* * *
Marcus didn’t fall sleep right away, though he knew Havily had.
He needed to think.
She had protested the
breh-hedden
at the precise moment that he’d had the worst epiphany of his life—he’d fallen in love with Havily Morgan, not a small kind of love, but the kind of love that made its way into sonnets and ballads, into pop songs and wedding rituals. He was in love with her. He loved her.
Breh-hedden
or no
breh-hedden,
he loved her.
Maybe he felt this way because he’d been inside her head and knew her basic generous nature, or maybe it was seeing her face off with Endelle, meeting her temper head-on by using the F-bomb, or maybe it was having her wake up and take care of him sexually that had pushed him over the edge of the cliff. Whatever it was, he was flying right now, so completely aware of this woman that for the longest moment, he didn’t ever want to be separated from her. He wanted to be attached to her side by a tether, keeping her close to his body, his mind, his protective sword.
As sleep began to dull his mind, however, an old memory grabbed hold, the time he had last seen his sister, Helena, two hundred years ago. She’d been dressed in a lavender cotton gown gathering flowers from her extensive garden, the one she had designed specifically for making arrangements for the house, a true cutting garden.
He had argued with her again about her safety. He wanted her to stop driving the carriage into town with the children to buy supplies. He wanted her to send the servants instead. Dammit, he wanted her safe.
She had caught his arm, looked into his eyes, and pinched his cheek. “Dearest brother, we all die even in this ascended world. Let me live as I choose. When my time comes, I am ready. Do you not ever feel that you and I have lived far too long as it is, perhaps on borrowed time?”
“No.”
He had argued with her. He needed her and the children. They had been his saving grace, that which had made his warrior job tolerable each and every night.
“Marcus, you sometimes forget that I’m almost as old as you are and worse, I have lost children in this war, grown children. I have lost two husbands. Wedding Kerrick for me was the only thing I have wanted in the past thousand years. The only mistake I believe I made was not marrying again right after my last husband died. Life is for the living, and until I am committed to the earth I will live. I hope you will do the same.”
She had perished in an explosion two weeks later, a gift from that bastard Greaves.
She had been the last of his family, she and her children.
When they died rage had flooded him and all that anger had become focused on Kerrick, as irrational as it was. He’d had a choice to make—stay and kill his fellow Warrior of the Blood, his own brother-in-law, or seek refuge and exile on Mortal Earth. He’d chosen the latter.
Now he was back.
He reached toward Havily and touched the bed just short of her body. She moved slightly in her sleep. Maybe his thoughts were too loud.
Havily was the first woman he’d wanted
, that he’d loved,
in longer than a thousand years. But already his heart ached with the impossibility of it all.
He thought of her darkening abilities and something clicked in his brain, the meaning of it, maybe even the purpose and why those abilities had first surfaced in her desire to be with him. In an elemental sense, the
breh-hedden
was a demand for openness, commitment, belonging. Havily lacked all of these things just as he did.
In that intuitive aspect of ascended life, perhaps connected to basic clairvoyance—of a sense of knowing the future will be impacted by the issue at the moment—he knew that if Havily was to be safe, given the enemy’s drive toward her, he must help her, somehow, to engage her darkening abilities, which meant he needed to open himself to her, to truly loving her.
Endelle was right. From this point forward, Havily’s life depended on her ability to move in and out of the darkening at will—and even more important, to split into two realities, one self that could function in the darkening
,
while her other self rested in the real world.
When he had come back to Second Earth, returning to guard her, he had believed his job was to stay close and defend her with his sword. How strange to think that securing her safety meant he needed to love her better.
Only after he made this leap did he finally fall asleep.
The dawn illuminates change.
—
Collected Proverbs,
Beatrice of Fourth
CHAPTER 18
The next morning, Havily awoke on her side. Her gaze was fixed on the lace curtain of the window, the morning light having lit the eastern side of the White Tank Mountains in a glow. The sky above was a deep blue that would appear to fade during the day because of all the intense June sunlight. But for now, she saw one of the beauties of the desert world: the clear cloudless sky, the light, a sense of the expanse of the world.
Thoughts of what her day would be, of all her concerns for the success of the Ambassadors Reception, threatened to take over her mind. So for just this moment, before her day could steamroll her deepest thoughts, she blocked her responsibilities. She wanted time to think.
Marcus wasn’t in bed, the shower wasn’t running, and the room was quiet. Where he’d gone, she didn’t know, but her thoughts turned to him. She rubbed her lower lip with her forefinger and smiled. Shivers traveled over her bare shoulders. Marcus.
She drew in a deep breath, released a deep sigh.
Marcus.
She smiled and a soft chuckle broke from her throat as she remembered awakening after a post-orgasmic doze to the bed shaking and her vampire lover so aroused, yet so restrained, that all his repressed need had set his limbs to trembling. Yeah, it made her laugh but it also made her heart constrict as she considered his character. Dammit, the man was thoughtful. He had fully intended to let her sleep even though his need for her bordered on torture. How could a self-proclaimed hedonist and narcissistic empire-builder of Mortal Earth also be thoughtful?
This wasn’t helping her situation
at all.
She needed Marcus to be a prick so she could walk the hell away from him. Didn’t he get that? She needed him to live up to her opinion of him as a disloyal bastard so she could let the
breh-hedden
run out of steam. Then she’d tell him to go back to his
small
life on Mortal Earth and she’d be able to get on with her own dedication to Second Society.
