Empower (34 page)

Finally, I remembered the promises. Him to me, that we would find a way. And then there was my promise to him. The one I told myself was impossible to keep. The one night we’d made love … I could still feel his fingers combing my hair as we lay in the bed.

‘I want you to know: you’re it, everything I want.’

I remembered how his words had morphed into a long, toe-curling kiss and then he’d said:
‘No matter what happens tomorrow – no matter
what
– tonight was exactly what I wanted and for all the right reasons. For you. Because I love you. Promise me, Vi. Promise me you will always remember that.’

And I’d stared back
into his intense eyes, and I’d promised.

My eyes opened slowly and I found myself staring at something floating in the river that had not been there before.

I stared at it for a time, taking note, before I stumbled to my feet, propelled by a force that was beyond me. Relieved when I hit the cover of the streets and roaming people again, I pulled in a trembling breath and wrapped a hand around my stomach.

I was broken.

I loved him so much but I was so afraid that it would be me who would cause his end.

Tears slipped from my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. And suddenly, I was running.

Yes, I’m broken.

But he loves me anyway. And he wants to save me. I know he does.

And I love him. So much I can barely contain it.

My feet moved faster. I knew. I knew now.

I love him enough …

I burst through the gates, waving at the guards so they knew it was me as I threw myself through the front door and took the steps three at a time until I barged right through his bedroom door, skidding to a halt, panting like a crazy woman.

Lincoln was leaning against his windowsill, looking over papers. He looked up, startled and then just wary.

The silence beat hard around us.

Finally, making the choice that was more daunting than jumping off any cliff … I leaped.

‘I need you to fix me,’ I blurted out.

Because I love him enough … to let him.

His eyes darkened as
he put down the papers and took a tentative step towards me. ‘Your injuries?’ he enquired.

I shook my head slightly. ‘All of me.’

His breath stuttered and he slowly took another step. ‘Do you know what you’re saying?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’ he asked, looking around as if expecting to see more than just me. ‘Did the world end while I was having a shower?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, something huge must have happened to change your mind.’

My heart was thudding, trying to jump-start. ‘Actually, it was the quiet. I found my life in the quiet.’ Tears welled in my eyes. ‘And all I could see and hear and smell and feel, was you. Us.’

Seconds felt like hours as he stared at me, straight into my soul that belonged to him. I waited, my heart thumping hard. But when he moved, it wasn’t to me; he strode straight towards the door and disappeared.

My hand reached out for the nearby desk to steady myself; without it I would have collapsed to my knees. I heard talking out in the hall, but everything was a distant buzz compared to the deafening truth from which I could no longer hide.

He doesn’t want me.

And I couldn’t even blame him. I’d left. I was the one who had taken the knife and severed the ties.

I was having difficulty breathing, my throat had tightened and my vision was blurring at the edges. None of that mattered.

Then suddenly the
door was open again and I didn’t need to look up to know it was him.

I cleared my throat, hoping I could at least make it out of his room before falling apart. ‘I’ll leave you to get some rest,’ I stammered, my voice sounding as hollow as I felt. Lincoln ignored me, and I looked up in time to see him push the door closed, and turn the lock.

He paused, still facing away from me, his palm pressed flat against the door. ‘I won’t go back again,’ he said, his voice gravelly but also threatening in its own way.

Slowly he turned to face me, while I processed the fact that he was here, the meaning of his words, the locked door. His eyes fixed on mine and burned with such intensity I almost couldn’t get the words out. But I did. ‘Neither will I.’

His eyes narrowed as if he didn’t believe I was lucid. He took a cautious step towards me. ‘Say you want this.’

‘I want this.’

‘Say you need us as much as I do.’

‘More.’

‘Impossible,’ he said instantly. He took in a sharp breath. Another step. Our feet were toe to toe.

‘This will be for life. For eternity, human and beyond. More than any commitment, than any marriage. Violet, are you ready to marry me?’

I swallowed, trying to catch my breath, because he was so close. So close to touching me. ‘As long as we’re together, I’m ready for everything.’

Breathing hard, he leaned in, our lips almost touching, his fingers moving through my hair as his hand wrapped around the
back of my head. ‘Tell me you’ll never run away from me again.’

He wasn’t asking me to promise nothing bad would ever happen or that I would walk away from every battle. We knew those promises could not be made.

‘Never,’ I swore, and then I voiced the words that neither one of us could ask the other for. ‘I forgive you,’ I said, relinquishing every last piece of me.

His eyes seemed to soften and intensify at the same time.

‘I forgive you, too,’ he said, right before he pulled me closer, his lips crashing into mine. My cold soul shuddered with desire, and hope filled me for the first time in two years.

Somehow I managed to pull back enough to confess, ‘I’m not sure it will work. I don’t know if I can ever be okay again. You need to know what you might be signing up for. My soul … the coldness … it might be too late. It—’

He put a finger over my lips, silencing me.

‘How about you let me worry about that? You might be able to do a lot of extraordinary things. But, baby,’ he smiled knowingly, ‘I was made for you and I’m about to find all the little pieces. I’m going to search your entire body. Every. Single. Inch.’ His smile grew just as my heart started to seize. ‘And I’m going to build the world a queen.’

And then he set about doing just that.

He kissed me thoroughly, lifting me gently onto his bed. First he opened his power to me, pushing at me softly and encouraging mine to work with his and heal my external injuries.

‘Relax,’ he ordered, his lips never leaving my mouth. I pulled him tighter and let my power go.

