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“Yes. But back to Ryan. I didn’t do it,”he said. His voice was soft, as though he really wanted me to believe him.
“I know.”
Because I did, I knew it was me. He was dead because of me, and he should have lived forever and he could have lived forever. But my selfish needs overcame my knowledge of his weakness, and I had not listened when Clay and Kane reminded me he took my pain, and they were right. It was too much for him. He could take normal pain, but apparently binding was something much more and his body couldn’t take all the pain I’d given him.
I should have listened, they knew. Kane finally admitted to everything Seb had told me about them being angels. I shouldn’t have bound to Ryan, he wasn’t my fated. I should have listened and bound to Blake first, but I desperately wanted to prove them wrong.
“But I should have.”The deep voice of the dark king finally replied.
“Why are you here?”I hissed to the dark king. Because he was here, I could feel his presence around me. I clenched my hands into angry fists because if he wasn’t insisting on taking me when I was twenty-one, I wouldn’t have to bind with anyone.
“To pay my respects,”he said. He didn’t gloat or sneer, he actually sounded sincere.“And to check on something or someone.”
“And what or whom would that be?”I asked.
“Two reasons. One, I was wondering why he was here,”he said.“To your left, near the pathway.”
As the Celebrant talked about Ryan’s brief life. I glanced to my left. He dipped his head, but his eyes didn’t move from me.
“Are you sure you are not him standing on the pathway right now?”I asked.
He laughed. It was light.“Possibly.”
Gray Trent smiled. I gave a small smile back. His eyes roamed up my body slowly, drinking me in, and I looked at him in a less lustful way, as each of us contemplated the other. My eyes lowered as I turned away.
The dark king’s presence moved away from me.
“Why don’t you stay?”I said to the dark king.My voice was coated in sleep, making it sound like a drawl.“I know you’re here with me and not just in my thoughts.”
“You want me to stay?”his voice seemed concerned for me. Could he see the pain that ebbed from every cell in my body?“You didn’t kill him.”
“It seems I did,”I said, tears crept from my heavy eyelids.
“Lace, don’t go there.”He sounded like he was chastising me.
“Why are we fighting? Why are people dying around me, all because I’m trying to fight you?”I said. Any other time I would have kicked myself for opening up and admitting such a thing. But today, as the coffin hit the bottom of the deep hole, I didn’t care. I felt I hit the bottom too.
“I’m not the one fighting.”
Kane’s thumb slowly stroked over the back of my hand. I glanced at him, and he gave me a weak smile. I forget Ryan was his friend, too.
“I can’t leave them for you,”I said.“Even if I fall in love with you. That is something I will have to live with. I have to fight everything inside me that wants you.”
He sighed.
I watched ahead of me as, one by one, Ryan’s family stepped forward and dropped a rose onto the casket. I held my yellow rose tightly in my hand and took a step forward and stared into the opening and to the box that held the man I loved.
“Until we meet again,” I whispered and tears fell again and my body shook, knowing it would never happen. I dropped the rose and my head lowered as I sobbed. An arm wrapped around my stomach and pulled me back to his chest. I rested against the warmth and felt a gentle kiss pressed on the side of my face.
I turned to smile, and nobody was there. I looked down, but there was no hand around my waist. A thrill of awareness skated down my spine and could only gasp.
I glanced to the pathway, but Gray Trent had left.
He touched me.
He was invisible but touched me.
No sooner did he touch me, but he disappeared again.
