The others headed for the path, too, and I turned to follow them. But a soft touch on my shoulder stopped me in my tracks.
“I don’t want to talk right now, D,” I said.
“Then just listen. Please, Gray.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I nodded and turned around.
“I’m so, so sorry for putting you through that,” Darius said, his eyes glazing with unexpected emotion. “I wouldn’t have gone to such extremes if I thought I could make the point any other way.”
“So you’re sorry, but you’re standing by it?”
“I don’t know what else to say. I’m trying to protect you.”
“Darius. You have to know that if any one of you went down like that, not even a freight train could stop me from getting to you.”
“I understand. Which is why I needed you to see just how easy it would be to get inside your mind. If that happens when we’re fighting in the Bay, even for an instant, there’s nothing you’ll be able to do to regain the upper hand. You may not even realize you’ve lost it.”
“So we just have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” I said. He’d been right about that part, anyway. I still had a lot more to learn, and not a lot of time to learn it. “I get it, Darius. You made your point. Mission accomplished.”
“Hey.” Darius hooked a finger beneath my chin and tilted my face up, but I refused to meet his gaze. “Look at me, love. Please.”
I finally gave in.
“I meant what I said,” he continued. “I’m deeply sorry. I never meant to hurt you, only to shock you. Understand, Gray… I’m your sire. Yes, becoming a vampire was your decision, but ultimately, you would not have undergone the transformation if I hadn’t agreed, regardless of the state of my memories at the time.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I made you. It’s my responsibility to guide you through this. To ensure, to the absolute best of my ability, that you can come into this new power fully, to explore every facet of it, to know your strengths as well as your weaknesses. If I overlooked something, and you got hurt as a result, or worse…” His voice broke on the word, and he closed his eyes, shaking his head. “It was a bad call on my part. I should’ve found another way.”
“I… I accept your apology.” I wrapped my hands around his wrists, and he opened his eyes, his hands still cupping my face. His gaze softened as he looked at me, sweeping down to linger on my lips.
I swallowed, my mouth already watering for the taste of his kiss, sweet and tender and full of the love I knew he felt for me, sealing the momentary gap that’d come between us.
But I couldn’t kiss him. Not right now.
Offering a small but brief smile, I pulled out of his touch. “I said I accept your apology, and I do. And I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to learn the shielding techniques, and any additional training you want to put me through. But I just…” I closed my eyes, the image of Liam’s bleeding corpse still flashing through my mind. “I need a little space, okay?”
When I opened my eyes again, Darius was still standing before me, his lips pressed together, his face tight with guilt. With pain.
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t granted me the space I’d requested.
But I didn’t need to wait for it anymore. I was faster than him now, and without another thought, I blurred out of sight. The guys were still clomping through the snow along the trail, the hounds keeping guard at the rear, and I sped past the whole lot of them, not stopping until I reached the car.
By the time they all got back, I was already tucked safely into the back seat, wrapped up in a blanket, pretending to be fast asleep. Only Liam dared to sit near me. Dared to take my hand.
I squeezed it tight, holding it close for the drive home, taking comfort in the warm and solid reality of it.
The weight of Darius’s guilt felt like another person in the front seat. I didn’t want him to feel that way, but I couldn’t find the words to make it better for him just then. He didn’t understand—I wasn’t even particularly angry with him anymore. Yes, his choice of imagery had been shocking and cruel, but I understood why he’d taken such an extreme measure.
It wasn’t that I’d needed space fromhim,or from what he’d done.
It was that I’d watched Liam’s blood soak into the snow until he had none left to lose.
In that brief moment, it had been real to me.
And for the first time since the Lord of Shadows visited my bedroom with talk of necromancy and the rare powers of the Shadowborn witch, for the first time since our journey through the Shadowrealm and hell, since he’d kissed me, since he’d confessed his betrayals, since he’d given me a rock carved with his signature raven feather, since he’d helped me bring Emilio back from the dead, since he’d sacrificed his eternal soul for us, since I’d fallen in love with him… For the first time in our long and winding relationship, I finally and truly understood that Liam—the Great Transformation, Older than the Seas, formerly known as Death Himself—could die.
Ten
