Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,67

as if this were common knowledge, so why was I bothering to ask him? “The human man. She talked about him. One of her daytime companions, since my company isn’t good enough then.”

His head drooped farther. How had perky Luna ever ended up friends with this dude?

Omen looked as though he were restraining himself from grabbing the elf’s shoulder and shaking the answers out of him. “What did she say about him? Did she mention anything to do with his wife?”

“That’s the only reason she knew him—his wife. Not that she was his wife to begin with. Who would have thought? But these things—sometimes it’s strange…” The elf shook his head dejectedly. “Luna made it sound like the most wonderful experience, not that I’ll ever have it.”

Antic gave him a jab in the belly with her finger. “What experience?” She made a face at me. “I think he’s trying to make us all just as miserable as he is.”

“No. No, no one should ever have to feel as I do right now.” He rubbed his mouth. “Ember was Luna’s best friend, really. How could I compete with an ifrit? And then she goes and has this romance with some human man—Luna found that so fascinating—but she stopped talking to me all that much, she got so wrapped up in helping them…”

My heart stopped. “Wait, you’re saying the guy named Philip that Luna knew—he married an ifrit? A shadowkind woman?”

“It does happen from time to time,” Gloam said, as if he couldn’t imagine any fate more tragic. Or maybe he thought the tragedy was his own lack of romance? It was difficult to tell through the general haze of melancholy. “All hush hush, of course. Luna barely let it slip even to me. Augh, maybe I shouldn’t even have told you.” He dropped his head into his hands.

My pulse started up again, but its beat kept stuttering. Naturally it was Snap, ever curious, who asked the question we must all have been thinking in that moment. He might not even have realized how ridiculous it would sound to anyone more familiar with shadowkind-human relations. He set his hand on my shoulder and leaned past me toward the elf. “Could the human man and the ifrit have had a child?”

Gloam laughed, but somehow he turned even that noise despondent. “Everyone knows shadowkind don’t produce children. But it’s funny that you ask. Luna said something once—looking up legends of when fae and the like had supposedly mingled with mortals to that extent—I suppose they might have been looking for a way. I doubt they found one, though.”

I swallowed hard, staring at him, not yet ready to look at my companions and see what they made of that revelation. No doubt rose up in me. What he’d said wasn’t definitive proof, but the pieces fit together in a way I couldn’t deny.

I bled both blood and smoke. I could hold iron and silver, and I could generate fire by will alone. I was human, and I was also shadowkind.

My parents and Luna had found a way.

There was my answer—and it was just as much a puzzle as it’d been before I’d started this quest. How could anyone tell me what being a hybrid of human and shadowkind would mean or how to handle my powers? Even this elf, who was apparently the only being still alive who’d known that secret, had dismissed it as utterly impossible.

19

Snap

How could I ever have forgotten the tempting spicy sweetness of Sorsha’s skin? Thinking back to those days when everyone and everything I’d known in the mortal world had felt so unfamiliar sent a jarring sensation through my mind.

So I put the thoughts out of my mind and focused on the much more enjoyable sensation of slicking my tongue across the nub of my beloved’s breast.

Sorsha’s breath caught with the hitch I loved to provoke, her fingers tightening where they’d twined with my hair. I gave the risen nipple a little nip I’d discovered could bring out even more delightful sounds and eased up to claim her mouth again.

My hand delved through the tangle of sheets on her bed to tease between her thighs. The slit where we both found so much pleasure met my touch slick and ready. Mmm, I would have to start our mornings off this way more often.

Sorsha’s knee rose against my hip, but she pulled her face slightly back from mine with a rough inhalation. “Snap—I think we’re going to need to be more