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“Rahvyn…”
As he opened his lids and focused on her, the yearning in his voice was so intense, it was a physical caress, and she reclosed the distance that had bloomed between their bodies, fitting herself to him. When her hips came up against his, she felt the hard length there—and she cursed that sadistic aristocrat who had taken from her that which she would have chosen to gift Lassiter.
But the cruelty shown to her had been the final key to her coming into her own. And that which had been forged in pain was stronger than what was nurtured, as it turned out. At least in her case.
“Yes,” she replied to the question he had not asked. Not with words, at any rate. “I need to be with you, and I have this troubling sense… that time is running out.”
Just as he frowned and seemed prepared to argue the point—
The double doors at the far end of the library opened, and what appeared, silhouetted against the pastoral landscape, seemed a threat, even though he was not one. Not in the conventional sense, at least.
The Brother Vishous stepped inside and walked toward them, his heavy boots making a thunderous sound he did not bother to dim.
With a shiver of anxiety, she heard the echoing beat as a countdown of whatever hours remained for her and Lassiter.
“I’m here for Rahvyn,” the Brother announced.
Lassiter stepped around, placing himself in front of her, blocking her with his body. “Why.”
Except Rahvyn was not inclined to have anyone speak on her behalf, not even him. Moving out from under the lee of the angel, she focused on the Brother’s chest. No daggers. No weapons on the male at all, as it turned out.
“Whate’er may I do for you?” she said quietly.
The icy eyes that bored into her made her feel so uncomfortable, she looked to the bookshelf she and Lassiter had come to stand before, to the tome he had taken out and flipped through. It was not precisely back in line with its ilk, and she had an odd thought that it would probably resettle itself, the perfection of arrangement in the library, in the Sanctuary as a whole, as self-perpetuating as the flora.
“Nate.”
As the name reverberated up into the high ceiling, her eyes flipped back to the Brother’s. “Is he all right? Has something happened—”
“What you did to him, to bring him back.”
Rahvyn immediately began shaking her head. “No, if you’re asking me to do that to someone else—”
“We need you.”
She put both her palms out. “Forgive me, but I will ne’er do that for anyone nor anything e’er again. It is a violation of the natural order and a curse more than a blessing.”
“It’s the miracle that we need right now.”
Before she got into a proper argument with the fighter, she glanced up at Lassiter for some assistance. He was staring at Vishous as if he were attempting to read tea leaves, and after a moment, he put his hand to his face and passed it over his features with exhaustion.
“I don’t think you understand,” Vishous said, “how important this is or who it involves.”
“It does not matter.” She thought of Nate. Her cousin, Sahvage. Herself. “Death can be cruel, but it is, along with birth, the basis of the Creator’s construction, and ultimately, a blessing. Tampering with that is wrong and certainly not for me to undertake. I should not have done what I did—”
“It’s Wrath.”
Abruptly, the portrait the Book had shown her was all she could see, the image of the great Blind King’s face consumed by darkness, by evil, the tide rushing in, claiming.
Lassiter looked down at her from his greater height. Then he said grimly in the Old Language, “Whither the King goes so goeth the species.”
A strange feeling of arrival cut through her anxiety. What if this was the reason for her powers, the mission she had always wondered about: All those times, when she had lain awake, consumed by confusion as to why she had been gifted with so much she did not understand, when she had grappled with implications she could not comprehend… what if it all came down to this moment here.
The Book had certainly sent her back down here for a purpose.
What if the Creator had been working through the ancient tome, just as He was working through her now by presenting her with this messenger of need?
So many disparate instances suddenly stitched together, including the torture of her body by that aristocrat, when he had unleashed the evil within her, providing the balance required for her powers to be fully present…
Yet the more she sought to construct her destiny, the more she returned to a core question that could not be skirted: Who was she to determine a King’s fate?
“It is not right,” she said as she stared back at Lassiter. “You yourself just told me thus.”
