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The image of Rahvyn’s face intruded on all that, sandblasting everything away.
He’d only held her once. When he’d told her goodbye.
Something hit his hand, and he looked down. The silver droplet gleamed and the warmth that was transmitted through his skin was the first sensation he had felt since…
Well, since he’d come here to this mountain, at any rate.
Shaking off the tear, he pulled a swipe under his eyes and then regarded the pads of his fingers. It was like mercury, what came out of him when he was in pain, the reflective liquid smooth and clingy, preferring to find a stasis point that was perfectly round if it could gather enough of itself.
Turning away, he ducked and reentered the hidden cave.
He had known true love when he’d seen it, when he’d scented it in his nose, when he’d felt it in his body. Now it was gone, and unless he immolated himself, all he had was time, a never-endingdrip of minutes, hours, and days—and the solution wasn’t going back to the ones he knew and loved. Wherever he went, whoever he was with, whatever he did, he was going to be nothing more than an inanimate hourglass, marking what passed endlessly through him, grain by meaningless grain.
He had done a terrible thing for the right reason, and there was no going back.
Better to have loved and lost?
Bullshit.
Nontemporal Plane of Existence
(No address and not in Caldwell)
“Of course I like you.”
As Rahvyn lowered herself to the hot-pink grass, she crossed her legs under herself and put her elbows on her knees. Overhead, the psychedelic sky was a brilliant orange, clouds of red and yellow drifting by, the pseudo-sun a brilliant, glowing blue. All around her, fluffy trees made of ostrich plumes and golden branches undulated in a soft breeze that smelled of lilies, and birds made of heat waves and shimmers flittered by.
When there was a ruffle, she looked down. “No, ’tis not your fault. And I am very sorry I am not very good company.”
The Book was open before her, its ancient parchmentpages rippling gently on their spine as if it were breathing in a rhythmic cadence. Bound in human flesh—or perhaps vampire?—the entity was no more about words than this metaphysical plane she was hiding them in was about reality. So, in many ways, this place that did not exist was a perfect refuge. The Book was a conduit for energy in the universe, and just as a mirror reflected whate’er was before it, so, too, did it both reveal and enter the inner worlds of its possessors.
Which meant the thing was capable of great goodness… and unfathomable evil.
There was another ruffle.
“Oh, thank you,” she murmured. “I appreciate your concern. But I shall endure.”
The dismissive sound that came back at her could have meant the Book was doubting her endurance or mayhap her course, but she knew it was not being unkind. With her, it had only ever been supportive and full of grace.
Then again, she had never had any interest in using the power harnessed between those grotty covers—and also, she believed it felt as though a debt was owed because she had rescued it from an untenable, abusive situation: Safety had been requested, and safety had been provided, without any expectation of something in return.
Knowing how the poor thing had been used, she could understand why the removal from thesphere of influence who had taken it over had been sought—
Fast flipping now, like the pages were a spinning wheel that went round and round, no beginning, no end.
“Please don’t,” she whispered in defeat.
Yet it would not listen to her.
Closing her eyes, she felt tension creep up her spine and penetrate into the nape of her neck, and she pulled at the sweater that clothed her, switched the arrangement of her legs in the jeans she wore. And when things stilled, she released her breath.
She did not want to look because she knew what she would see.
She opened her eyes anyway.
And there he was. As if the Book had become a window, she saw through the interior of its contours a male who was never far from her thoughts: Lassiter, the fallen angel, was oddly-colored-eyed and blond-and-black-haired, his face constructed of powerful angles and balanced by an intelligence that, having watched him in a crowd once, she believed he kept well hidden under a drape of humor.
“Oh, fates preserve me…” Then she cleared her throat. “Whyever do you keep showing him to me?”
