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She smiled … crookedly … and finally managed to lift her hand enough to touch his cheek. His face was swollen, bruised, bleeding in places, but he’d never looked more handsome. “It was my shields,” she said, her tongue still way too thick and unwieldy from the drugs. She spoke slowly. “My greatest strength … was my greatest weakness. I had to let … my guard down completely … in order to find my way into the darkening.” She drew a breath. “How’s that … for irony?”
“Beautiful,” he said, one hand pressed to his chest, the other tightening around her shoulder. “I think it’s goddamn beautiful.”
Love defies our deepest fears.
—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 23
Havily stared up at the ceiling in the bedroom she shared with Marcus, the coffered ceiling with the beautiful wood beams. She sighed. Three days had passed at Medichi’s villa. Between the drugs in her system and her loss of blood, she had been in a weakened state and recovery had been slow, even for a vampire.
Right now she wore one of Marcus’s soft T-shirts, something he said he only wore on Bainbridge. Nothing else would do, not even her La Perla nightgowns, not because they weren’t soft but because they didn’t carry Marcus’s fennel scent embedded in every thread.
For the first two days she had slept around the clock, waking only at intervals and crying out. But each time, Marcus pulled her close, stroked her back, and whispered his comfort to her.
So she slept, then slept some more.
When she finally knew she wouldn’t be going back to sleep, that she was up for the day, Marcus had kissed her once and promised her a meal. If she understood correctly, he was doing the cooking himself. She wasn’t sure what to think about that.
She smiled at the thought that Marcus, Warrior Marcus, head of a multibillion-dollar Mortal Earth financial empire and former Warrior of the Blood, was preparing dinner for her, Havily Morgan. Who was she—an occasional Liaison Officer, a current executive in Endelle’s administration, a vampire whose blood had some of the qualities of dying blood, and an ascender with the ability to split-self and move a second corporeal self into the darkening.
She was calmer now. Sleep had helped, and the heavy sedative had finally left her system. Her mind had therefore started making sense of all that had happened.
She could feel that she had changed but she couldn’t seem to define the next step in her life. Something needed to be different, but what?
Some part of her, an old useless part of her, had died in Crace’s forge.
She was made new, but in what way and which direction should she go now?
She had never expected to see Marcus again. She had been so sure he had perished that none of her new thoughts had included him and yet her life, in some bizarre, breh-hedden, elemental way, belonged to Marcus.
But to continue as they had been seemed impossible.
Tears dampened her hair and trickled into her ears. She didn’t even know why she was crying.
The door opened and Marcus appeared with a tray in hand. Her eye was drawn to a really tall red rose standing in a short bud vase. The flower flopped around as he moved. The whole thing looked ready to fall over.
She smiled and her heart swelled.
Then love swallowed her whole. She couldn’t speak as she looked at him. Mostly she was afraid she was glowing with the sensations passing through her, over her, around her. She loved him. Oh, my God, how she loved him.
Then she understood what had changed, what had transformed within her … her ability to love had just expanded to embrace the entire universe. She no longer feared losing Marcus. She had already lost him. But that wasn’t even the point. Life required this kind of love, from the heart, from the soul, from every molecule of the body, fully present, 100 percent engaged, willing to risk, even if that love would never be returned.
“Are you all right?” he asked, rounding the bed. “Your skin looks flushed. Do you have a fever?” Fevers were rare in ascended life so he looked astonished as he asked the question.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position and shoved a pillow behind her back. “I’m fine,” she said, the words a miracle of understatement. Yet she had no other words to speak, even though her heart felt full to overflowing.
He looked like a million bucks since he was dressed in a business suit, black wool, tailored to every muscular curve. But then no one dressed like that in June in Phoenix. Her heart sank. Where was he going? Was it possible he was leaving Second Earth?
She sighed as he settled the tray over her lap. Funny little odors reached her nose and she worked not to grimace. The toast was badly burned on one side and the coffee—grainy looking—had sloshed onto the saucer. The eggs had brown streaks. “This looks wonderful,” she said, her gaze again skating over the suit. She knew he preferred Tom Ford and she could see why. But … where was he going, when, and why? Her heart ached.
He glanced down at the tray and grimaced. “I made everything myself and for that I apologize.”
She looked up at him. She reached for his hand. “Thank you, but you’ll stay, won’t you, right now, and talk to me?”
“Actually, I have to leave.”
So, there it was. Havily’s heart constricted and she only barely restrained a gasp. “So soon?” Over before it had really begun?
He dropped to his knees beside the bed and took her hand. “I should be back within a day or two. Don’t worry.”
Why did two days suddenly seem like the razor edge of eternity? She nodded.
He pushed his longish hair away from his face. “I have business to take care of on Mortal Earth. My CEO has been blasting me with urgent texts. Decisions have to be made. A lot of decisions.”
She nodded. “Absolutely.” Decisions had to be made.
Choices. More of them. Big choices.
She piled some egg on the toast and crunched a bite. She took a sip of gritty lukewarm coffee to wash it down. She smiled. It was the best dinner-breakfast she’d ever eaten.
“Havily, I’m coming back,” he said. “Permanently. I need you to know that.”
Tears rushed to her eyes. She crunched another bite and nodded over her breakfast. “Uh-huh,” she said, blowing bits of dry crust out of her mouth. She sipped more coffee. She chewed and swallowed. Okay, a little more coffee.
She looked at him again. He was frowning at the breakfast. “I can’t cook worth shit. You should know that about me.”
“I do all right but I’m very fond of restaurants.”
