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But you know what? He didn’t feel any fucking better for having bared his truth.
Then again, he was still walking out of this cave alone—
“Lassiter!”
At the sound of his name, he pivoted around—and he had a soul-searing visual of Rahvyn standing there in the midst of all the empty shelving, her silver hair catching the torchlight as waves escaped from the neckline of the black robe she wore.
The female was still, and ever would remain, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—
With a hoarse cry, she lunged forward and ran toward him, hitting him so hard she nearly knocked him off his feet—and his arms shot around her by reflex.
But also because, in a pathetic part of his soul, he had missed her so much that he’d use any excuse to hold her one last time.
He wasn’t surprised as she pushed him back.
The tears streaming down her face were a shocker, however.
“Oh, my angel,” she said, “how could you have not told me? I would have been there for you—I want to be there for you. I am so sorry I misinterpreted everything—I think I questioned, in ways I could not acknowledge, that it was all too good to be true, that you would want me, and need me. That you would choose me. Oh, verily, I am so sorry…”
She was talking fast, tripping over words, snuffling. Then her hands were on his face, his shoulders, his chest.
He watched the goings-on for a moment, as if from a vast distance. Then he tentatively—reaaaaaaally tentatively—touched a strand of her hair. You know, just to make sure this was real.
“I did not know your truth,” she said in a broken voice. “And I never would have guessed.”
He shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t duty for me. Just so you and I are perfectly clear… you were never a duty. You were only ever a gift. The spell just got me over my fears and my self-loathing. That was all it did.”
Now her hands were back on her face, her expression so appalled she looked as though she was going to faint. “Lassiter, how can you ever forgive me…”
Reaching out, he eased her arms down. Then he searched her panicked face.
“What can I do to help it,” she whispered. “Tell me how I can make it up to you, tell me… if it is not too late, please, I love you, and I wish to make this right between us, if I am able.”
A warm, fuzzy pool of relief started to flush into the cold vault he had become, and he found himself weaving on his feet.
Then he said softly, “For you and me, it is never, ever too late. If I’ve told you once, I’ll tell you a thousand more times. You are my Gift of Light. Without you by my side, I am forever in darkness.”
As he spoke, her eyes shifted over his head. “Your halo… I love that it is with you.”
He smiled a little. “That’s because you bring it to me.”
With a muffled sob, she threw her arms around him and kissed him.
As the funeral wore on and grief found expression deep within the recess of the earth, outside, closer to the surface, love rebloomed in the midst of the early spring.
Like wild flowers in a meadow of April snow.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
One hundred million years after Beth donned a white robe and left the royal suite, she returned to the third floor of the Brotherhood mansion, aching and tired. Worn out. Cried out. Hollowed out.
As she closed herself in, she forced herself to look around. The jeweled walls still gleamed, the furniture remained in the same places, the layout with the bath beyond and the nook with the crib was identical.
A wrecking ball had busted through the place, however. Everything was ruined. But that wasn’t the worst part of it all.
The worst part was that Wrath’s clothes were still hanging in their closet, and the pillow beside her own still smelled like him, and there was his cell phone, right by his side of the bed.
The worst part of coming back here was all the evidence of the life interrupted, the personal possessions that no longer had an owner.
On that note, George walked by her, passing by his bed and his water bowl, going straight over and hopping up on the mattress. He curled into a ball where Wrath had always slept, tucking his tail in and putting his head on his front paws. His brown eyes watched her as if he were waiting for her to fall apart again.
And as if his heart was broken, too.
Glancing down into L.W.’s face, she found the young staring at her in exactly the same way—and looking into those pale green eyes, she nearly started weeping again.
Not for the last time, she couldn’t decide whether the fact that those were his father’s eyes was bad or good.
