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If they’d been destined mates, she would’ve guessed that he sensed the turmoil in her emotions, but he’d rejected her how many times? “How can you stand to touch me after what I did?”
“I’ll always want you.” Reaching a hand toward her, he went past her cheek, brushing through her matted hair, the fallen mussed braid. “But I can’t see you, can’t see anything.”
Worry wrapped around her heart in a thorny fist. She must have heard him wrong. His calmness didn’t match his shocking admission. His earlier words about it being dark…they took on a far different meaning. In her panic to keep them safe, she had assumed he’d been talking about the ship’s power outage. “The light of my magic? You can’t—”
“No.” He curved his lips into a grim smile. “I can feel your powers, the hum of them through your touch on me. I thought maybe the darkness meant you’d burned out the shine of your symbols.”
She felt faint, vertigo spinning her world as if she’d been tossed from the ship into the waves below and couldn’t tell up from down. What appalling powers had she unlocked? “Iblindedyou?”
“You saved me.” He grabbed hold of the hand she had on him, yanking her against his chest with an impossible mixture of strength and gentleness. Restraint and self-control amplified—the noble fierceness of her demon prince. “I heard you calling me, and I followed your voice out of death’s darkness.”
“ButImust’ve been the reason you died.” She had somehow twisted her magic into an awful thing.
“What happened?” His question came out softly, like he dealt with a wounded animal who might strike out in retaliation.How close to the truth he had come. Yet he didn’t let go of her, didn’t push her away despite her confession. “You can tell me anything.”
“You’ll hate me.” Her voice came out small.
“Could never happen.” His unyielding trust called to something deep within her, something she wanted to believe in.
She’d locked the Order out, but for how long? Concentrating on his touch, his strength, she knew she couldn’t hide the real monster in the room.Her. How had she gone from healer to murderer in an instant? “According to Noxx, I won’t find my family because they don’t exist.”
“We’re your family. Me and my kingdom. You belong with us.”
“But she—”
“Is a liar and a psychopath.”
“Who created me.”
He paused. “Say I buy into that unlikely theory, how does that link up to whatever happened here?”
“Noxx said healing might be the only power that has manifested, but it’s not the limits of my magic.”
“And?”
Joelle had done this. She’d have to summon the courage to say it out loud except doubt crept through her, stealing her voice. “What…what do you remember about what happened?”
“The guard aimed his gun at my head. He shot me, and I died until you brought me back.”
“The first part lines up with what I remember, then the pieces go hazy. He didn’t fire his gun.”
“He didn’t?”
She glanced at his face, making herself meet his sightless eyes. “No bullet wound.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t shoot. He could’ve missed.” Alexei sounded so matter-of-fact. “How do you remember it?”
“I was so scared, and I couldn’t let you die. I had already lost Kyle.”
“He’s gone?”
They couldn’t mourn—not yet. But sadness dragged her down to drown in the senseless tragedy of what had happened to a son who had only wanted to save his mom. “Noxx took him apart because of his telekinesis. She didn’t give me another reason. Not that any could excuse her butchery, but he thought…” Tears burned through the blood that had to be sticking to her cheeks. “Kyle believed they had let his mother go, and I couldn’t tell him the truth.”
“You wanted to spare his feelings.”
“One of the last things he heard was me lying to him.”
“You working to heal him, to comfort him? Those would’ve been his final memories. That someone cared enough to come for him.” Alexei lowered his head. “I should have been faster. If I hadn’t been so intent on taking my feelings for you out on Eddie…”
