There was a reason—beyond the whole alcoholic-father -codependent-mother thing—that he rarely drank. He was pretty sure he was allergic. Which begged the question: What the hell had he been thinking? Had he been celebrating something good? Drowning something bad?

Fuck, even thinking hurt. Okay, no more thinking.

Food, he realized when his stomach grumbled. He needed food. Which didn’t make much sense if he was hungover, but figuring that out would’ve required thinking, so he just rolled with it.

‘‘Okay,’’ he mumbled between dry, cracked lips. ‘‘Step one. Get vertical.’’ When that more or less worked, he followed up with steps two—cross bedroom—and three—open door. He didn’t need to bother with step four—get dressed—because he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. They were streaked with rusty brown, like he’d gone mud wrestling or something, and there was a funky smell coming from somewhere, but his roomies were both off on field assignments, so he figured he could eat first, then clean himself up.

Then he shuffled into the kitchen and stopped dead. There were more of the rust stains splashed everywhere, like something out of CSI.

‘‘Ohhh.’’ He looked down at his clothes as the stains started making way more sense. Then a fragment of memory broke through and he looked at his right hand, where a gaping cut was scabbed over with a big, nasty clot. ‘‘Fuck me.’’

It didn’t start hurting until he looked at it. Then it hurt like the dickens.

What the hell had gone down last night? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, just stood there staring from his hand to the kitchen and back, before the downstairs buzzer sounded, jolting him.

‘‘I’m not here,’’ he said, and headed in the opposite direction for a first-aid kit.

The buzzer sounded again—three short, angry bursts. ‘‘Still not here.’’ He turned on the faucet and put his hand under the water. He hissed with pain as old blood swirled in the sink and ran down the drain, and when he used paper towels to blot the wound dry, they came away pinkish brown at first, then red.

At least whoever it was got the message and stopped buzzing, he thought, debating between going for stitches and using one of those icky wound patches that bubbled up and looked seriously gross after a few days, but worked really well.

There was a knock at the apartment door.

Lucius’s breath whistled between his teeth and his head cleared some on a burst of adrenaline. Ignore it, he told himself. They’ll go away.

‘‘Hunt?’’ a pissed-off male voice shouted full-volume. ‘‘I know you’re in there.’’

What had he done last night?

‘‘I’m not in here,’’ he said under his breath. ‘‘Go away.’’

But there was another knock. Then the voice again, quieter this time, and sounding vaguely familiar. ‘‘Hunt, please. I need to talk to her.’’

Her? Lucius took a quick look around, in case he’d missed there being someone else in the apartment, especially of the female variety. When a really, really bad thought occurred, he peeked in the other bedrooms, and let out a breath when he didn’t see anything—or anyone— out of place.

There wasn’t another knock, but he could sense the other man leaning against the door. He heard a broken sigh and a whispered name. Anna.

Oh, shit, Lucius thought when recognition jolted. It was the Dick. And he was looking for his wife. In a few seconds he was across the room and yanking open the door, his heart hammering far faster than it should’ve been. ‘‘Did something happen?’’

First he saw the Dick, followed by the Dick’s fist headed toward his face.

Then he saw stars.

The next thing he saw was the cops.

He watched in a numb blur as they confiscated the bloodstained stuff he’d slept in, photographed the shit out of the apartment, and took a couple of his steak knives into evidence, along with the dime bag they’d found in the fridge and a gun he hadn’t even known his freak-show roommate owned.

The bad news—like he needed any more of it—was that the Dick knew most of the cops who covered the campus and surrounding area, so Lucius wasn’t getting too many favors. The good news was that the one cop Lucius did know happened to be the one in charge of detention and it was a slow day, so he got a cell to himself. Small favors and all that.

He skipped his phone call. There was no way he was calling his parents until he knew the exact situation. And the person he normally would’ve called to bail him out— Anna—was apparently in the wind. His cautious optimism that she’d left her husband warred with worry. Where the hell was she?

He supposed he could call Neenie, but what was she going to do? In a few hours or whatever, everything should get straightened out. All the blood in the kitchen was his—he was sure of that much, anyway. Even better, when the cops had asked the Dick why he’d been convinced his wife would be at Lucius’s apartment, he’d gone red-faced and refused to answer.

