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"I've already died once before. There are worse things."
The air seemed less charged, the daylight softening along with her resistance, such that she didn't move when he reached out and pushed back a lock of her hair. "It's not my way to prove something like this in such a violent way." His tone changed, became more gentle, as if he felt the shift within her as well. "But you've been testing me from the beginning, and it was time to show you that I won't ever let you hurt Anna, Mina. Or me. Or anyone you're afraid of hurting. Okay?" He bent his knees a little so he could look directly into her pensive face. "And I'll still hold you whenever you think you need it. Or as long as you can stand it."
Mina swallowed, looked at the carnage she'd created. "I wish I could trust you. Believe you."
"Trust comes with time. And it has to be earned."
"It's not a matter of that. I can't trust you, David. That part of me..."
"Once again, is it possible that you've confused the defenses you've built for yourself with the enemy outside of them?" He tipped her chin up again when she tried to look away. "It's just a leap of faith. That's something you'll have to decide for yourself.
"Now." He forced a lighter tone. "Good thing I left the food and clothes outside in the street. Are you interested at all in what I brought you for lunch?"
Seventeen
MIND-SHATTERING orgasm, a violent argument, a harrowing revelation, and now food. Mina would never be a dull companion.
"So if the Dark Ones have been in your dreams all these years, maintaining a connection and awareness of you, why do you think they're pursuing you more aggressively now?"
She shrugged. "I don't really know. I just know their interest has increased over the past couple of months. My assumption was it was the Canyon Battle. It revealed more of the powers I have. All Dark Spawn, while they survive, are connected to the Dark One world in their dreams. I was just one more, until I started keeping questionable company with angels."
"Can you see their world?"
"Can we eat before we talk about this? Some of us don't live on manna alone."
The way she was eyeing the food, he could tell she was hungry. And of course, living in a survival mode as she did, she would want to dispense with it first, before the next crisis confronted them. "Getting between you and the call of the Dark Ones I can do," he said lightly. "Getting between you and food-I'm not that brave."
She narrowed her eyes at him, but David said nothing further as he gave her the sandwich, his tongue tucked into his cheek.
First she dismantled it and studied all the separate pieces. Chopped almonds, lettuce, tomato, the soft golden spread of hummus, cucumbers, wheat bread. Then she reassembled them, nibbling a corner of the bread first, after smelling the fresh-baked aroma-several times. Potato chips startled her with their loud crunch, but she quickly got over that.
While she ate, David considered his approach. Before the disruption at the Citadel, the unexpected offer Jonah had made had two parts. One was that Anna was prepared to give Mina money to exist in the human world. The portion of Neptune's treasure Anna had at her fingertips would be enough to support one mermaid, plus one hundred witches, for five or six lifetimes. Part two was a little more complicated, but it was time to present it. While his witch was eating seemed the best time. While he loved to watch her eat, it also pained him. The initial caution followed by a ravenous hunger, the way she would pull it close and hover over it like a pack animal, expecting to have to fight others off for it. He suspected she wasn't even aware she did it.
"Did Anna ever tell you about the house she and Jonah stayed at when they were at the Schism?" He referenced the magical fault line in the Nevada desert, where Anna had taken Jonah to heal his soul.
"Briefly." Mina swallowed a mouthful of hummus and then followed David's gesture to pick up the bottle of water and wash down the spiced spread. "She said it belonged to a couple helping the shaman maintain the Schism's balance."
"Matt and Maggie. Yes. They returned to their home in another state recently, and left the care of the house and its use to Jonah and Anna. Jonah has suggested we go there, for now. If it will let us in."
"Why wouldn't it?"
"The Schism won't allow Dark Ones in, and the house is just inside the perimeter. It's not a white light zone," he added quickly at her furrowed brow, the worry it indicated. "But it's one of the magical principles."
After Jonah's stinging comment earlier, David had worried the offer might be rescinded, but the commander was still willing to proceed with it. Reassured, David had tentatively suggested that Mina could help Sam, the aging shaman and guardian of the Schism, maintain the Schism balance and protect it. An equitable exchange for a safe and protected place to be while she investigated her abilities with greater freedom.
Jonah had been dubious. First step, he advised, was seeing how she dealt with being on land for a prolonged period. Not to mention whether the Schism would even accept her.
Thinking on that as well as the volatile exchange they'd just had, the pleasurable and not so pleasurable, he couldn't deny that Jonah's advice to proceed with caution was worth heeding. No matter the disarming nature of her current appearance.
When he'd judged her size, which he thought grimly would be somewhere between junior and preadolescent, he'd gotten her a brown T-shirt with a desert scene on it, and a broomstick skirt that picked up the pink, rose, blue and brown desert colors. He hadn't been thinking much about them matching, but they'd been paired on the same rack. He'd also gotten her a pair of pale pink panties that she'd studied with interest before discarding the saloon-girl dress and wriggling into them with little modesty, a casual intimacy that had been... stirring. Because of the disfigurement and the fact she was small breasted, he hadn't bothered with a bra, but he was rethinking that as her nipple distracted him with its tempting protrusion against the cotton. It made him want to stroke her through the soft shirt.
He'd also gotten her a pink ball cap to guard her face from the sun. Apparently feeling vulnerable without her cloak, she'd pulled the bill low on her brow and arranged her hair so it fell mostly over the non-scarred side.
"Why do you do that?"
"What?" She glanced up, a potato chip ready to be put in her mouth.
"Cover the non-scarred side. M
ost people would do just the opposite."
She shrugged, interestingly unconcerned with the question. "The scars say I can take care of myself. Survive. The beauty is a trick of creation, the luck of chance. And luck is fickle. I have no use for it. Beauty also attracts attention," she added. "Deformity tends to make people want to avoid contact with you, and then they don't notice other details."
"Is that why you didn't want me to heal your scars?"
That startled her. Even as he watched her expression shutter, he knew she was going to lie to him.
"Yes," she said. She ate the chip then, closing her eyes, a non-verbal cue to discourage conversation until she finished.
He waited, but when she was done, he put a hand on hers. "There've been males who tried to take advantage of that beauty. That's a reason to hide it as well."
She tried to withdraw her hand. "They weren't successful. Which you know, if you know that much."
"I'm glad. I'm sorry you had to..."
As she studied him, her impassive expression gave way to curiosity. "What?"
"I'm just sorry." David gave a half shrug, unsure himself of what he'd been trying to say. "I understand a lot about the world I didn't know when I was human. About why people go through terrible things, the balance between good and evil, and how life is a journey and all that. Anna told me once she didn't regret anything she'd suffered, because every bit of it made her who she was. I look at you..." He gave her an appraising look, causing Mina's brow to furrow. But when she drew away, her body language defensive, he reached out again, only this time he waited patiently and with a pointed look until she relented, laid her hand in his again. The three-fingered one, so that his touch slid over the maimed stumps, gently handled the splint. "I look at you and see a powerful witch who's that way because she's a powerful soul. But at the same time, I want to go back and break into pieces anyone who thought he had the right to cause you a moment of fear, hurt you because he thought himself stronger and wanted something you might not be willing to give him."
The surge of fury he thought he'd managed to control since his visit to the Heavens came back then. He didn't want violence of that kind to flood out and over her. So instead, he did the next best thing. "Oh, hell. Just come here."
