Page 8 of Edge of Stars

Kell’s posture goes slack. “The humans?” Right before she tenses again, curling white fingertips around Arden’s knuckles. “Is she positive about that?”

“I would be,” the incubus inserts. “While this world has led the way in so many innovations and advances, they’ve done so at the price of their infrastructure. Not just the physical. For all of our disagreements in the underworld and higher firmaments, we have always found a way toward common ground and the steadiness of traditions. But the humans…they’re tearing each other apart. Rendering their world down to the fiber of their souls.” He sweeps a dark look around our little circle. “If any realm was already crumbling from the inside and ready to be quashed to dust, it’s this one.”

Kara drops my hand. I let her, already feeling the trembling fist she’s forming. “Don’t underestimate dust, brother,” she grates. “It can form rocks. Cliffs. Galaxies.”

“And peace?”

Prieto’s challenge comes with a crane of his head in the other direction. My woman matches the position with a small but steady smile.

“Especially that,” she finally declares. “And especially if every cell in my body has any say about it.”

Her fade-off is filled with expectation—which Kell meets by stepping forward and yanking on her sister’s hand. “And mine.”

I press my grip atop their conjoined one. “And mine.”

A few moments of silence, though they’re actually good ones. During the pause, I watch as Prieto mirrors Kara’s expression with a confident smirk of his own. When it reaches its height, he speaks.

“All right, then. What’s the plan?”

CHAPTER THREE

KARA

Not long after those words leave Arden’s mouth, I’m semi-sure he regrets them. But I’ve never been more thankful for his smug bravado and the question that transformed Kell and him into more than just the snarky representatives from our wedding party.

They’re now our comrades. Co-conspirators for a plan that has to work.

Because despite the words I was tossing back at him, my stomach lurches at thinking of this world—my home—as dust.

This globe, even in its messed-up madness, is part of me. Threaded into all the parts of my being.

Nothing validates the surety more than the moment Kell and Arden exit the storage closet. As Arden pushes open the door and ensures they aren’t being watched, an ocean-and-redwoods breeze steals past my nostrils and into my heart. My soul is next, reaching in response to the dark gold sunlight that surrounds Kell when she turns back to me with a quietly concerned glance.

“I wish I could say this plan is one syllable short of idiotic, but it already makes too much sense,” she mutters, twisting her fingertips with mine. “But don’t drag out this prologue too long, or I will lose my nerve.”

“You won’t be the only one.” But I stop an inch short of putting action to my words, already taking note of Maximus’s tug on my other hand. “I’ll be right out,” I tell her. “I promise.”

She purses her lips as if already calling my bullshit. As soon as the door closes behind her and Maximus hauls me close, I admit that she’s not wrong. And I’m not ashamed of it. Not by one iota of my incinerated senses.

All the cells that go up in flames as soon as he crushes his mouth over mine.

Then moans, using his mouth to open mine.

Then growls, plunging his tongue against mine.

It’s the last thing we should be doing right now. But the most crucial thing we need. The steel rope to each other, like a tether in the storm we’re about to face. A tempest that might be merciful—or terrible—to us. I yearn to believe in the former but know we must be fully prepared for the worst.

So here it is. Our version of training camp.

And I’m all in for the rigors.

We gasp against each other as if we’ve run ten miles. Laser our gazes as if our aims have to be sniper perfect. My heart throbs in my chest with that importance. It climbs into my throat, its thunder serious and scathing, as if this is the last time I’ll drink in the glory of my amazing man.

My husband.

The words we have yet to say…though right now they’re just a formality. The verbal versions of what already rings through me as perfect truth. Resounding reality.

So why am I waiting?