Maeve pulled the sleeves of her pajama robe down over her hands as Reeve threw on a shirt, concealing most of the Vexkari tattoos across his chest that called to her, asking for her touch. The hour was late when she had knocked on his door. He ran his fingers through his hair, exposing his undercut, a gesture that always had Maeve forgetting he was three hundred years old.
When he was seated on the other side of the fireplace, she realized his eyes were heavy with exhaustion. The thread of Magic between them hung with new weight.
The tension between them was thick, nauseatingly dense.
She shifted her knees in front of her in an attempt to shield how anxious she was. “I am going to ask you questions and you are going to answer them all without argument.”
Reeve nodded.
“My mother was of Shadow Magic?” she asked finally, beginning her interrogation.
Reeve nodded.“She is why you are part Shadow.”
“Why did you know? And why couldn’t you tell me? Why have you known everything all along while I have been in the dark?”
“Because your parents wanted you to live a different life than your mother did. Free of the mental slavery that Shadow Magic can create. Free of the persecution you would have faced beneath the Orator’s Office.”
“That doesn’t explain why you know.”
“Your father was my best friend then. When your mother began struggling beneath the Magic she didn’t understand, he asked for my help.”
“And were you able to help her?”
Reeve looked at the fire. “No.”
Maeve asked her next question carefully, acid turning deep in her core. “How did she die?”
“She shattered her own mind.”
Maeve exhaled loudly, dipping her head back and closing her eyes. She remained there as more questions spilled from her.
“How old was I?”
“You were barely a week old.”
“Where did they meet?”
“At Vaukore.”
Maeve looked up at him, their eyes meeting like magnets snapping into place.
“And he loved her?”
Reeve smiled, softly. “Very much.”
“What was her name?”
“Maeven.”
Maeve couldn’t smile, despite the sentiment of her given name.
Her own memories ran wild, forcing things to the forefront of her mind that felt like a past life reincarnated. Every quiet and quick moment she and Reeve shared. The way he kissed her with bruising force, like he wanted to consume her whole.
His tattooed hands, much larger than hers, as she hooked her fingers around his pinky alone. His grin, and those perfectly pointed canines the tip of his tongue loved to press against.
“It’s all coming back to me,” she blurted out, her voice small.
Reeve’s reply came with brutal honesty as their eyes remained locked together. “I never forgot.”