Sure enough, a couple of hours after he’d been locked up, a skinny guy in jeans, a polo shirt, and sandals stopped outside Lucius’s cell. ‘‘Mr. Hunt?’’

‘‘You’re the public defender?’’ Lucius asked, looking him up and down and back again. ‘‘For real?’’

‘‘You want to get out of here, or would you rather wait for somebody in a suit?’’

Lucius rose from the cot. ‘‘Nothing wrong with Tevas. I take it they figured out all the blood is mine?’’

The guy gave him a look. ‘‘Please. Evidence only gets processed that quickly on TV. No, Professor Catori’s wife called him. She’s fine.’’

‘‘Thank God.’’ Lucius exhaled far too much relief, earning himself a second look. ‘‘That she’s back, I mean. She’s my thesis adviser, and I’m supposed to defend soon, and—’’ And I’m babbling. I’ll shut up now.

‘‘I said she called,’’ the PD said, leading him out to a desk and watching while he signed off on his personal effects; such as they were. ‘‘I didn’t say she was back.’’

Lucius held out until they got out onto the sidewalk before he said, ‘‘Where is she?’’

He didn’t give a shit whether the PD thought the Dick was right about them having an affair. Something wasn’t right. Anna wouldn’t just up and disappear. She just wouldn’t.

‘‘New Mexico. Something about needing some time away, staying with a friend, et cetera, et cetera.’’ The PD handed Lucius another paper to sign, then stepped back. ‘‘You’re good. Charges dropped, very sorry, blah, blah.’’

He turned and walked away, leaving Lucius with the distinct impression that the PD, too, was a friend—or more likely a former student—of the Dick’s. Anna and her hubby were both professors, yet the Dick had been ‘‘Professor Catori’’ and Anna had been ‘‘she.’’

‘‘Don’t overanalyze it,’’ he told himself aloud. ‘‘Just be glad you’re out. Go home, clean up, and get back to work.’’ Maybe with an aspirin or five added to the mix.

Heading for the bus stop, he reminded himself that Anna was an adult—a married adult—and she didn’t owe him any explanations or schedule updates. But he couldn’t shake the sense that something monumental must’ve happened to send her to New Mex when she’d never mentioned the trip before. Maybe something connected to the Dick’s utter conviction that he’d find his wife at Lucius’s apartment. Damned if he knew what it might be.

The bus arrived, and he climbed aboard. As he lifted his hand to grab an overhead anchor, he caught a glimpse of the slice on his palm and frowned. ‘‘Weird.’’

The cut was almost completely healed.

Leah woke slowly, her consciousness dragging itself out of a warm cocoon of sleep back to reality, where it way didn’t want to be. Her head felt hollow and empty, and her heart hurt with grief, with guilt. For the first few seconds she couldn’t remember why.

Then it all came rushing back; she remembered the nahwal’s dire predictions, remembered that Vince and Zipacna were one and the same . . . and she remembered what the ajaw-makol had said about her being the gods’ chosen.

Making a small sound of pain, she rolled onto her side and curled up, pressing her hands to her face in a pointless effort to shut it all out.

But the mattress dipped beside her and gentle hands touched her, rolling her over. Strong arms drew her against a warm, solid chest. ‘‘Come here,’’ Strike said, his voice rumbling beneath the softness of his T-shirt. ‘‘Hold on to me. You’re not alone, Blondie. You’re not going through this alone.’’

Shock rattled her, and she opened her eyes to find herself nestled in the crook of his arm, lying on the mattress she’d schlepped out to the solarium so she could sleep beneath the stars.

He was fully clothed and resting on top of the comforter while she’d slept beneath in a T-shirt and underwear, as though he’d kept watch over her, not wanting her to wake up scared. His eyes were very blue, his face haggard with emotion and exhaustion as he pressed her head back to his shoulder. ‘‘Just one more minute. Then we’ll talk.’’

She resisted for a heartbeat, then gave in and clung, because the fact that they were alone together—in her bed, no less—meant she hadn’t imagined any of it, that it’d all really happened.

