have a lifetime, too. Neither one of those options should be a factor if you want to propose.”
“Really?” he asks, eyes wide with hope.
“Really,” I assure him.
“So, if Carrick asked you, would you say yes?”
My smile falters a bit. “He won’t ask. What we have isn’t like that.”
“But you said you thought you loved him,” he pointed out.
“I think I do,” I replied, then immediately correct myself. “No, I know I do, but it’s in this way I can’t describe. It feels like I’ve always loved him. I know that probably doesn’t make sense, but every day we’re together, I feel like I’m a part of something that I’m destined for.”
“Then why wouldn’t you marry him?” he asks.
I don’t want to voice the truth because it makes it all too real. That, in all actuality, I’m probably going to die when this is all said and done. And Carrick is going to ascend, so even if I don’t die, he’s not looking for a relationship.
Most of all, it just can’t work between an immortal and a mortal. That one is a complete no brainer.
The only thing I can really tell Myles is, “While I love him… and feel like he is mine in all ways, he’s only mine for a short while. This is something I know in my heart.”
Myles’s expression fills with sympathy, and he takes my hand. “Then I’m truly sorry for you, Finley, because I can’t imagine having Rainey only for a short time.”
“Yet another reason not to delay,” I point out.
“Delay what?” Rainey asks as she comes up behind us, and Myles and I jolt apart as if we’d been caught kissing.
But Rainey’s not watching us, rather walking with an open book while reading it. It seems she only caught that last little bit.
“Delay in getting some serious research done,” I say, slapping my hand on the table. “I’ve got so much to tell you guys, and we have a lot of work to do.”
That gets Rainey’s attention and her head lifts. She blinks as if just seeing me for the first time and grins. “You’re back.”
“Ta-da,” I sing, standing and holding my arms out. She walks into them, and we give each other a hard, quick hug, the book she’s holding digging into my ribs.
I pull back to glance down at it. “Learning anything good?”
She shrugs, moving to the table and setting the book down. “It’s such a needle in a haystack. Carrick should seriously hire someone to catalog all this stuff.”
“That would take years and, unfortunately, we don’t have that,” I point out. “But I have a ton of stuff to catch you up on.”
Rainey takes the seat I’d vacated beside Myles. He doesn’t look anything like the nervous man I was talking to just a minute ago about whether he should propose to Rainey. I wonder if he’ll do it.
Tonight?
Maybe tomorrow?
Shaking my head, I make a note to try to get another moment alone with him to ask. He might need my help in planning it out.
When we’re all settled, I catch them up, starting in Berlin and our meeting with Ozigeor.
“He thinks you have an identical twin?” Rainey asks incredulously.
“I think he’s right,” I murmur and then tell them about my dream.
Or my astral projection.
Or whatever the hell it was where I’m convinced I was inside my sister’s body and watching her maneuver around the Underworld.
Rainey and Myles have a million questions, and I try to answer them as best I can. I explain about Zaid’s father—but not the details of their relationship—and how he confirmed the way I’d described the Underworld. I was definitely there.
“It’s incredible to think,” Myles muses while tapping his hand on his chin. “Zora has free rein to walk around The Caverns. Why?”
“Why indeed,” I agree, still astonished by that fact. Why hadn’t she died when the power left her and went into Kymaris? Why was she left alive?
“Do you think she has loyalties to the Underworld?” Rainey asks hesitantly. I know she doesn’t want to think the worst about my twin, but I’ve wondered the same thing.
“She was raised there.” I slouch in my chair, crossing my arms. “She could have been brainwashed.”
Also something I’ve fretted about.
“Doesn’t matter what she is,” I proclaim to my friends. “I’m figuring out a way to free her.”
Rainey gasps. “You mean, you’ll actually go there?”
“If I have to,” I say confidently. “Carrick has promised to help, and I can’t leave her there.”
Rainey and Myles exchange worried looks.
“Our connection goes both