Lienna tensed, then rolled her eyes so hard her pupils disappeared. “Does the word ‘subtlety’ mean anything to you, Kit?”

“Sure, but Robin here didn’t seem to be getting it. No offense,” he added, flashing me a grin.

I was too anxious to be insulted. “I’ve got it.”

He slid his hands into his pockets. “Good. So, let’s all forget about Arcana Flamingostra—”

“Fenestram,” Lienna growled.

“—and not turn Vancouver into an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Amalia folded her arms. “Dunno what you’re talking about. We killed a couple sicko murderers and their freaky pet fae. That’s it.”

“She gets it,” Kit told Lienna.

Another dramatic eye roll. “Let’s go before you start spilling agency secrets.”

He followed her to the door. “It wouldn’t matter what I said if the MPD had Neuralyzers like Men in Black. There’s got to be a magic equivalent to—”

“Or you could just be more careful with what you blurt out …”

Her voice trailed off as Kit swung the door shut.

Amalia and I stood in silence for a full minute after the agents had left. Finally, I let out a long, exhausted breath.

“Well,” Amalia drawled, “that was interesting.”

“They don’t want anything about portal magic in our reports,” I mused, nervously adjusting my glasses. “They came here just to make sure our story would match Ezra’s.”

“The question is why they want to push that fae bullshit instead of finding the truth.” She waved a hand. “Not that I’m complaining. We don’t want them investigating us.”

“Unless they are … unofficially.”

We exchanged worried looks.

“Have you talked to Ezra since we left him last night?” she asked.

“I’ve texted him four times asking him to call me. No answer.” I grimaced. “Sounds like he’s been busy, though. I guess reporting what happened was the smart thing to do. Someone would’ve eventually noticed the helipad had sunk and looked into it.”

“Still, would’ve been nice if he’d given us a heads-up.” She checked the time on her phone, stuffed it back in her pocket, and scooped up her patent paperwork. “I’m going to start getting ready.”

“Getting ready? We don’t need to leave for over an hour.”

“Yeah, but this is Zora’s ‘welcome back’ party. It’s her first time at the guild since she was hurt! We can’t be late for that.” She gave me a chiding look as though I were the one who never arrived on time for anything, then headed into her room.

Smiling at her new concern for promptness, I returned to the sofa. Since my beauty routine involved a straightening iron and a tube of lip gloss, I only needed a few minutes to prepare.

The grimoire sat on the coffee table, and beside it was Zylas’s book of landscape photography. The top corner was a mess of dog-eared pages. Bemusedly, I slid the book onto my lap and flipped through all the photos he’d marked. Wildebeest herds on the African savanna, the precariously narrow mountains of Hunan Province in China, a waterfall across black rocks in Iceland, snow-crusted mountains of the Antarctic, California’s breathtaking Redwood forests, towering sea cliffs on Scotland’s coast.

As I gazed at the last one, my imagination added Zylas and me to those cliffs. Looking out across the iron seas, the cold wind whipping at us. His awe and delight—and mine. Sights neither of us had seen. An adventure I could never imagine attempting on my own, but with him …

I shook my head. What was I thinking? Zylas wanted to go home, not tour the planet. He’d already almost left me.

My chest tightened.

Heat vibrated through the infernus. Zylas appeared in a crouch on the sofa and immediately reclined against the cushions, one foot propped up. Those crimson eyes watched me, and I wondered how much of my thoughts he’d heard.

The ache inside me grew, and I closed the book. We wouldn’t see those places together. He wanted to go home—and that’s what I wanted too. I wanted my normal life back, where I wasn’t an illegal contractor constantly fearing for my life. I didn’t want to share my home, my life, and my mind with a demon. I didn’t want to be bound to him forever.

I didn’t … but my chest still ached.

“What hurts, vayanin?”

Flinching, I ducked my head. So he wasn’t privy to my current thoughts—but he was picking up on other signs. Unwilling to delve into the confused maelstrom of feelings I was experiencing at the prospect of his departure from this world, I gave him a scowl.

“Do you have to keep insulting me, Zylas?”

“I am not insulting you.”

“Maybe you don’t think calling me clumsy is an insult, but—”

“I did not call you clumsy.”

“You keep calling me vayanin.”

“I told you, it is not an insult.”

“Then what does it mean?”

He grinned, amusement brightening his crimson eyes.

I bristled self-consciously. “It might not be an insult, but you’re still making fun of me.”

“I am not making fun.”

Despite his claim, I could see the laughter he was holding back, and hurt slashed me. Maybe he wasn’t being mean-spirited, but if he thought it was funny, it couldn’t be anything pleasant. Why would he use everyone else’s name, but not mine?

Huffing to hide my distress, I shoved off the sofa and took a stomping step away.

A hard tug on my sweater. I fell backward, landing on his lap. Before I could think of leaping off him, he wrapped his powerful arms around me, pulling me tight against his chest.

“Vayanin is not an insult,” he murmured, his warm breath teasing my ear. “Your language does not have this word. You do not know it.”

“Then why do you keep calling me it?”

“It is a good word for you.”

I gritted my teeth, too aware of all the places our bodies were touching. “Explain it to me, then.”

“Hnn … that is not fun.” He sighed. “Vayanin means …”

For a moment, he was quiet. Gathering his thoughts or deciding whether to speak at all?

“Night is a time of danger.” All amusement left his voice, his tone low and husky. “It is the time when we hunt. When we are hunted. It is dark and cold, with no way to recover vīsh. All night, we watch the horizon.”