Stifling a sob, she pressed against him full-length and looped an arm around his waist, holding him close, anchoring herself. Heat rose, and she was tempted to kiss him, tempted to lose herself in the madness. But that would’ve been an evasion, and she knew it. So she shifted to look at the scar she’d gotten as a child, high on her inner right wrist. He’d asked about it twice before, and each time she’d avoided the question. Now she had to wonder—if she’d told him from the very beginning, would anything have happened differently?

‘‘We were on vacation,’’ she began. ‘‘In Mexico. The Yucatán.’’

The time-share had been billed as a ‘‘rain forest retreat on the beautiful Yucatán peninsula only minutes away from the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá.’’ The house itself had been okay, but it had been the small, unrestored stone ruins tucked into the rain forest nearby that’d grabbed Leah’s attention. She’d been eight years old, Matty six, and she’d had no business sneaking out that night, even less business making her younger brother go with her. But even knowing she’d catch hell if her parents found out, she’d snagged a flashlight and headed out into the warm, humid night, far too brave for her own good, but not brave enough to go alone.

‘‘Don’t be a baby,’’ she’d said to Matty with all the lofty scorn of a two-year age gap. ‘‘I dare you.’’ And he’d gone along with her, not because of the dare, but because even back then he’d been too willing to follow the leader.

‘‘We went inside,’’ she said, remembering the damp chill of the stones, even though so much time had passed. ‘‘It wasn’t big, just a stone rectangle the size of a school bus or something. We’d checked it out that afternoon, the whole family, so I knew there wasn’t anything scary. Except when we got inside, there was a door that hadn’t been there before.’’ She paused. ‘‘School had just gotten out when we left. I don’t remember the date, but it could’ve been the summer solstice.’’

Strike nodded, and didn’t seem all that surprised. Which she supposed made sense. The phrase ‘‘twenty-four years ago at the summer solstice’’ was burned into the Nightkeepers’ collective consciousness as the night their lives had changed irrevocably.

Hers too, apparently. And her brother’s.

‘‘Go on.’’

‘‘The door led to a long tunnel that sloped down. Matty didn’t want to go in. I didn’t either, really, but there was something calling me. Like a child’s voice, only in my head, telling me it was okay, that I needed to go in there. So I did, and I made Matty come with me.’’ He’d been crying, she remembered. And she’d dragged him along anyway.

She continued, ‘‘I don’t know how far down we were, but there was this explosion, first orange, then yellow. I remember screaming and turning to run, but something hit me on the back of the head. I fell and lost hold of Matty, and then . . .’’ She trailed off. ‘‘My parents found us the next morning outside the little ruin, unconscious, and rushed us to the nearest hospital. When I woke up, my mother was crying. She stopped when Matty woke up, too. We both had burns on our arms, and . . . that was it.’’ She stared at the scar. ‘‘We went home the next day, and I spent the entire summer grounded.’’

‘‘Did you and he ever talk about what happened?’’ Strike asked, his words rumbling beneath her cheek.

‘‘Not then. But we got into a fight a few months before he died, when I found out how much time he was spending with the 2012ers. He said there was something about Zipacna that called to him, that I ought to understand what he was going through.’’ She broke off, swallowing hard. ‘‘He was so angry . . .’’ She closed her eyes, making a connection she hadn’t seen before because she hadn’t wanted to look too closely. ‘‘He’d always been a little borderline.’’

It was starting to make an awful sort of sense. The temple must’ve been some ancient place of power, maybe even one of the hidden entrances to the underground river system beneath Chichén Itzá. She’d wandered in there—or been called?—at the same time that Strike’s father and the other Nightkeepers were fighting to seal the intersection. After the Nightkeepers died the barrier started to close off, and Kulkulkan must’ve reached out to the two nearest—and possibly, because of their ages, most open-minded—humans: her and Matty. The dual god had touched them somehow, making them his. Matty had gotten the darker aspects, leading to his later troubles—or maybe he’d been predisposed to trouble, and that had attracted the darker aspects of the god; who knew? She’d gotten the lighter aspects, which included justice. Police work. It fit.

Unfortunately, it also fit that the Banol Kax had somehow known about the two of them, or sensed their connection to the god and had sent Zipacna after them.

Matty’s blood had held enough power to reactivate the barrier, Zipacna had said. Hers held enough to bring the Banol Kax through.

All because she’d gone exploring as a child.