He took it all, controlling
and manipulating it until we were surrounded by our powers misting the room and it felt like floating in a sea of purple rimmed with green.

Gradually, our clothes disappeared and when Lincoln abruptly stood up I panicked, but he grabbed my hand, pulling me with him and walked us into the bathroom, where he proceeded to wash all the blood from me. He took his time, and when he was certain I was blood-free he dried me off, towelled himself down, and took me back to bed.

Lying on our sides facing each other, he swept the hair off my face and held it back as he pressed his forehead against mine.

‘You have to drop your shields. You have to let me in.’

I grinned mischievously. ‘That was the plan.’

He mirrored my grin but his eyes remained serious. ‘Everywhere. You have to drop your walls completely.’

My smile quickly disappeared and I started to shuffle back, but he held me tight. ‘You don’t understand, I can’t …’

His hand cupped my face. ‘Trust me.’

Oh, holy crap.

Tentatively, I started to lower my shields.

Lincoln shook his head, his powerful gaze never leaving mine as he said again, with more emphasis. ‘Trust me.’

I do.

My shields crashed down around me and I cried out in pain, tears pouring from my eyes. My body convulsed and I started to panic, but Lincoln’s hold was firm and he held me down. ‘Look at me!’ he demanded.

My eyes flashed up even as I screamed again and then he leaned down and he spoke into my ear. ‘I love you. Hold on.’

And that’s exactly
what I did. I screamed as my soul’s damage was finally and fully exposed for the first time since that night two years ago. I felt Lincoln’s agony that this was what I’d become and I wanted to console him, to tell him I understood. That I forgave him, but the pain was so intense I could only scream.

Piece by piece, he tended to me, his power working its way through me, trying to calm me. Finally, I managed to get enough control that he leaned down and risked a kiss. He must have felt confident I wasn’t going to bite his tongue off, because the kiss deepened and I felt small sparks of fire ignite in my body. Sparks of life.

‘More,’ I said, gasping.

‘More,’ he agreed.

When finally we came together, understanding was mine.

There was no fighting it any more. We were two halves of one whole. Each fundamentally incomplete without the other.

It wasn’t like the first time – all new and explorative. This was real. Understood. Fought for. Against. Lost. Now found. And so much more.

We had suffered life without each other and now it was simple: we would never let each other go again. Ever. We held on tight and dropped all the façades. All the smoke and mirrors of strength and perfection, and it was raw and needy and desperate.

At some point my screams of pain turned into something else altogether as our powers finally merged completely for what we both knew was the beginning of our forever.

His power coursed through
me and I welcomed it as he lay back, his body shaking slightly as my power overwhelmed him. I kissed him lightly, soothing him until it settled.

Then his thumb grazed my cheek and he murmured. ‘No more crying.’

I smiled, kissing him quickly before whispering, ‘The cold has gone. You burned it out of me. They’re tears of joy.’

And then a tear slipped down his face too.

Later, we lay silently in the dark, my head resting on his chest, surrounded by a peace unlike anything I’ve ever known.

It wouldn’t be long before morning, and there was much to do with the new day, but it had been the best hours of lost sleep in my life.

Just before we drifted off I told him, ‘I know where they are, Linc. I know where they’re going to take Spence.’

His hand continued to slowly stroke my arm and I felt him nod, unsurprised. I realised that very little I did ever surprised him.

He kissed the top of my head and pulled me closer. ‘First light?’ he asked.

I closed my eyes. Bliss. ‘First light.’

‘Yourself – your soul – in pity give me all, withhold no atom’s atom or I die.’

John Keats

C
offee.

Lincoln.

Naked memories.

Paradise.

‘It’s like a
dream,’ I said, stretching out and gratefully accepting the to-go cup. He smiled as he held up a paper bag. I raised an eyebrow.

‘It’s from a little cafe that opens at the crack of dawn.’ He pulled two square pillows of pastry doused in icing sugar out of the bag, smoothing the bag flat to use as a plate. ‘They’re famous for their beignets.’

He held one out to me and I took a cautious bite. It was still warm and the dough was more like a doughnut than a pastry and surprisingly savoury, but the thick covering of icing sugar more than made up for it. My eyes rolled back and I took a sip of coffee. ‘Definitely a dream.’

And I realised, feeling my body and soul in a way I had never imagined would be possible to do again, that it really was. I felt whole, undamaged, warm, content. The pain of the last two years was still sharp and vivid but with my soul bond with Lincoln back in full effect, it had become secondary. The sensation of rightness bubbled up inside me, making a slight humming sound escape from my lips.

Lincoln chuckled,
that low, adoring chuckle.

My chuckle.

I smiled sadly.

His brow furrowed with concern. ‘What?’

‘I’ve just missed that laugh. I’m sorry I left, Linc,’ I confessed.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I was such an ass when you turned up at the Academy. But things happen for a reason sometimes. Even the hard stuff. I admit I never want to relive the past two years of my life but somehow we’ve ended up exactly where we always belonged, so that makes it all worth it.’

I nodded, understanding.

I could hear people starting to move around in the house. It was time to get moving and I still needed to talk to Phoenix. I crinkled my nose, looking at Lincoln. ‘Do you think we should keep this to ourselves for now? At least until we get Spence back?’

Lincoln laughed so hard he had to grab his stomach.

‘What?’ I asked, fighting his contagious bouts of laughter.

He took a deep breath. ‘Do you have any idea how much noise we, er
you
, made last night? Aside from that little issue of the most powerful Grigori known to this world just
happening
to drop her shields completely. In a city filled with exiles.’