“Erm, okay. What the hell have you got in there? Please tell me it’s not a demon.”
“What?” he laughed. “Why would I— Never mind. Just stay here. I’ll open the main door.” He disappeared inside.
I heard a deep, monotonous rumble. Given my past experience with surprises, I considered reaching for my demon, just in case. The doors rattled and rolled upward. I backed up against the Mustang, tucked my thumbs in my pockets, and watched the workshop reveal its treasures. New workbenches and racks sparkled. I smelled coal dust, heat, and metal. I knew those evocative scents. The door rolled fully open. A lit forge roared near the back. I hadn’t been sure, not until that moment, but seeing the forge. “Oh…” A metalworking shop, like the one Stefan had blown to bits a lifetime ago.
Stefan jogged to my side and turned to admire the workshop. “Well?”
I couldn’t speak. No words. No thoughts. A workshop? For me?
He lifted my hand—his touch gentle— and dropped a key into my palm. The very key he’d taken from me months ago at a time I thought we’d been so broken nothing would fix us again. “It’s yours.”
Mouth open, I grappled with what to say but still couldn’t make a sound.
“It’s a fresh start.” He blinked blue eyes. An unsure, tentative smile pulled at the corner of his lips. “The forge is one of those new, quiet models. Ryder waffled on about it, bored me to tears. And out the back… C’mon—” He took my hand and tugged me inside.
“I…” Nope—still couldn’t speak. I trailed my fingertips over the shiny new benches and gawked at the forge. It was huge. I could have several pieces on the go at once. Swords. I’d start with those. I could etch anti-elemental symbols into the blades. Just in case. Stefan pulled me into the small side room, once his office. It had a lick of fresh paint and a shiny new desk. Through the office window, I saw Ryder loiter by the workshop entrance. He lifted a six-pack of beers and pointed at me. Jenna entered behind him, bright smile on her tattooed face.
“There’s more…”
Stefan pulled me into the narrow rear corridor then whipped around and faced me. I tried to peek around him, but he blocked my view. “Okay, this part is kind of a joint venture.” He scratched at his cheek. “We figured you were never going to be happy living the nine-to-five. You’ll get bored, and then there’s the demon in you, who definitely isn’t going to be satisfied with normality. So we added a little something on the side.”
I blinked up at him. My heart fluttered. “I… I didn’t… I’ve… I mean—it’s—” Oh, to hell with it, I pressed my hands to his face and rose up on my tiptoes. “Thank you.”
“You haven’t seen—”
I kissed him. I only meant for it to be a gentle kiss, but something happened between my decision to kiss him and the moment my lips touched his. Emotion happened. Overwhelming thanks and heartwarming love. I could never tell him what the workshop meant to me. But I could show him. I slipped my arms round his neck and kissed him with everything I had. For a heart-wrenching moment, I felt him tense and thought he might push away, but the tension melted. He closed his arms around me, folded me against him, and kissed me back like we were the only two people in the world. Everything else was forgotten. The lust I’d poured into him, the scars I’d left him with. He could have pulled back, and I would have understood, but he didn’t. We’d been through so much, the kind of horrors that tore most people apart. But not him. Not us. We’d survived. Together.
He drew back and cupped my face in his hands, peering deeply into my eyes. “We’re free.”
“I know,” I whispered. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet. Free. “It’s over. The nightmare.”
He pinched his bottom lip between his teeth, afraid to say it. “It is.”
Those winter eyes sparkled. He felt it too: the kind of overwhelming emotion you can’t express with words. I brushed his bangs out of his eyes. Was it happiness? Was that what this feeling was?
“There were times…” His gaze flicked over my face, his eyes intense. “I thought we’d never live to see this. I mean, I hoped... I dreamed...”
So many times… I rose up on my tiptoes again, hooked my arms around his neck and locked my stare on his, so close I could see my fire-touched gaze reflected in his diamond glare. “I said I’d never let you go. I don’t make empty threats.”
He made a sound deep in his throat, somewhere between a growl and a purr, and delicious demon shivers skittered beneath my skin. In one powerful move, he hitched me up and pressed me back into the wall. I hooked my legs around his waist and lost myself in the cool burn of a kiss so raw with true, soul-deep emotion that it reached into the parts of me I kept locked away where nobody could touch them. Where hope lived. It truly was over because we’d stared into the eye of the storm and, against the odds, survived.
Ryder cleared his throat.
Jenna said, “They didn’t even make it to the den.”
Stefan and I separated. Slowly. Lips, mouth, body, gaze. I didn’t want to let him go. What I wanted to do with him would make our seasoned audience blush. My gaze told him it would happen. Soon. With copious amounts of ice cream.
“Den?” I asked, flicking my hair out of my face and straightening my clothes.