That was why she hadn’t wanted to talk about the scar before, for fear that it would be something like this. Even before she’d learned of the Nightkeepers and the things going on beneath the surface of everyday life, she’d known Matty’s—and her—connection to the 2012ers and their Maya-based mythology wasn’t a coincidence.

‘‘He was crying,’’ she said softly, her voice cracking on guilt and despair. ‘‘He didn’t want to go into the tunnel, but I made him.’’ And in doing so, she’d started the chain of events that would eventually kill him.

‘‘You were eight.’’

‘‘I knew better.’’

‘‘You made a mistake.’’

‘‘Yes.’’ There was silence between them for a moment. She could hear sounds coming from other parts of the mansion, and the steady thump of Strike’s heart beneath her cheek. ‘‘He kept a journal,’’ she said eventually, feeling as though the words were being pushed out of her by an outside force, a compulsion to purge all the ugly truths she’d been keeping. ‘‘I guess he started seeing a therapist after his fiancée left him. I didn’t even know. . . .’’ She trailed off, feeling the weight of guilt. ‘‘The Calendar Killer task force kept it as evidence, but Connie had them make me a copy.’’

‘‘Did he write about that night in Mexico?’’ Strike asked, seeming to know she needed the prodding or she’d lose her ability to keep going. ‘‘Did he say that was why he was attracted to Zipacna and the group?’’

‘‘Not in so many words, but now that I look back, yeah.’’ She nodded. ‘‘It was in there. He talked about how he felt like he and Zipacna were connected somehow, like they’d known each other in another life.’’ She glanced at Strike. ‘‘Past lives weren’t Matty’s style. He wasn’t real artsy or spiritual. He liked things—possessions, money, pleasures—and he liked to get them the easy way. At first I thought that was the attraction of Survivor2012— the nice mansion, the fat bankroll. When I read that diary, though, it freaked me out. It sounded like he was really buying into the religion, which didn’t make any sense.’’ Now, though, maybe it was starting to. ‘‘Do you think—’’ She broke off. ‘‘Do you think he became who he was because of Kulkulkan’s darkness, or did he get the darkness because his personality already skewed that way?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’ He shifted so he could look into her eyes. ‘‘Which would be easier to hear?’’

She exhaled. Nodded. ‘‘Yeah. Doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just . . . I can’t help thinking that if I’d gotten the darkness I could’ve handled it better. I was older and stronger; I should’ve—’’

‘‘Hush.’’ He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘‘What’s done is done. We go on from here.’’

She said, ‘‘I don’t suppose any of the trainees got time travel as a talent last night.’’ It was both a wistful thought and an offer to change the subject.

He gave a rumble of sad amusement. ‘‘Unfortunately that’s not in our skill set. As of last night, I have one fire starter, one invisible, a seer, a spell caster, and seven warriors. Sven got a talent mark nobody’s ever seen before, and I’m the local teleport.’’

‘‘And the guy in the apartment?’’

‘‘Red-Boar got him fixed and wiped his memories.’’ He paused. ‘‘Anna came back with me. I don’t know how long she’ll stay, but she’s here now.’’

‘‘I’m happy for you,’’ Leah said, feeling a catch in her throat. ‘‘Brothers and sisters should stick together.’’ Then, knowing they couldn’t stay curled up in the royal suite forever—tempting though that might be on many levels—she said, ‘‘What happens now?’’

He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘‘I need to talk to Anna, and see where her head is at. She got her mark on the way through the barrier, but an itza’at’s sight can be a tricky talent. If she’s not committed to the magic, it won’t work.’’ He paused. ‘‘Then I need to sit down with her, Jox, and Red-Boar and lay out your situation. ’’

‘‘My ‘situation,’ ’’ she repeated. ‘‘Is that what we’re calling it?’’ Acid burned at the back of her throat. ‘‘I suppose it does sound better than, ‘We’ve got two options: Option one, I die before the equinox and the god goes free, or option two, the god and I both die during the equinox and take the skyroad with us, meaning that there will be no Godkeepers ever, and pretty much ensuring the end of the world as we know it.’ ’’

He tightened his arms around her. ‘‘You’re not alone in this, okay? We’re going to find a way.’’ He sounded angry, but not with her, she knew. With the situation. The whole miserable, sucky situation they’d found themselves in.

