sighed and turned back to me. “She is becoming something. She is transforming, and she’s close now. I think all these years she’s been working toward this. What she transforms into, I don’t know, but when she does she will bring down vengeance on all those who harmed her, who denied her a rightful place. She will tear across the planes to have her way. That’s what I got. And Kelsey swears she saw something when Erna attacked her. She says her face briefly changed. I think she’s close to having all the magic she needs to complete her transformation.”
She’d vowed to do whatever it took. And she’d promised to come back for me.
“Bella?” Marcus moved out of the shadows and took his place at my side.
His place. The words had whispered across my brain. This was his place and he was my good right hand, my love, the heart behind my power. He was the final domino to fall in a long line that would save the planes.
I shook off the thoughts because they scared me even more than Erna did. I wasn’t some goddess who could power the planes. I didn’t have some grand destiny.
Still, I took Marcus’s hand. I was falling in love with him and it was because we fit together. That was the only destiny I needed.
“We should sleep.” Marcus stroked my hair back. “We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow. According to Taggart we must cross two planes to get to Tír na nÓg.”
I didn’t think I would be able to sleep. “Can we sit by the stream for a while?”
“Of course.” He would always indulge me. He would sit beside me and simply be, allowing me to think.
He was everything I could want in a man.
In a king to sit at my side.
I let him start to lead me away.
“Summer?” Dean sounded wistful.
“Yes?” I looked back and he was so young and fragile. He did have a great destiny, and I prayed we’d found the right people to lead him through it.
“It looks good on you.” There was the saddest expression on his face. “Love, that is.”
He turned and walked away.
Marcus squeezed my hand and the night was quiet around us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Zoey
I knew the minute I entered the tent that things were about to go sideways. It had been building all afternoon and evening since that moment when I’d died.
It wasn’t a big deal. Erna had managed to short-circuit my heart, and the vampire blood in my system had brought me back, lickety-split. No blood. No foul. I’d died plenty of times and honestly, this one didn’t even make my top ten.
But this was the first time I’d died and Daniel didn’t have the power to bring me back.
Oh, technically he had. His blood had been in my veins, but he couldn’t give me more, and I think it hit him hard. He’d been quiet all through dinner. We’d sat around the fire eating the Vampire plane’s equivalent of MREs and talking to Summer. I’d asked her a million questions and basically enjoyed being near her.
But Daniel had been quiet, and a quiet Daniel always worried me. A quiet Daniel was a plotting Daniel.
“I’m fascinated with all this tech.” Dev was sitting on a chair that had come out of a cube of nanites. All the chairs around camp had. They were surprisingly comfy. “I’m not sure if I should take it back and have our company try to reverse engineer it or worry that these suckers are going to achieve sentience and take over the worlds.”
The tent wasn’t exactly what Dev would have provided, but it was large enough to fit the three of us comfortably, and Taggart had provided us with fresh clothes and most of what we would need. There was a big bed, three chairs, and a tiny room that would serve as a bathroom. I’d already taken what I’d been told was a sonic shower. Dev had preferred to jump in the stream, but then he could call the plants to his defense if a kelpie got him.
“I don’t think we should play with fate. We have enough to worry about with Myrddin. Let’s fix that before we start worrying about tiny machines. I just said good night to our daughter. Where’s Daniel?”
I’d sat by the fire for a long time talking to Kelsey and Dean and waiting for Summer to show up again. It was the mother in me who couldn’t go to sleep until