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The misplaced taunt didn’t register. Instead, he pursed his lips but locked eyes with her. “There are some things honorable men shouldn’t do.”
“And you consider yourself honorable?”
“A lot of people have asked that question, to differing answers.”
The sarcastic smirk vanished. Suddenly angry in his stead, she said, “You stayed here with me last night because I asked you to. Because I didn’t want to be alone. That seems honorable to me.”
“Did it help?”
Examining him, she nodded. “It did.”
“Good.” He paused, gently sitting back on the edge of the bed before adding, “Sometimes, you have to be alone to heal, but other times, it only manages to intensify the pain.”
“Yesterday, before it all, I’d made up my mind that I was leaving Paracel. Not forever, but … for a while.” She sighed. “I needed to get away.”
“And now?”
She gave him a watery smile. “I don’t think I’ll get that chance.”
Isaiah was pensive for a moment, as if weighing his words carefully. “Do you think Gideon will rise?”
On the heels of his question, silence fell as she ruminated on what she believed—what she could allow herself to hope for. Slowly, she dredged up the memory that painted a bleak picture.
“Four decades ago, an earth Elemental was badly injured, nearly killed, in a farming accident. He, like Gideon, still had a heartbeat when he went underground, but he was on the edge.” She swallowed, fingers curling around her comforter. “He’s never risen.”
Isaiah was silent, his eyes on hers with something near sympathy.
“There are some things our elements simply cannot or will not heal,” she whispered. “I don’t know if Gideon will rise. I just—I don’t know. I can only hope.”
Isaiah’s hand inched across the bedspread and gently took hers, giving it a squeeze. “We should check in with Aidan. Jeremiah left the compound in a fury last night.”
A deflection, but one that made Rukia remember her priorities. Slowly, she slid out of bed and grimaced when she saw the state of her wrinkled dress. Rukia frowned and shot Isaiah a look.
“I need to change.”
He nodded, turning for the door.
“Don’t leave.” She called after him, her voice wavering in a way that she detested. She cursed herself seconds later, growling inwardly. “My house, I mean. Get out of my room, Raeth.”
One ebony eyebrow shot up at her gruff tone, but he nonetheless complied, the door closing dutifully behind him. Huffing out a breath of annoyance, Rukia stripped and threw the dress in the hamper behind the door. Darting toward her closet, she grabbed a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting top and tugged it on.
Last night, just after Isaiah had left them in the sitting room, she’d reached out to Jeremiah, tried to comfort him. But he’d reacted poorly in his grief, bursting into a fit of anger that was so unlike his indomitable character. He’d cursed his powerlessness that night, the fact that he could only stand by and watch as his best friend was being attacked in front of them.
Rukia had never seen Jeremiah react like that before.
Broken in a way that’d inevitably cause irreparable cracks in the foundation of his spirit, Jeremiah had become an entirely different person in the span of several hours. When he’d stormed away, keyed up on fury and self-loathing, she hadn’t been able to go after him.
By then, her energy had abandoned her, and she’d been too lost in her own world of self-serving pity. A fathomless, emotional black hole, it’d swallowed her whole.
Drawing in a restorative breath in the familiarity of her bedroom, Rukia throttled back the urge to sink into it again. She had work to do. Mind vacillating between what was to come and what’d happened, she padded silently down the stairs.
Isaiah stood, arms folded over his broad chest, staring blankly out her front window. Though slightly wrinkled, he was still attired in the tailored dress pants and collared white shirt he’d worn last night. In his formal wear, he looked every inch the decadent treat she’d love to sink her teeth into.
It was odd, the image of him in her home. The Raeth was a beautiful dream in the quietness of her domain. So out of place and yet so fitting at the same time. The irony of it struck her as she came to stand in the foyer, peering into the silent living room that held her paradoxical interloper.
The subtle tang of electricity hummed through the air, the Raeth undoubtedly using telepathy to communicate with another.
While normally she wouldn’t care that he was having a private conversation, Rukia gave pause this morning. After his tenderness last night—and this morning—she decided to show him some leniency.