The trouble was, every minute she was with him kept proving that his essential character was very different from what he projected. He wasn’t selfish; he was generous. He wasn’t self-involved; he was thoughtful. He wasn’t disinterested; he cared.
When Parisa had accidentally flown through the mist and Marcus had appeared in the air within seconds, in full-mount, ready to protect them both
,
her first thought had been,
Thank God.
Her second had been,
Who is this man?
She released a heavy sigh. From the time she’d met him four months ago, during Alison’s ascension, she’d known she was in trouble. Her crazy attraction to him was simply overwhelming. Add to that a subsequent four months of having sex with him in the darkening
,
acknowledged or not, and connections had been forged between them that should never have been built in the first place.
And oh, God, could the man make love. She didn’t know if it was the
breh-hedden
or if it was just four thousand years of excellent practice or what, but damn he knew how to work her body. Desire rippled over her and resulted in a full-body shiver. She squeezed her eyes shut and for one ridiculous moment thought about calling Marcus back to bed. She moaned.
Okay, this was so not helping her time of reflection.
The trouble was …
the trouble was
… the longer she was with him, the more she enjoyed him, being with him, talking to him, sharing this difficult journey by his side, his sword drawn half the time, his body pinned to her the other half. She loved it so much, the connection, the physical oneness, the shared bed.
Yeah, she loved it all.
There was only one problem, the same issue she’d had from the beginning—she didn’t want to be in a relationship. She didn’t want her heart to swell with love and risk being punctured, deflated, obliterated by yet another death.
With the loss of her entire family so many years ago and later Eric’s death, she had learned to live a serene, unruffled, unemotional existence because she had determined in her heart that she would never be in love again, never be married again, never risk losing someone she loved. The pain had been too much, and her ensuing commitment to a solitary life had been profound and purposeful.
A tear slid over the bridge of her nose. When had she started to cry? Only then did she understand that though she could intellectualize her situation, her heart knew she was in serious trouble.
She drew a deep breath and sat up.
Reflection time was over. She had to face the day. She had work to do, and it would include figuring out how to do a split-self so that she could engage in darkening work. In fact, with her ability to be in the darkening she might just be of some real use in the war effort. How happy that would make her, to have one more tool by which she could honor Eric’s death.
A light knock sounded on the door. She dragged the sheet up around her bare breasts and covered her hips. “Who is it?”
“Just me,” Marcus said.
She smiled, surprised that he would knock. “Come in.”
He opened the door and stepped inside. He wore what she’d come to think of as his casual uniform, a short-sleeved silk shirt, this time in navy, and cotton slacks with a perfect break in the cuff. He also wore a variety of casual but expensive loafers, this time in dark brown leather. His hair was damp and combed behind his ears. He looked fantastic and, oh, damn, her heart swelled at the sight of him. His gaze slid over her face, her hair, her shoulders and her arm pressed beneath her breasts to keep the sheet in place. His eyes flared. She glanced down. Oh. She wasn’t exactly covered.
When a wave of fennel washed over her, like licorice and grasses and summery scents, she closed her eyes and swayed even though she was sitting on the bed.
She expected him to slam the door shut and throw himself on her. Instead, he stayed put. Did he know she wouldn’t have turned him away?
She opened her eyes and glanced at him. She lifted her brows, a silent question.
“Bad news,” he said. “Endelle wants to work with you this morning.”
Havily’s first reaction was simple. “I can’t. I have final meetings with my team leaders today and then the Reception this evening. I don’t have time.”
“Endelle rescheduled for you. She says this is more important.”
Havily swallowed hard. Great. Then she noticed that Marcus’s eyebrows were low on his forehead and he still hadn’t advanced into the room. “There’s more, isn’t there?” she asked.
“Shall I tell you straight-out?”
Oh, God, what? “Yes.”
“Only this—I feel it as well, this pressing need for you to figure out how to do the whole weird splitting-self skill. I’m afraid I’m with Endelle today. Your safety is at stake.”
“You’re really serious.”
He nodded.
What a great way to start the day.
As though he’d read her mind, he smiled. “I do have some good news. Parisa is making frittatas for breakfast.”
She wanted to smile in return but she couldn’t. She looked away from him, her gaze drifting to the lace curtains and the blue sky beyond. Well, she had wanted to be of real use to the war effort, but she wasn’t exactly happy about having to endure Endelle’s bucking-bronc style of tutoring again. Her head ached just thinking about it.
She glanced back at him. “I’ll take a quick shower then join you in the kitchen.”
When another wave of fennel pushed over her, when he growled but left the room, she knew she wasn’t the only one making sacrifices this morning.
She showered then donned a gray silk dress and water-marked gray silk scarf. She wore heels. In gray. She felt gray as she ate her frittata then headed with Marcus and Parisa over to the admin building.
But when she saw Endelle, she felt even worse. The woman wore a black leather bustier, of all things, as well as a black-and-white-striped skirt made of some kind of animal fur. Havily so didn’t want to know where the fur came from.
Whatever.
By the end of the second hour of enduring Endelle’s strident method of teaching, Havily’s brain had turned to mush. Her Supremeness had tried every possible means of forcing her to do a split-self. She had given her new memories, she had showed her by example, she had yelled at her, she had even folded a chaise-longue into her office so that Havily could practice while reclining. But nothing seemed to work. For whatever reason, she just couldn’t make sense of the process.