The danger had followed us to our door once again, but I knew what the Trpaslíks who guarded us did not. The time was coming, closer and closer. I could feel the tick in my blood, beating like a clock, signaling its arrival.
The hairs on my arms prickled as my energy rippled over my skin, my alert power prickling, desperate to be used. I always kept so much of my magic restrained, for safety reasons. It was only in battle that I could freely feel my magic flow through me, that I could be free. My energy rippled now; the maniacal energy setting me on fire in eager anticipation.
The final battle was knocking on our door. The sight had shown me that.
We just needed sleeping beauty to wake.
“He will tear us apart. Pokud si p?ejete, aby viděl konec, dej mi své srdce.” I spoke the words of Joclyn’s sight silently, the words sounding like a deep prayer of mass when whispered in Czech.
Give me your heart.
Hadn’t I done that already? Hadn’t I promised her every beat that it possessed when I first held her in my arms eight hundred years ago?
Yes, but I had also taken it away.
I had taken away her claim on me when I made the decision not to break the bond between her and her mate. My brother. Could I break that bond now, after all I had sacrificed, after all I had promised her? No, it was not in me to be so cruel.
My back was still toward her as my heart beat for her. I felt love and confusion swell inside of me. I didn’t need to look at her to feel my conviction continue to cement itself within me. I could see her beauty, her strength, her power. I could see her weakness and the hold it had on her vanishing slowly every day. I could hear her laugh and see the way she wrinkled her nose. I could see the flash of her silver eyes when she was upset.
She was amazing.
I would do anything to protect her, to help her, to let her become what she wanted and needed to be. I would give her my heart, if that were required. She had it until it beat its last.
The tops of the trees reached toward the moon, the shadows dark and deep. I loved this view, the natural beauty of the world that modern man had destroyed. There were so few places on earth where you could find that peace anymore. Places that I had walked through, loved, worshiped, and explored through my hundreds of years had all been overrun with what others were calling progress. I could feel the energy of the earth radiate from the ground, the natural force strong here, whereas in the cities of the world, the natural power was covered and poisoned until it no longer existed.
The thought came to me before I could stop it, the desire to hold Joclyn as we looked out at this beautiful view, as we felt the magic of the earth together, because I knew she could. So many of our kind never could, but she would. I wanted to see her face when she did.
I wanted to show her the beauty in the world, not just the sadness. I wanted to give her my heart openly, and I wanted her to take it.
Chapter Nineteen
For hundreds of years, this Abbey had housed the brethren that came to worship their own silent god. They farmed, they prayed, and they worshiped until the year the troops drove them away, leaving my beautiful home abandoned. It had been ransacked, the stained glass windows were destroyed, the gorgeous pews burned, and the stone walls carved with crude declarations of love. What had been my home, my personal place of sanctuary, was now only a discarded, forgotten place.
I could see one of the carvings now, a roughly drawn heart and an unintelligible figure carved amongst it. It was bright against the stone in the evening light, the last of the day’s sun bouncing off the angles of the ruins like glittering jewels. I stared at it as I sat on the rubble strewn floor, my legs crossed in front of me in a style more common amongst the Chinese worshipers.
I had intended to restore this portion of the building, giving life to the ancient arches and restoring the glass back to what it had once been. Now, it seemed to be too late. What could be rebuilt would only be ruined and destroyed within a matter of days.
I breathed in the smell of earth that lingered heavily in the air, the density of it filling my lungs before dispersing throughout my body, the heavy earth magic lingering with my own.
My feet had brought me here after the nerve endings in the base of Joclyn’s neck had been severed from her spine. I had felt them snap, one by one, my magic working tirelessly to repair them as her heart began to go into cardiac arrest. If I hadn’t been singing to her at the time, I would have missed it. She would have died in my arms as I slept.
My heart longed to stay next to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t look into her face and not blame myself for being unable to release her from her prison.
Ten days.