It felt like they’d been trudging through the desert for seven hundred years.
Gabriel had forgotten how endless Nexxus seemed. And how much it sucked to walk great distances when the temperature was topping one-twenty. When they made it home, he was totally buying a car. He’d be damned if he was ever going to walk anywhere ever again.
Home.
The word gave him pause. When had he started thinking of Adrianne’s dimension as home?
He wasn’t exactly sure. At some point over the years, he’d decided—whether or not he was willing to admit it aloud—that for him, Adrianne was home. Wherever she was, that’s where he belonged.
All the time he’d spent denying that simple fact…all the wasted moments…
No wonder Adrianne had been so pissed at him. Hell, he’d kick his own ass if he could.
“OK, what the fuck is that?”
Gabriel followed the direction of Adrianne’s wide-eyed stare. “That’s the entrance to my father’s keep.”
She raised a skeptical brow at him. “Why does it look like a ring of fire?”
“Because…it’s a ring of fire.”
“We have to pass through that to get into his keep?”
“Think of it like a rift. It divides one land within Nexxus to the next. The good news is that it’s cooler over there. And you’re fireproof now, so there’s that.”
“And the bad news?”
His wife was so smart. It truly was a blessing…and a curse. “Everything there still wants you dead, except for my father, who’d rather capture you and torture you forever.”
She swallowed hard. “That is bad news. Do you have a plan for getting past the guards into the dungeon?”
“I do. But you’re not going to like it.”
Her nose scrunched up adorably, which made him want to kiss it. “I feel like I’ve heard that a lot here before.”
He chuckled. “There’s a set of tunnels that lead into the dungeons on the opposite side of the keep. They’re old. They were in place long before my father came into power. He never knew they were there when I was a kid. I stumbled into them by accident. Hopefully, he still doesn’t know they’re there.”
She snorted. “Yeah, hopefully. The other thing I’m hearing a lot of over here.”
Gabriel hooked an arm around her waist and hauled her in for a quick kiss. “Don’t get timid on me now, Moonshine. I know you can handle it.”
“Just tell me this—are there spiders in these tunnels?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. She wouldn’t like his answer. Again.
Adrianne rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Lead the way, Magellan. The quicker we get through these tunnels, the quicker we can get home.”
There was that word again. Home.
“My thoughts exactly, Moonshine.”
Even though he’d been ready for it and expected it, the temperature difference between the desert side of Nexxus and the forest side was startling.
Gabriel shivered involuntarily as he stepped through the ring and pulled Adrianne through behind him.
“Fucking hell,” Adrianne mumbled, unwrapping the first few layers of her clothing. “Did we just get dumped out into Costa Rica or something?”
Gabriel had never been to Costa Rica, but based on what he’d read about it, this side of Nexxus probably was like a rain forest in Adrianne’s world.
Vegetation so vast and dense that not even the light from three suns could penetrate the depths surrounded them, and the rushing water of rapids in the distance was loud enough to drown out the sounds of the insects and woodland creatures he knew were hiding in the trees.
He’d keep that to himself. Adrianne had never been a fan of bugs, and the bugs that were here? Well, they’d be the stuff of nightmares for her.
The air was so thick with humidity that even he needed a moment to acclimate. He couldn’t even imagine how overwhelming all this was for Adrianne.
“Is that your father’s keep?”
Gabriel didn’t even need to look to know what she was talking about. His father’s keep rose like the haunting shadow of grim death over the otherwise peaceful forest around them—bleak, dark, and ominous. “Yes. We’re going around it, though. The tunnels are on the other side.”
She didn’t say anything, so he turned to look at her, only to find her staring up at the tower, head cocked to one side like a confused German Shepherd.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
She slow blinked a few times before saying, “Well…it’s kind of…penis-y, isn’t it?”
He slow blinked back her. “Penis-y?”
“Yeah, you know, phallic. Like, it looks like a river rock Washington Monument. It’s basically a giant penis rising up out of the forest, which, if you’re looking down at it from up there, would be like the pubic hair.”
Gabriel glanced up at the place he’d spent most of his childhood and scratched his head. Well, shit. “How the hell did I never notice that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s pretty obvious your father is compensating for something.”
As he grabbed one of the knives on Adrianne’s belt and started hacking through vegetation so they could get to the tunnels, he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You’re a lot things, love. Boring is certainly not one of them.”