A terrible sense of inevitability closed over her.Ellie fought back against it.“How much damage could a person even do with the secret to eternal life?”
“You tell me,” Adam demanded.
Irresistibly, Ellie thought of the answer.
She imagined a world where the right to conquer death could be bought and sold.How a race of immortal men might place themselves above everyone around them.
People would be desperate to buy even a taste of that privilege, to cure their diseases or claw a few more years of life for themselves or those they loved.They would giveanything.And before very long, there would be two species on the earth—two different breeds of human.Those who lived, and those who served, with nothing in between.
What would a man like George Bates do with an arcanum like that?
Ellie already knew.
Whatever would make him more powerful.No matter what it cost anyone else.
Adam read the expression on her face.“Yeah.That’s what I thought.”
Fear twisted through her as she realized what that meant—and what it would demand of Adam.
Determination snapped through her with the force of a storm.Ellie spoke the words through gritted teeth.“I will not let him hurt you again.”
Adam’s voice was achingly sad.“I’m not sure that’s something you can promise me, Princess.”
Ellie twisted her hands into the fabric of his shirt.A tear broke loose from her eye, gliding down her cheek.“I just did,” she bit back stubbornly.
Adam cupped her face with his hand, his thumb grazing over her cheek.“There’s another reason we need to go to Korea.Your reason.”
“Mine?”
“Seems to me there’s a failed hermit you need to talk to.”
Ellie recalled the name of the scholar who had taken up temporary residence in Vijay’s garden.
Cairncross.
“I’m sure that fellow isn’t the only person in the world with some knowledge of the things we’ve been running into lately,” she hedged.
“He’s the only one we know about,” Adam pushed back stubbornly.“You’re carrying a lost city around inside of you.Your brother’s running around having visions of the past.We’ve been tripping over bloodthirsty mirrors and Biblical staffs.It’s important, Ellie.You deserve to know what that’s all about.”
Ellie couldn’t tell him that it didn’t matter.She would have been lying.
“I think we should go,” Adam declared firmly.
Love swelled painfully inside of her.With everything he had just revealed—all the reasons he had given for why he felt he had to do this, even though it might cost him terribly—he was still asking.
There was only one answer she could give.
“Then we’ll go.”
She set her hand to the front of his shirt, gliding it up the hard lines of his chest.“But when we go, I will be traveling with you as your wife.”She caught herself.“If you find that arrangement acceptable, of course.”
Adam’s hands tightened where he held her waist, his grip heating her skin through the silk of her gown.“It’s more than goddamned acceptable.”
The implication of what they had just said washed through her.
Adam’s eyes widened with a dawning surprise.“We just did something there.Didn’t we?”
“I… think we did,” Ellie agreed, reeling from the realization of what they had just committed to.
