Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,69
back to the reasons we needed that protection and the possibilities of how Sorsha herself had been conceived. Even through the expanding swell of pleasure, my mind latched onto a memory from before we’d ever become so intimate.
I stilled her hand before I could lose the thought in my distraction. Sorsha looked up into my face with a question in her expression.
“It makes sense now,” I said.
“I’m glad my hand job came with bonus enlightenment. What does?”
“The impressions I gleaned from that pretty box that your parents left for you.” I might not have known just how much I’d come to value Sorsha’s existence at the time, but I’d still been honored that she’d trusted me with the treasures of her past. “The strongest sense was that they’d taken a lot of risks to bring you into their lives—that it almost hadn’t been possible at all. Because of how difficult it must have been for the two of them to conceive you at all.”
“That’s true. I’d forgotten you took your reading of the box.” She paused. “You didn’t get any sense of someone else being involved in that process—someone they owed a debt to or wished I could have met or anything like that?”
“You mean if the Ruby shadowkind was connected to them and helped them somehow?” I shook my head. “It was all focused on you and their bond with you. But that doesn’t mean Ruby wasn’t involved. It was so long ago, the impressions were quite vague.”
“I get it.” She grimaced. “I remember that you also told me there was someone from Luna’s past that she missed. I wonder if that was the lighting store fae or our gloomy elf. I never thought to ask her about the things she left behind—somehow I always took it for granted that her whole life should be dedicated to me.”
I stroked my hand over Sorsha’s hair. “From what I know of shadowkind, I don’t think she’d have made the sacrifice if you weren’t much more important to her than anything she gave up.”
Thinking about her losses had dampened my desire. I could fulfill it to greater effect once she’d gathered her protections anyway. I sat up, tugging her with me. “You should have your breakfast before it gets cold.”
Sorsha arched an eyebrow at me. “Are you sure?”
I stole one last kiss. “I have everything I need. For now.”
We emerged from the bedroom to find that Ruse had laid out his bounty on the RV’s table—and Omen had returned to join us. The hellhound shifter had gone off on his own again not long after we’d finished questioning Gloam, who’d had no contact with the shadowkind named Ruby either, at least as far as he’d admitted. From our leader’s stern expression, I suspected his independent search hadn’t turned up any new information either.
Sorsha must have made the same assessment. “No sign of our mysterious Ruby?” she said as she slid onto the sofa-bench. I sat beside her and picked up a particularly delectable-smelling pastry with syrupy cherries in the middle.
Omen sighed. “As far as I can tell, none of the shadowkind in the city even saw her, let alone noticed any catastrophe she caused. It could be that the Highest’s lackeys cleared out any other being who’d been drawn into her schemes… but I’d have expected there to at least be rumors of that kind of round-up.”
“Perhaps it was a false rumor that brought them here to begin with,” Thorn suggested. “Or a piece of information they thought was related to her but wasn’t after all. We don’t know how many cities they conducted a more intensive search in. The fact that they did here, where Sorsha was born, might not be that great a coincidence.”
“True enough. For all we know, they harassed shadowkind across every metropolitan area in this half of the country.” The hellhound shifter’s next breath came out in a huff. “I suppose there’s no point in continuing to go out of our way looking for Ruby. Whatever trail there was is long cold. We’ll have to make do with what we have. Rex’s hacker thought the command center of the Company was located in San Francisco. We’ll scope them out and decide how to proceed from there.”
Sorsha had picked up a wrap stuffed with cheesy scrambled eggs. She stopped in mid-bite, her stance tensing, and lowered her meal with an audible gulp. “You want us to leave now?”
Omen eyed her across the table. “It seems we’ve achieved all