Grave Destiny (Alex Craft, #6) - Kalayna Price Page 0,96

around me without a word. We stared up at the stars for a moment, ignoring the dead bodies on the hill around us. Then a laugh escaped me. It wasn’t an amused laugh, and even I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. But I laughed, because otherwise it was going to come out as a scream. I laughed because our best lead was dead. I laughed because I’d fled from a devouring mist with two heads dangling from my hands. Because the horrible wasting disease that killed my mother was now killing me. Because I might be able to survive it if I was willing to kill other living things. And apparently I was willing, because I already had. I laughed until tears ran down my face. And then I wasn’t laughing alone; Falin’s deep chuckle vibrated up out of his chest, into me.

“Well, that was certainly a first for me,” he said when his laughter faded.

“Fleeing from a devouring mist? I sure hope it wasn’t just normal fog, or I’m going to feel really stupid,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.

We both laughed one more time as Dugan stared at us like we’d lost our minds. I didn’t care.

I was home. We were safe. I had a moment to breathe. Literally.

The wind blew my hair and carried the scent of flowers across the hill. I drank it down, enjoying the warmth of the air. It was always warm here because this place was mine. I hadn’t wanted it originally. Hadn’t meant to inherit an entire Faerie castle. It had been self-defense that had forced me to kill the body thief. But as well as the blood on my hands, Faerie had given me the castle. And when I became independent, Faerie had moved it from Faerie proper to this folded space that was a mix of Faerie and mortal reality.

And now, Faerie had apparently tied a door to it.

That is unlikely to be good.

I dismissed that thought to somewhere I could deal with later. Right now I just wanted to have my moment of peace. I hadn’t noticed while hyperventilating, but Falin had glamoured me a tank top to replace the corset, so I wasn’t sitting on the hill half naked. The skirt of my gown was the same, and considering how much banging about the heads had done on my dash, I made a point of not looking at the bloodstained material.

Instead I sat staring up at the stars, on a grassy hillside filled with moonflowers, Falin’s arm warm and strong around me.

With a couple dead bodies around us. Nothing is perfect.

I almost laughed at the thought, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop again. I sighed. That moment was over. We needed to get back to what had to be done—like deal with Jurin and Lunabella. Now that we were in the mortal realm, I could feel the grave essence reaching out from them. That also meant decay would start catching up to them. They definitely weren’t going to get any easier to deal with, and there was a lot to do before we returned them to their courts.

“Time to deal with the dead,” I whispered.

Falin nodded and stood. Then he turned and offered me a hand. I accepted, letting him pull me to my feet.

“We need to change. As you’ve so elegantly put it in the past, we look like we’ve just left the set of a horror movie,” he said, gesturing to both of our clothes.

Yeah. Ew.

“I think we’re still on that horror set. What do we do with the bodies?” I didn’t want them in the castle. I’d already let him take bodies to my office. I wasn’t allowing bodies in my home as well, case or no case. But, I didn’t know if my roommates had made it back from the revelry yet. They had to drive home from the Bloom, not take the unexpectedly expedited route we had. I wouldn’t want them to walk through the door to the folded space and trip over a dead body.

I sighed and answered my own question before Falin had a chance. “Maybe I should just do the ritual right here and then we can take them back to Faerie.”

“No,” Falin said at the same Dugan said, “You can’t.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“Look at them, Alex.” Falin said it gently.

I frowned at him. I didn’t want to. Hadn’t it been enough that I carried the damn heads? I didn’t want to