stopping moment, he feared he’d opened some abyss worse than anything the league had documented.

But she only smiled at him. “You say it with such conviction, just like you do everything else.” A sheen lit her golden eyes.

Not just rain, he realized, tears. His rebel tyro cried because of him. A hammer blow to the chest would have been less shocking. “Trust me, Jilly, this is like nothing else. You are like no one else.”

Her smile deepened. “I love you.”

He would’ve stayed happily trapped in the moment, locked the world out. But around them, the bone-chill wind of the tenebraeternum whispered as Archer and Sera joined forces to shepherd the defeated demons back through the Veil. A malice screamed somewhere in the darkness, its ether unraveling, then fell silent.

Jilly touched his temple, bringing his attention back to her. “Where’s Corvus?”

He rested his head against her hand. “I don’t know. I was only looking for you.”

“Well, the league won this battle, if not the war. We’ll get him next time.”

“We?” He settled on the concrete as if they had all the time in the world—which they did—and there was no place he’d rather be. Which there wasn’t.

“I realized there was something bigger than me,” she said.

“That’d be me.”

She nudged him, gently. “Not just you. Us.” A jerk of her chin indicated the other talyan, the warehouse, the league. “I get that now. The rebel finally has a cause.”

“But the cause is not enough, is it? You showed me that.” He tucked back wayward blue strands of her hair, softened in the rain. “Everything I know the league should stand for—salvation for the city, redemption for the teshuva, hope for the talyan—all of it doesn’t matter if there’s not a place for this, for you and me.”

She blinked, tears spiking her lashes, and he kissed them because he knew his tyro talya would always have her spikes, and he loved her for it. Her hand dropped to his chest and fisted in his shirt as if she’d never let him go. “Why did we have to take such a winding path to get here?”

“I had to quit drifting,” he said, “and you had to come out from behind that maze of walls you built around you.”

“I couldn’t have, not without you. You came over the walls for me.”

“Through,” he said. “Through the walls. Hammers are a good weapon for that. But you followed me out.”

“I will always follow you.” She tucked her head under his chin. “As long as you don’t do anything colossally arrogant.”

“Not with you around to save me from myself.”

She untucked enough to peer up at him. “This won’t be easy, you know. I won’t be easy.” When she bit her lip uncertainly, he caught a quick scent of sweet cherries, as if the wild wind had blown in an early spring.

He pressed his lips to her brow and closed his eyes for a moment. “Then I’ll be the center of your storm.”

He stood, lifting her to her feet with him. They turned to face the ruined street and the salvage warehouse with its windows cracked and ichor smears, the talyan standing in ragged ranks.

She slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow and leaned close, the torque pressed against the reven that curled over her breast. He smiled down at her, his heart light—and his soul too—as if they wanted to spiral in on the woman beside him, now that they’d finally found their place. “Welcome home.”

“How convenient the league keeps a warehouse full of architectural salvage.” Jilly tweaked her teshuva to heft the heavy stained-glass window into the gaping hole left by the “unexplained gas-line-leak explosion.” The city inspector had eagerly latched onto that excuse, which Liam had offered without a single betraying blink. The only other explanation for such devastation would be an all-out war of some sort.

And who would believe a war existed between evil incarnate and . . . well, not good guys, but repentant demons? Plus, Liam had promised to pay for the street, although Jilly wondered if they’d have to sell the last of the aging fleet to pay for it.

“Convenient? Hardly.” Sera held up her end with equal ease despite the impatient April wind that pushed at the bright patchwork of glass. “The league just has a tendency to need replacement pieces.” Then she winced and cast a sidelong glance at the talya fitting the shims at the base of the window. “Oh, Jonah, damn it. I’m sorry. I might be sharing half my soul with Archer, but I shouldn’t let him take my discretion too.”

Jonah, his arm stump held tight against his body, didn’t acknowledge her apology. “We should have abandoned this place, like we left our hotel last time we lost to the djinn- man. We can’t let the league’s mission be revealed.”

From the doorway across the room, Liam said, “The league’s mission remains. But it’s past time to make a few changes, which includes standing up to the fight.” Jilly’s breath caught at the sight of him, tall and focused as ever, yet with a conviction now that drew her irresistibly. Good thing she was holding a window or she might just embarrass them both. He crossed to her side with a smile, as if he knew her thoughts. “Corvus and his djinni won’t find us so alone next time.”