“Last night wasn’t enough?” she teased.

“It will never be enough,” he vowed to her. “It’s been years now, yet I still feel as if we are at the start of it all.”

“Oh, not the very start. The very start was hard.” She thought about how they had once thought they couldn’t bridge their two worlds. He had been a penance priest at the time, sworn to uphold a duty bound by the laws of his god and goddess. But they had left all that behind when he had resigned and they had gone to live together in the underground Shadowdweller city in Alaska. Away from light, away from the outside world. Just them and their three cats. She’d had to leave the cats behind when they moved out there, but Daenaira, a close Shadowdweller friend, was watching over them.

“True,” he said. “I was talking to Chancellor Tristan yesterday.”

“How is he?”

“He’s fine, as is Malaya.” Malaya was Tristan’s twin and also Chancellor of their people. They shared the title in much the same way they shared everything else. “He mentioned coming down here to be with us.”

“Oh no! He shouldn’t do that! I can’t protect you both!”

“I know,” he said, calming her. “I told him as much. He just feels that he should be doing something to help us.”

“Staying home would help us. Tell him to watch the cats. That’ll be a big help to us.”

“Val! I can’t tell the Chancellor of my people to watch our cats! Besides, Dae is already doing it.”

“Well, tell him anything, just keep him home safe.”

“I already said as much. Give me some credit. But he does want to be apprised of the situation at all times.”

“Well, we’ll do that then.”

“I said that too.”

“Okay good.” She reached up and kissed his lips. “Now move. I gotta pee.”

He laughed. “All of the romance has gone out of our relationship.”

“Ha! Tell that to my sore thighs,” she said as she scrambled over him.

“Your thighs are sore?” he asked with concern. “I was too rough on you?”

“No!” she called out from the bathroom. “You were just rough enough!”

That made him grin a wolfish grin. His fiery little redhead had always been hot to the touch. And there was nothing he liked more than seeing his dark hands on her pale white flesh.

“Ah! That’s better!” she said, coming out of the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the bed. He reached for her hand and began kissing her fingers. She didn’t seem to notice as she said, “You know, I think we should have another one of those training sessions this evening.”

“We’re having one later on tonight.”

“Well, I think we should have two. One in the evening and one later in the night. I feel like we need to be doing more.”

He frowned. He understood the feeling. It was one he shared. He was a warrior. He was meant to be in the thick of battle. He exercised his skills every day, that wasn’t the problem. The problem would come when people started hurling bolts of light at him. He felt restricted by his vulnerability to light. The only solution was to not be a target. To sneak attack. Move in and out before anyone saw him. Using shuriken, saw stars, and glave to hit from a distance. At home, in the dark.

“Then we’ll go to Jacob and tell him how you feel. I’m sure everyone can agree there is no such thing as too much battle-readiness.”

“All right.” She nibbled on her nail a minute. “My protection spell has gotten stronger, and I think the spell that blocks light from touching you could work in tandem with it to protect you against the Curse of Ra. But the only way to know for sure is to have someone throw the Curse of Ra at you and see if it works and I’m not willing to take that risk.”

“I think we might have to. It’s the only way we’ll know. If we don’t know for sure then I shouldn’t go out in the thick of it.”

“Well, we can’t test it on you! What if it doesn’t work?”

“That’s it!” he said, brightening suddenly. “We won’t test it on me. We’ll test it on someone else.”

“But light doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

“Wrong. Sunlight burns Vampires. The Curse of Ra is a concentrated beam of sunlight. That’s why it hurts Nightwalkers so much. Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the Curse of Ra on this side of the fence.”

“I could cast it and—”

“No! It’s an aggressive, antagonistic spell. It’s just the kind of magic that can turn a human magic-user into a necromancer, poisoning you from the inside out. I won’t have you doing it. We need a Templar—Kamenwati or Tameri.”

“But the same problem as always applies. We can’t see them and they can’t see us.”

“On the plus side, with the curse in place we aren’t threatened by the Templars and the Curse of Ra. Again, they can’t see us and we can’t see them. On the negative side, if they have necromancers that can cast it or something like it, we’re screwed.”

“So what do we do?”

He reached up and stroked a thumb across the sensitive, delicate skin beneath her eye. “I have no idea, baby.” He sighed. “I have no idea at all.”

—

Kamen awoke with a start, feeling something was out of place. He went to move, but something on his chest weighed him down. That was when he looked down and remembered what had become out of place. He wasn’t used to sleeping with a woman. Even when he had indulged in sex it had been a rather cool exchange, certainly nothing worthy of having a woman sleep by his side. There had also been trust issues. The Templars were a sect known for its power-hungry ways; there were many who were willing to do anything to get it, and it would’ve been unwise to place trust in any of them for any reason—especially as a high ranking officer. It was also rather akin to a boss sleeping with one of his underlings. Never a wise choice. Not if he wanted others to take him seriously.

But anyone who was in the Templar sect had known to take him very seriously. He had proven himself time and again, in ways he was now not proud of. He had let himself be swept up in the coldness and callousness of Odjit’s way of handling things, had kept his mind free of guilt by justifying it as a necessary evil.