“Oh.” She looked back at the Tribunal. “Fine. I accept your offer.”
The Tribunal shifted uncomfortably, clearly unaware that they’d still been negotiating. Keira ate the smile that wanted to creep across her face.
“Then you will leave immediately.” The Tribunal member hesitated. “Walker Andover? Will you go with her, or do you require separate transport?”
Keira glanced over. Walker’s eyes were wide with surprise. He cleared his throat. “I will go with her, your Eminences.”
“Fine.” The Tribunal member waved them away. “You are dismissed.”
As the guards led them from the room, Walker wrapped his arm around Keira’s shoulders. For the second time that day, her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. But this time, she felt like she was flying.
“We can do this, right?” he whispered, as the guards ushered them down the hall. “If we fail . . . ”
Keira slid her arm around his waist. “We won’t fail. We won’t.” She put as much confidence as she could muster into the words. After all, they’d already fixed parts of Darkside—twice. They could do it again.
They had to do it again.
She hadn’t come this far just to lose everything in the end.
Chapter Fifty-Four
THE TRIP BACK TO the Hall of Records may have taken an eternity. Keira couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. The Darklings put them in the windowless belly of a strange contraption that they called a transporter. It was something like a cross between a bulldozer and a stagecoach made of a material that looked like graphite.
But she was alone in the compartment with Walker. There was no one to interrupt them and no risk of accidentally crossing into Darkside. With everything riding on their success at the Hall of Records, there was also no way to tell if this was the first moment they could touch each other without holding back—or if it was the last.
The transporter lurched into motion, clacking rhythmically as it moved across Darkside, and Keira launched herself into Walker’s waiting arms.
In the near darkness, their lips met with the tenderness and ferocity of a kiss that was unlike any other they’d shared. They weren’t going to crash through into Darkside. They’d already fallen through that barrier. They’d already fallen in love. There was nothing left to keep them apart.
The unexpected scrape of Walker’s teeth against her bottom lip was like a match against tinder—it set Keira on fire so fast that her legs buckled.
Walker caught her without breaking their kiss. Gently, he lowered both of them to the floor between the seats. The floor was hard and the space not quite big enough for the two of them, but Keira barely noticed. She just wrapped herself more tightly around Walker, sliding her palms across his skin and gasping when he slipped his own hand beneath her shirt. His fingers traced the shape of her ribs and Keira arched into his touch.
He lifted his mouth from hers, pulling back to look at her. She could barely see his eyes in the darkness.
“Do you remember back in the hotel? When I promised to make up for all that lost time, once it was safe?” Walker asked softly.
“I remember,” she whispered.
Walker’s fingertips swept across her waist. Every inch of her that wasn’t being touched ached to be next.
He propped himself up, his body hovering over hers, the same way he had that morning in the hotel. Keira’s breath went ragged.
“Good,” he whispered. “Because I love you. And I intend to take back every single minute that I didn’t get to touch you”—his lips grazed her neck—“starting now.”
The rest of the trip was a blur of warm skin and soft mouths and whispered promises. When the clacking of the transporter stopped suddenly, Keira sat up so fast that she nearly cracked Walker’s nose.
“Are we here?” she asked, struggling to pull her slowly disintegrating clothes back into place. Her shirt was tattered, and the fabric at the shoulders was so thin it was nearly transparent.
Walker ducked into what remained of his shirt, and Keira stared regretfully at his clothed chest.
“Probably,” he said.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the door flew open. Keira had to close her eyes against the Darkside light that flooded the compartment. The intensity of its strange glow hurt her eyes.
“The Hall of Records,” the guard said simply.
Keira saw the listing Hall, surrounded by the ring of gnarled trees. Shimmering on the other side of it was her own neighborhood, quiet beneath the night sky.
The night sky—they’d been gone almost a whole day?