A Crown Of Fire And Wrath (The Shadow Walkers Saga #5) - Sloane Murphy Page 0,53
to spend together these days.
“I know, and ditto. Once this madness is over, and we get to the bottom of everything, I vote we go somewhere sunny, with white sands, and hot boys that can bring us margaritas.”
“That, my friend, is a plan.”
We spend the rest of the night avoiding heavy topics, and it’s nice to just pretend we’re normal people, with normal problems that aren’t more complicated than eating too much ice cream and what tv show to binge next. The guys give us space, only dropping in to let me know where they are, and when they head to bed. I know the latter is because they’re hoping I spend the night with one of them, but I convince Fallon to spend the night rather than me driving her back so late, and we move the contents of my bed to the sitting room, so we can binge movies all night.
It’s everything I didn’t realize I needed, wrapped up in one day. Just one day of being a normal person, without the turmoil that’s been haunting me taking over. I laugh at the cheesy romcom we decided to put on, and notice Fallon’s dropped off, so I shut off the move and turn down the lights. Maybe everything will be all right after all, as long as I have people around me to remind me who I am and what’s most important.
“You know he’ll keep sending us out scouting together until you stop your bitching about wanting not to go out in the field anymore right?” I whisper-shout to Nevin as we creep towards what leads have told us is the camp for the higher demons that are causing this stupid fucking war in the first place. We’ve tried to find them for years, but we’ve either been too late, or the intel was wrong. That or we have a mole, but Leviathan refuses to believe that possibility—that one of his Death Dealers is betraying him. The man I love is a stubborn one, loyal to a fault, it’s part of why I fell in love with him, but it’s also a total pain in the ass sometimes.
“Maybe he’ll stop sending me out with you when you learn to think before diving into reckless situations,” he grumbles. I mean, he could be right, but it’s kind of a part of who I am. I protect the people I love. The ones I care about. Looking after myself always comes second. Or it did, until about two weeks ago, when I learned that I’m no longer the only one depending on my survival.
It’s made me more cautious, but, I’m still not going to sit on the sidelines and do nothing. It’s not who I am. It never will be.
“How about we just focus on getting the information we need and getting back undetected and in one piece?” I say, and he rolls his eyes at me.
“I’m not the one who’s likely to get us discovered,” he huffs. Ever since Tobin died, Nevin has been a little gruffer. I get it. Tobin was always the lighter one of the two of them, he’d pull Nevin from any funk he was stuck in. And now Tobin is gone, he doesn’t have that anymore. I can’t help but feel guilty about it, even though there’s no way we could have known that the demon had shadow fire. It’s so fucking rare, that even Nevin didn’t have a clue what it was until he’d spent weeks researching.
It might have been nearly ten years ago, but that’s nothing but a drop in the ocean to an angel. His grief is still as raw as it was the day it happened, and no matter how many times he tells me it’s not my fault, a little part of me will never really believe that.
We move our way into the demon camp, sticking to the shadows that I manipulate to keep us hidden, without it being obvious. It steals some of my concentration, but it’s necessary for us to get the information we need and to get it back to Leviathan, so we can try and end this war once and for all. Morgan has enough chaos going on in the Shadow Realm to deal with everything on Earth, so outside of her helping me eventually seal the realm, her and the Horsemen aren’t going to be of much use. Plus, there’s that whole, Hell on Earth thing that we’d all like to try and avoid.