She pushed away and levered herself up on her elbows, so she was braced above him looking down. ‘‘And if we can’t?’’

‘‘We will,’’ he said, and there was such certainty in his voice that she was tempted to believe him.

But saying something didn’t make it the truth, even if the guy saying it was magic.

‘‘Your duty is to the gods first,’’ she said, ‘‘then your people and mankind. I’m pretty far down on that list.’’

‘‘Trust me, I know what the king’s writ says.’’ He reached up and cupped her jaw in his palm, and she could feel the ridges of the sacrificial scars from the night before, rough against her skin. ‘‘But you said it yourself— this is a new day, with modern men and women playing the role of Nightkeeper. Some of the old ways simply don’t apply now. Maybe it’s time to make up a few new rules.’’

Tightening his grip, he urged her down, his eyes darkening with sensual intent.

Heat speared through her. Lust and frustration, her constant companions since she’d come to Skywatch, rose to the surface and her skin prickled with awareness, with anticipation.

But she stilled as the reality crashed in on her, chilling her to her soul. ‘‘You’re in bed with me because you think there’s no point in our staying away from each other, that you’re going to have to—’’

‘‘No,’’ he interrupted, tightening his fingers on her jaw before she could pull away. His eyes went dark, his voice rough. ‘‘No, I don’t think that. I won’t think that. But last night when the ajaw-makol went after you, I realized that it doesn’t matter whether we’re lovers or not. You’re already too important to me. Losing you wouldn’t just be the greatest sacrifice; it’s simply not an option.’’

‘‘Oh,’’ Leah said, the word coming out on a long, shuddering breath. Just ‘‘oh,’’ because what else was there to say? Longing coalesced inside her, a bone-deep desire to be the woman who could love him. Scrambling to find distance and reason, she said, ‘‘It’s the god. Kulkulkan. He’s trying to reunite himself on earth by bringing the Godkeeper of his light half together with her Nightkeeper mate.’’

‘‘Maybe, maybe not. But more than that, this is us.’’ He shifted and sat up so they were eye-to-eye when he said, ‘‘It’s just you and me right now, Blondie. What do you say?’’

There was a ton left to say, she knew, a whole list of reasons why their being together complicated far more things than it simplified.

But in that moment, alone with him in the glassed-in solarium with the late-summer sun splashing down around them through privacy-tinted panels, it didn’t seem to matter that a future looked damn near impossible. What mattered was the two of them together. And the question that hung in the air between them. What do you say? he’d asked, and she had no answer for that, because ‘‘yes’’ was too simple a word for what was between them.

So she leaned in. And touched her lips to his.

The kiss detonated something inside her. The first touch of tongues brought heat screaming, and need.

And rationality was lost. There was only desire.

They’d kissed before. She already knew his taste and the feel of him against her. But it was different this time—there was an edge of desperation when he slid his hand up to fist in her hair.

Heat flared, ripe and dangerous, and need was sharpened with the knowledge that their days were numbered.

Suddenly the sun was too bright, the room too open, the sparse furnishings too modern. Leah’s heart beat with the rhythm of wooden drums, and that golden place inside her where the dying god lived had her rising to her feet and stretching out a hand to him. ‘‘Come with me.’’

He stood without a word and followed her to the private temple.

The torches flared as they stepped inside, reflecting their images from the black stone mirror—Leah tousled and bed-ready in a T-shirt that hit the tops of her thighs, Strike looking dark and forbidding and dead sexy in all black.

Then she turned and hiked herself up on the altar as she had done before. Only this time when he moved up against her, so her knees bracketed her hips and they were eye-to-eye, there was no thought of holding back or turning back. There was only the heat spiraling up toward madness as they kissed, straining together.

Leah moaned, the small, vulnerable sound escaping before she could call it back.

‘‘That’s it,’’ he said thickly, nipping lightly at the side of her neck. ‘‘Tell me where and how and I’m there for you, Blondie.’’

He rocked his hips against her, creating torturous friction. She arched into him, offering herself to him even as she tugged at the hem of his T. ‘‘Hope you weren’t too fond of this.’’ She grabbed a corner of the fabric between her teeth, bit down, and used her hands to yank the material apart.

