Sweet Reckoning(36)

“What about you?” Marna asked. “Where will you go?”

I looked at Kaidan, feeling the pain in his gaze. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t think you should be alone,” Kaidan said.

“We’re all gonna have to be alone if we want to convince them we’re working,” Blake said.

He was right. Kaidan and I couldn’t stay together, especially after we’d come all this way to keep Blake and Ginger from doing that very thing.

Kaidan shook his head. “Anna can’t pretend to work now that my father’s searching for her. She’s got to stay hidden.”

“Well, perhaps—” Marna was cut off by her own giant gasp as a dark, ethereal form with the largest wingspan I’d seen yet, dove through the window and halted above us.

Our group instinctually recoiled as one. I fought to breathe and appear unafraid. We were caught. Ideas and excuses began tumbling through my mind, none of them feasible.

The huge spirit swooped down, his horned head looming over the group before seeing me and advancing. This demon’s face appeared as a ram, thick horns curling downward. The closer he got, the stranger I felt. I waited for fear to engulf me, but a familiar warmth filled my chest instead—the feeling of safety.

“It’s me, baby,” the spirit said.

The voice was different in my mind—not as gruff, but still deep.

“Daddy?” My voice cracked.

He moved nearer. No wonder he hadn’t called. He’d shed his body. As a spirit, his giant chest and arms were bare, and he had a strange cloth wrapped around him from his waist to his knees. His body was humanesque, and yet not. Swirly and hazy. Too graceful. I felt a sense of loss knowing I’d never see that big, scary-looking man again. I pushed away the strangeness and sadness and lifted my chin to him.

“Thank God it’s you,” I said. “So much is happening. Pharzuph is hounding me, and I don’t know what to do or where to go.”

“That’s why I’m here.” His voice was unlike those of any of the dark whisperers. His was a soothing rumble. “You don’t have much time.” He turned his head to Kaidan, who came and stood at my side. The others watched, on edge.

“What do you suggest?” Kaidan asked.

“You have only one safe option,” Dad answered. “Get married.”





CHAPTER TWELVE





DREAM WITHIN A DREAM



The room stilled as his words cartwheeled around in my head. I had that distant feeling that came with dreams—first at the realization that Dad’s body was forever gone, and then the unbelievable words he’d just uttered—giving voice to a dream that I’d long since buried.

“We can’t.” I shook my head. It wasn’t possible. If there’d been a glaring loophole, we’d have thought of it by now. Dad failed to notice one major issue. “I have to stay a virgin. The sword—”

“No. You have to stay pure of heart, Anna,” Dad said. “What’s more pure than committing yourselves in love?”

“But . . .” I looked toward Kaidan.

My insides twisted at the dread on his face as he stepped back.

“No.” His voice was low. “It won’t work.”

I wanted to reach for him, but he stepped back even farther. His face hardened into the mask I knew all too well, concealing emotion.

“I’m sorry, Duke Belial,” he said to my father. “I can’t marry.”

I said nothing, but my heart shattered into a million shards as his rejection slammed into me.

“Don’t be stupid, Kai!” Ginger said. “There’s no time for this. If it can save you both, you need to do it!”

“Duke Astaroth will be able to see the bond of marriage,” Kaidan pointed out, frustrated.

“Well, he’ll see the bond of love between you anyhow, which is nearly as bad,” she countered. The twins’ father was the only Duke who could see relational bonds. We’d need to avoid him at all cost.

Kai thrust his fingers through his hair and faced away. He looked poised to run, his back muscles tense.

Obviously, being a husband had never been in the forefront of Kaidan’s mind, but his reaction still burned like an acid bath. If he loved me, why wouldn’t he want to take this step? Yes, we were young, but we weren’t normal. Yes, these were perilous circumstances, but the romantic part of me wanted him to want it all, peril or not.