Elara’s gaze softens, full of some emotion I can’t name. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She walks away before I can reply, the scent of lilies fading in her wake.
They know I’m free and they’ll come for me.
Good.
Let them.
Because I’ve been waiting two and a half centuries for something meaningful to kill—and I just remembered why.
For the greatest love ever to exist.
7
SECRETS OF THE NUNNERY (PART II)
The door shuts behind her and I stand there long after she’s gone, staring at the dying fire, her words echoing in my mind.
Silence rushes in, desperate to drown the noisy insanity of what needs to be done. It’s the kind of silence that feels too thick, too deliberate, like the house itself is holding its breath in sheer terror.
Her scent clings to the walls, to my skin, to the air I breathe. I could track her blindfolded now, follow her heartbeat through stone and shadow.
And yet, for the first time in centuries, I don’t trust myself to.
She’s alive. Real. Warm. In my house.
And already, she’s slipping through my fingers.
Of course, that triggers the deep and savage urge to bind her to me in every imaginable and many deeply unimaginable ways.
But if I’ve learned anything in my three millennia of existence and more importantly in the two and a half centuries I’ve spent wandering the earth searching for my love, it’s that, patienceisn’ta virtue, but it is occasionally a necessity.
So I curb the feral need to hunt her down, stop long enough to listen for her heartbeat, settle my own to match it.
Then I pace the length of the study, glass crunching underfoot from the one I shattered before I left in search of her. The fire spits a single coal that dies before it hits the rug. Outside, the bells toll again. Dawn inching closer.
The city waking while I unravel.
While I peel back and bare to light hard but essential questions.
Questions that should shame a lovesick fool…if he wasn’t over three thousand years old and hadn’t endured every treachery and betrayal.
She said she did it to save me. That every scar carved into her flesh was the price of keeping me alive.
The thought sinks its fangs deep, stirs my blood like nothing else.
But…I’ve seen covens of witches use men as pawns, lovers as sacrifices.
I’ve also seen demons wear the faces of the living and the dead.
To my very decayed marrow, I yearn to believe her. But what if the woman sleeping a few rooms away isn’t Elara at all, but something wearing her shape…something the coven sent to finish what they started?
I press my palms against the desk, head bowed. The grain of the wood cracks under my grip.
No. I’d know.
I’dfeelit.