The shirt tore neatly up the middle, all the way to the reinforced collar, which she parted with a quick jerk, leaving the fabric hanging off him on either side, baring his heavily muscled torso and the faint line of masculine hair that ran down the center of his ripped abdomen and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.

When their eyes met, she grinned. ‘‘Sorry about the shirt.’’

‘‘Screw the shirt; that was hot.’’ He got a couple of handfuls of her shirt and drew it up and off over her head while she nipped at the strong line of his throat and jaw.

Glorying in the feel of him, the reality of him, she suckled his skin, reveling in the harsh rattle of his breathing and the stroke of his hands as he caressed her hips and sides, then traced inward to touch her aching breasts with a soft skim of pressure, a rough hitch of pleasure. Her nipples tightened harder still beneath his touch and she rocked against him, moaning deep in the back of her throat, though she didn’t let the sound free.

‘‘Did you dream of this?’’ he demanded, rearing up so they were pressed chest-to-chest, staring into each other’s eyes. ‘‘Did you dream of me?’’

‘‘You know I did.’’ She kissed him, wet and hot and openmouthed, stroking the bare skin of his shoulders and back beneath the ruined shirt, which he shrugged off and tossed aside. ‘‘I dreamed of us beneath the stars.’’

‘‘Tell me,’’ he whispered, his breath hot against her throat as he stripped off his jeans, then her underwear.

‘‘I slept in the attic,’’ she said between kisses. ‘‘Under a skylight. I touched myself and thought of you.’’

‘‘Show me.’’ His voice was harsh, his excitement vibrating to her core.

At any other time, with any other man, she would’ve told him he was dreaming. But because it was here and now, with the man she knew better than anyone, yet not at all, she took his other hand in hers. ‘‘Like this.’’

She guided him to her breasts, showed him whispered touches and long, slow strokes. She was aware of the firelight and magic around them, and the warrior who stood against her, watching with fierce intensity when she spread her legs wider, opening the place where she was already wet and wanting. She guided him there, guided him until he was touching her the way she’d touched herself up in the attic, the way she’d dreamed of him caressing her so many times before.

Soon light and lingering wasn’t enough, and she pushed his hand against herself harder, quickening the tempo. Sounds broke free—a gasp, a moan—and needs coiled tighter within, and she whispered, ‘‘Condom?’’ They’d had unprotected sex once before, and their blood had mingled, but there was no sense being stupid about the pregnancy thing, especially under the circumstances.

He grinned. ‘‘Great minds and all that.’’ Heat coursed through her as he pinned her with his body, reached across to his discarded pants, and retrieved the flat square of a wrapped condom. When he withdrew it from his pocket, there were multiple crinkles, and three others fell out.

Leah found a grin amid the heat, amid the deadly seriousness of it all. ‘‘That’s optimistic. I guess you planned ahead.’’

As he dealt with the protection, he touched his lips to hers and whispered, ‘‘I have faith.’’

Ignoring the faint twinge that statement brought, Leah leaned into his kiss, into the heat, and murmured her pleasure when he shifted against her and poised himself for entrance. Her body ached with need, lending a sharpness to the desire as she looped one leg around his hips, urging him home.

Yet still he paused, holding himself away from her.

Frowning, she opened her eyes and found herself caught in his.

‘‘There,’’ he murmured. ‘‘That’s better.’’

The connection stripped her bare. Claustrophobia threatened, fluttering panic at the edges of her consciousness. She scrambled for a joke, for a snippy comment that would reduce the moment to what it should have been—sex between two consenting adults who liked and respected each other, who desired each other, who had common goals.

‘‘Don’t.’’ He touched her lips. ‘‘Don’t try to make this less than it is.’’

Don’t try to make it more, she would have said, but he moved before she could, sliding into her and disrupting all rationality with the feel of him. The reality of him. His hard, thick length filled her, stretched her, set off neural detonations within her that took away speech, took away thought, and tunneled her vision so all she could see was the fierce love in his eyes when he took her. Claimed her. Made her his own.

Her inner muscles clamped onto his invading length, stroking him as he thrust and withdrew, thrust and withdrew, each time seating himself deeper and deeper still until— Yes, there.

