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He did need to leave Lydia Susi alone.
Shaking his head, he closed his eyes. “I don’t think I can.”
“You have to—”
“Let me ask you something.” He refocused on his sister, squaring his shoulders and shifting his weight. “Do you know how you feel in thismoment? The relief? The grace? The near miss that ended well as opposed to badly?”
“Yeah?”
“If you could give this to another who suffers… would you do it? If you loved them?”
“Of course.”
“But what if it cost you the very core of yourself.”
Xhex frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He glanced back at where the entity had been, in its wolven form. “The old woman told me that I am Lydia’s future, but not in the way I wish I was.”
“She is in love with Daniel.”
“Yes, and he is dying—and that, I am afraid, is what I can fix.” As his sister’s eyes widened in surprise, he had to walk off a little because he could not hold inside his skin the emotions within his heart. “If he dies, I could comfort her, and that is something to build on—”
“First off, I hate to break it to you, but she’ll love him forever even if he’s dead.” His sister put her dagger hand over her heart. “And I know this because if anything happens to John Matthew, there’s no one else for me.”
Blade thought about it for a moment. “Interestingly, that rather helps.”
“But I don’t get it. What can you ‘fix’ for Daniel? I mean, mind control is one thing, but advanced cancer? That’s not the kind of shit you just will out of someone’s body.”
“Oh, it is not his will that I have at my disposal.”
Xhex stared at him, clearly nonplussed. “You have a… cure? Forcancer?”
“It is not without a sacrifice, however.”
Silence stretched out between them. “Do you love her,” Xhex said. “Truly, really, love her, without motivation, without ulterior interest.”
He thought about the wolf, staring at him with those golden eyes, so deadly… so beautiful.
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay, then. What else in the universe is more worth sacrificing for than… love. If you really feel like that for her, and you know you can save that which she cares for the most? The answer is simple. Love is giving everything you have, even if it hurts.”
But what if it destroys, he thought.
And yet… his sister was right.
After a long moment, Blade bowed deeply. “Thank you. That is most helpful. And may I tell you that I wish you all the best, you and your male. Now, if you will excuse me—”
“Where are you going?”
He exhaled and glanced around. “To get my proverbial doctor’s bag, sister mine. Good evening.”
He did not walk off. Rather, he dematerialized. After all, when a plan had been decided, a resolve locked into the marrow, one did not wish to dally on foot whilst time was of the essence: Although he had never consciously been one for feats of heroism,he would feel rather cheated if Daniel Joseph, his former operative, lover of who Blade feared was the love of his life, died on the cusp of his rescue.
Lydia’s favored future cut short by biological failure, when there was a far happier resolution on the verge of reaching her beloved.
And there was another reason he wanted to dematerialize instead of go on foot. It appeared as though he was turning over a new leaf of virtue, and he didn’t want the other half of him to sabotage it by a trip-and-fall, engineered by thesymphathin him.