Jenna wasn’t wrong. The room at the back of the workshop had once housed Stefan’s demon-killing arsenal. And it did again, but this time there was order in the chaos: guns on one wall, swords on the other, TV on the back wall, and couches in the middle. My battered red leather coat lay over the back of a couch. I saw a coffee machine and even a cooler, which Ryder was already finding use for by popping his beers inside. He straightened, pointed to the right. “That there is a ChayTac Intervention bolt-action rifle, fed by a seven-round detachable single stack magazine. I’ll take you out to the quarry where the Institute tested their weapons, and we’ll fire off a few rounds to see if you get a feel for it. The three daggers you see over there have been etched with anti-elemental symbols, courtesy of Jenna’s tattoo artist, perfect for slippery all-up-in-your-face lessers.” He spread his arms and grinned. “Fuckin’ A, right?”
I drifted into the room between the couches, looked up at Ryder’s thrilled but slightly apprehensive expression, and couldn’t hold back the smile any longer. “This is—amazing!”
“Just don’t cry, okay? I can’t handle that shit.” Ryder offered me his fist. I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight.
“The demons left on this side still need to be dealt with.” Stefan said, moving around the couch to touch his old coat, now mine. “Coleman and Boston PD’s SRT need consultants, and they want us.”
Oh yes, I was ready for this. Abandoning my Ryder hug, I wandered around the room, touching the swords, feeling the spark of metal memories. One sword drew my eye: a katana with an elaborate guard. Recognition darted through me. A slight gasp trawled through my lips. I’d shared a moment in history with that sword. I’d witnessed the metal memories in its blade and watched Akil kill an institute spy. He’d done it to protect me like so many other sacrifices he’d made. Some desires must be sacrificed so that other needs live on. Life is a balancing act. My heart constricted, and for a few moments, I just...remembered.
“We can take it away, if you want. We just thought…” Stefan trailed off.
Akil’s sword. I reached out and hovered my fingertips close to the scabbard, but not touching. Ryder—Stefan, they knew I’d read the past in metal. This wasn’t just a sword. It was a touchstone to the past, so the memory of Akil would never fade. “No, it’s okay.” My throat tightened. “It should be here. He’d want it to be here.”
The sword. The workshop. The weapons. This was perfect. It was right. It felt like home, as only my friends could know it would. I faced them: steely-eyed Jenna, smug-ass Ryder, and the half-blood Winter King, Stefan. “Thank you.”
Ryder cracked open a beer. “Thank you, Muse. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here.”
I met Stefan’s warm gaze. “I didn’t do
it alone.”
I would never be alone again. It hadn’t been without great cost, to all of us. But these people, my friends, they were priceless. I had a life. I had the love of loyal people, the love of a man who understood the good and the bad in me, who loved me all the more for my faults. I was complete.
And finally, absolutely, free.
Epilogue
Ahkeel/Mammon.
Fire flows through valleys and over grassland, feasting like the hungry, wild thing I used to be. Demons scream. I absorb their agony. It may mask my own. Fire cleanses. It will cleanse this world, though it doesn’t cleanse her from my soul. I can’t burn away the memories. But even now, I feel…nothing. What am I prince of? I don’t want this mockery of an immortal life. I never did. Freedom. I gave her mine.
Burning dust gusts against my flesh. The scorched wind carries with it the girl-queen’s screams like echoes of a queen long dead. The time will come. The girl will beg for freedom. History repeats. I know. I’ve lived enough of it. Soon. When the Court thinks her silent, her mind gone, her power controlled and dormant, the little girl-queen will ask for it to end. I’ve freed a queen before, and two worlds collided. Chaos and control must be maintained. But should she ask—that little chaos girl—should she look me in the eyes and plead for freedom, I may oblige. Not for her. No. For me. I am greed. I get my wants. My needs? I. Need. Muse, the impossible half blood who defies chaos. I always did. Always will. An immortal lifetime of wanting, needing, awaits me. She’ll age and die. And still I will need her. Unless...
Chaos abhors control. The King cannot control the Queen forever. The girl-queen will rise up. And when chaos reigns, the veil falls.
I smile into the raging firestorm, into the future—History repeats. I will guarantee it.
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About the Author
Born in Tonbridge, Kent in 1979, Pippa's family moved to the South West of England where she grew up among the dramatic moorland and sweeping coastlands of Devon & Cornwall. With a family history brimming with intrigue, complete with Gypsy angst on one side and Jewish survivors on the other, she draws from a patchwork of ancestry and uses it as the inspiration for her writing. Happily married and the mother of two little girls, she resides on the Devon & Cornwall border.
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Also by Pippa DaCosta
The Veil Series
Wings of Hope ~ The Veil Series Prequel Novella
Beyond The Veil (#1)
Devil May Care (#2)
Darkest Before Dawn (#3)
Drowning In The Dark (#4)
Ties That Bind (#5)
Get your free e-copy of ‘Wings Of Hope’ by signing up to The Veil Series mailing list, here.
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New Adult Urban Fantasy
City Of Fae
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Science-Fiction
The 1000 Revolution
Girl From Above: Betrayal. Book 1
Girl From Above: Escape. Book 2
Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) Page 24