Her breath whistled through her teeth on a hiss of pleasure, and she changed the angle, drawing him deeper and watching his eyes go hot with the new sensations.

He growled low in his throat and increased the tempo of his thrusts, sliding in and out of her, simultaneously touching her core and her clit with each drive home, coiling the long-denied orgasm so tightly her body became a vibrating knot of tension. The sensation built, then faded into the hot, tingling numbness her body hid behind in the final few seconds before implosion.

Her mind blanked. Her senses spun with the awe of it, with the hugeness of sensation as everything inside her paused for one. Breathless. Moment.

And then it came, she came, the rush of pleasure starting in her fingers and toes and all the places where they touched, where they strained together. The shimmer coalesced inward, rushing to the point inside where she gripped his cock with the first long, drawn-out pulse.

She said something, maybe his name, maybe something more dangerous, but she was beyond knowing, beyond caring, crying out as the inner contractions sped up, playing him, taunting him. He grew impossibly thick, impossibly hard, and his whole body went tight as he bellowed and came with her, within her. His orgasm caught the tail end of hers, kicking it back into the stratosphere, cramping her, wringing her with wave after wave of pleasure that held her paralyzed. Helpless.

Fulfilled.

When it was over, Strike muttered something and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. They leaned into each other as the torches continued to heat the air around them. A high, golden hum touched Leah’s soul for a moment, then was gone, leaving her feeling strangely empty and unsettled.

‘‘You’re not in this alone, Blondie,’’ he murmured against her neck, stroking a hand along her back in a gesture that was simultaneously reassuring and possessive. ‘‘You’re mine now.’’

But instead of making her feel better, his words gave her pause, warning her that none of this was simple. Nerves tightened in her belly, bringing the sense that what they’d just done had gone too far, that it’d shifted something that shouldn’t have been moved. ‘‘Being your lover doesn’t make me a Nightkeeper.’’

‘‘Maybe not, but being consort to the son of the king has to count for something.’’

It took a moment for that to sink in. Then, chilled, she leaned away from him, waited until he looked at her. ‘‘You made love to me for my own protection?’’

Dark anger flashed in his eyes. ‘‘I made love to you because I couldn’t damn well not make love to you anymore. Don’t turn it into more than that.’’ He cursed. ‘‘That didn’t come out right. I meant that you shouldn’t read ulterior motives where there aren’t any. I wanted you; you wanted me. End of story. What happens next is completely separate from this.’’

Only it wasn’t, and they both damn well knew it. It’d never been that simple between them and wasn’t about to start.

She got it now. He thought that if they were lovers, the others might not force him to go through with the sacrifice, knowing that a mated Nightkeeper was stronger with his mate than alone, stronger still with a god-bound mate. But that didn’t even begin to address the fact that they apparently had a creator god stuck halfway between the planes, and the thirteenth prophecy loomed large.

Strike, like his father before him, was trying to bend the traditions to save someone he cared for. And if his strategy failed, as it had done for his father before him, the results could be catastrophic.

‘‘Don’t go up against Jox and Red-Boar for me,’’ she said quietly. ‘‘Not without a backup plan.’’

‘‘And don’t you tell me how to do my job.’’ He turned away and started pulling on his pants with quick, irritated efficiency, and she could feel the darkness simmering very close to the surface. She could sense the anger that rode him, the frustration, and knew that what they’d just done had, if anything, made it worse.

Knowing he needed an assurance that she couldn’t give, she dropped down from the altar and pulled her shirt and panties back on. The two of them were close together in the small space, but the gap separating them suddenly seemed wider than ever.

She touched his arm, where his marks stood out in stark relief against his skin in the firelight. ‘‘I’m just one person, Strike. Like it or not, you’ve got a way bigger responsibility than that.’’

‘‘Tell me something I don’t know,’’ he grated out. He sounded angry, but when he spun to face her, she saw grief on his face. ‘‘Do you want to die?’’

‘‘Of course not,’’ she snapped, ‘‘but I don’t want to live four more years knowing the world is going to end because I’m still in it.’’

He looked at her long and hard before he said, ‘‘You know what? Maybe I do.’’

Then he strode from the small chamber, bare chested and pissed off. And he didn’t look back.