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“So I’m putting myself in your power. To balance the scales.” He drew in a breath and laced his finger with mine again. “I need you.”
“To fight Titania?”
“One doesn’t fight Titania. One struggles not to be consumed by her. She drives us, pushes us toward our darkest natures until we have nothing to resist with.” His profile was stark against the gray sky. With the unmarked side of his face toward me, he could be almost human. “So I called you. I dreamed about you, in your world. I needed you to keep me from losing myself. If you hadn’t been close to losing yourself, too, you wouldn’t have heard me.”
I pondered that.
“But it was the Dog who came to me.”
“I can’t control him.” Rogue said it quietly. State secret.
“Isn’t the Dog, well, you?”
Rogue laughed. “One aspect. He’s part of me and yet not. Both older than I and younger.” His indigo eyes flashed at me, hair sleek in the rain. “I believe you know what it is to have parts of you that aren’t entirely in your control.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
“Exactly. But he—it—that part of me responds to you.”
“That’s why he came to me. And why I could pull you back out of him.”
“Yes. You’re learning, clever Gwynn.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me this before?”
He stopped. Turned me and pulled me to him. Now I could see both faces. The man and the wild creature. In front of me all this time.
“Aren’t we the same, Gwynn? Both wanting the power? No—you had to choose it and I didn’t know how else to make you face that choice. Only something truly felt could break Titania’s grip.”
I laughed, the feeling bubbling up through me, chasing away the dark shadows. “Are you saying that love triumphs over evil?”
He searched my face, almost with childlike curiosity. “Do you believe in love?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe I did. My heart thumped. “You ask me what I wish for? I want this. I want to learn and grow. I want to be happy. I want the best part of what we are together—the back and forth, the partnership.”
“I can give you that.” He smiled that cat-in-the-cream smile. “You belong to me now.”
“Only one part of me,” I whispered.
Rogue smiled, eyes dark with triumph and something more. “True, my bold student. But in time, I will have all of you. Every part.”
“I’ll take every part of you in return then.”
Rogue threw back his head and laughed in sheer delight. He pulled me tight up against his lean chest and dropped his face close to mine. I could feel the heat of his breath, the scent of mace twining through my blood, his lips were so close.
“Powerful Gwynn, I shall savor every moment of it.”
Strangely enough, I knew that I would, too.
The story continues in
Rogue’s Possession
