Chapter 23

23

V eloria's Blessing was one of the farthest rooms I’d been to. The few times I’d made the journey, it’d been en route to the jungle room to hunt, and I’d taken multiple days to reach it.

“Here’s what I’m thinking.” I traced my fingertip along the map, which we’d spread on a large stump outside the shelter. “We work our way up the stairs in four-door intervals, spending at least half an hour at the first stop to allow Gregar to lose interest and go back to whatever it is he does all day when not trying to dismember me. The second layover will need to be longer, since he’ll be riled up from the previous run. We’ll spend the night in the third room since there’s a scattering of houses we can stay in there, then repeat the process the following day until we reach Veloria's Blessing. From there, Mariana will work her magic and hopefully end this curse once and for all.”

“If there are rooms with actual houses in them, why the fuck are you living in a crappy ass cabin?” Tenebris grimaced. “No offense.”

Gods, this little shit irritated me to no end. “I happen to like my cozy cabin,” I ground out. “But more importantly, this room has the only viable water source.”

“It’s a nice cabin,” Calum supplied. “And I don’t think I’ve ever had such refreshing water before.”

“I suppose that’s true…” Tenebris reluctantly agreed.

I rolled my eyes. “Moving on—Calum and Tenebris, you two will stay here until the threat is cleared.”

Calum snapped his head up with a growl. “Like hell we will. If Mariana’s going, I’m going. Pack mates stick together. It’s why I came in the first place.”

“Is it?” I looked pointedly over at Tenebris, who shuffled uncomfortably. And when I arched a brow back at Calum, he had the decency to blush. Honestly, who these guys thought they were fooling was beyond me, but I got that they were trying to protect Mariana. I wasn’t about to indulge it, but I could respect it.

“We’re all going,” Mariana cut in. “And we’ll get there tomorrow, no stops.”

I reared back, meeting her determined gaze with an incredulous one of my own. “Impossible. Not only would we be moving at half speed to accommodate Mr. No Powers over here, but Gregar would be on us before we reached the quarter mark. If he gets his claws on you, you’re fucked. A twitch of his hand and you’ll be crushed.”

Mariana shrugged. “Not a problem, because he won’t. In fact, he won’t even know we’re there.”

“Ooh, stealth mission,” Tenebris said. “I like it.”

I pressed my lips into a thin line. “And how do you intend to manage that? Twenty minutes ago you were saying we’d have to leave Tenebris behind.”

“Yeah, but then I remembered I’m a witch.” Mariana smirked. “I’ll use magic.”

“Magic,” I deadpanned.

“That’s right.”

I scrubbed a hand down my face. “You have the means to magically move four people up twenty flights of stairs without being detected?”

“Obviously,” Mariana replied. “Or else I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

I sucked in a steadying breath. “If you can do that,” I said slowly, “why the hell didn’t you do it earlier? In case you didn’t notice, we barely avoided eating shit out there today.”

“’Cause I’m a werewolf first and a witch second, and if I can’t outrun some oversized shadow monster, then what’s the fucking point?” Mariana’s smirk grew wider, and damn if I didn’t want to kiss it right off her face. “Besides,” she added, a mischievous gleam lighting her eyes. “It was fun.”

There she was— that was the Mariana I remembered. “It was pretty fun, wasn’t it?” I grinned, letting my gaze roam up and down her delicious curves. “Particularly the part where we sought cover in the hot springs and you proceeded to stri?—”

“So that’s the plan,” Mariana interrupted, her freckled cheeks growing pink. “Tomorrow morning I’ll enchant our clothes with an invisibility charm, and we’ll quietly sneak up the stairs, grab the decanter, and get to work containing the curse. If all goes well, we’ll be climbing down the beanstalk before sunset.”

Tomorrow. I could be leaving this place by tomorrow. Returning to Mondue, to my family . Gods, it’d been so long I probably wouldn’t even recognize my little brother anymore. I’d been so wrapped up in Mariana, I’d barely given any thought to what waited below the clouds. Returning home had become little more than a dream.

One that might actually be coming true.

Tomorrow.

“That’s, uh, a solid plan.” I swallowed over the lump of swelling emotions lodged in my throat, blinking back sudden tears. I hadn’t cried since the day the giant door closed behind Noah’s retreating figure, trapping me inside this infernal place. Not during that first night when the shadow bats screeched and tore at the cloak I lay huddled beneath. Not when a tiger tore a chunk the size of my fist out of my leg before I could wrestle it into submission. And not even last week, when my bonding ring slipped from its place on my finger and dropped into the well while I was drawing water—my last real connection to Mariana, gone.

Throughout all of that pain, I’d held it in.

But now… now I had hope.

And sometimes that’s the most painful feeling of all.