*
Urian sighed as he met his father’s gaze while Stryker sat on his throne in a disgruntled pique. “They’re not as easy to get to as you’d think. They’re under a lot of security.”
His father’s nostrils twitched. “Take more men! I want them dead!”
“I’d rather keep a lower profile at the moment. It’s just a matter of time.”
His father actually growled at him. “Don’t fail me, Urian. We’ve come too far and we’re too close.”
He pushed down the urge to bristle under his father’s swirling silver gaze. “I won’t fail.”
Besides, their enemies were closer than ever before. Helios was still trying to take down Apollo, even though he and his siblings and all their children were considered dead now since they were Daimons.
Urian didn’t know why, other than perhaps spite. But he was growing tired of the fighting and the games. Bowing to his father, he left and headed home.
Davyn met him outside the great hall, on the street. “Are you all right?”
No, but he didn’t want to confide in his friend right now. “Fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Davyn would know.
Urian gave him a droll stare. “Why are you annoying me?”
“I like to annoy you. Besides, I know the look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you have someone.”
Urian stopped dead in his tracks as horror pounded through him. This was one secret he couldn’t afford to let anyone know. Not even Davyn. “Pardon?”
“You heard me. Who is she?”
Urian shook his head. “You’re wrong. I have no one.”
Davyn caught his arm and held him in place. “Don’t, Urian. This is me you’re talking to. Just like when Paris was afraid to tell your father about us because he didn’t know how he’d react. Just like when you were afraid to tell anyone about Xyn. I know you better than anyone. Who is she?”
Damn it to hell.
Davyn was a little ferret and whenever he had something like this, he was fixated. Either Urian told him, or he’d have no peace.
Glancing about, Urian drew in a sharp breath. “That, I can’t tell anyone. Not even you.”
“Does she make you happy?”
He laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. I’ve barely spoken to her. But then, I guess the question is if anything in life ever makes anyone truly happy.”
“No, Uri, that’s not the question. The question is, can you live without her?”
Urian glanced down to all the teardrops on his arm and hand that marked all the people he’d loved and lost over the centuries. Including his twin. Of all the losses, Paris’s had hurt the most. He still couldn’t bear to think of it.
And he knew how hard that death had been for Davyn. To this night, Davyn had never been able to take another husband. Had never even tried to find someone else.
Because no one could replace Paris.
Each death had been a gut wound. Each one a laceration to his heart that Urian had never thought to survive.
Yet here he was.
Numb and not.
Damn you, life. Damn you straight to hell.
“You really want to make that comment to me?”
Davyn placed his hand over Urian’s tattoos and gave a hard squeeze. “How about this then, Urian? Surely after all you’ve sacrificed and done for your people, after all you’ve lost in your lifetime, don’t you think you deserve for the heavens to send down an angel to finally save you?”
November 29, 1988
At midnight, Urian tapped on Phoebe’s bedroom window.
Dressed in a pink dorm shirt and thick yellow bathrobe, she pulled back the curtains to see him there. Her eyes widened. Then she immediately let out a squeak and ran to a mirror to check her hair.
While he waited outside.
Baffled, he watched her quickly brush her hair, remove a retainer, and then sniff daintily at her armpits. Then, remembering that he could see her, she covered her face with her hands and appeared mortified.
He laughed at her antics. Though why he found them so funny, he had no idea. Not to mention, he was surprised that she could see her reflection while he and his kind couldn’t. It must be because she was part human that she didn’t have that part of their Apollite curse.
Slowly, she made her way back to the window and opened it. “Tell me that you didn’t see what I just did.”
Urian laughed again. “No worries. I didn’t see you sniff anything.”
“Oh my God!” She began repeating that in an endless loop.
He scowled at her. “Did I break you? Are you stuck like that? Should I thump you out of that rut?”
She stopped and turned back to face him. “What?”
“At least that worked.”
Cocking her head, she stared at him. “Why are you still hovering on the fire escape?”
“I have no choice. You haven’t invited me in.”
“Oh.” Then her eyes widened even more as she remembered he was a Daimon. She glanced around her room for a second as if debating whether she should break protocol. Finally, she bit her lip and whispered, “Come in.”
Urian slowly entered her bedroom. It’d been a long time since he’d been inside the home of anyone else. As a Daimon, he didn’t get to randomly venture into many places. Only those that were public domain, or homes of friends and family.
This one was very different from anything he’d been in before. Decorated in tans and pinks, it was very …
Feminine.
Right down to the posters of boy bands that littered the walls. “Interesting wallpaper. Duran Duran?”
“‘New Moon on Monday’ is my all-time favorite song. Do you like them?”
Not really. “More of a Krokus ‘Screaming in the Night’ or ‘Eat the Rich’ or a Sex Pistols ‘Anarchy in the UK’ kind of guy.”
She nodded. “Ah, that makes sense. Being a Daimon and all.”
A sharp knock sounded on her door. “Pheebs?”
She motioned him to silence. “Yeah, Mom?”
“Who are you talking to?”
She ran to her door and cracked it open. “Myself. Sorry. I’ll go to bed. Didn’t mean to keep you up. Love you.” She kissed her mom’s cheek, then closed and locked the door.
After taking a small detour to turn on her radio, she returned to Urian and pulled him as far away from the door as she could.
His heart pounded to be this close to her while she wore so little. And he couldn’t help wondering if she had on anything beneath her dorm shirt …
There in the dim light they stood. Not touching with barely a hand’s breadth of distance between them. Urian kept his hands to his sides and yet he could feel every inch of her body with his. Her presence was so vibrant that it was like an all-over caress.
Her dark eyes sparkled as she looked up at him with wonder and excitement. How strange that he who had lived for so long and had done so much evil in the name of his father felt suddenly reborn in those eyes.
Felt recast as something other than what he was.
A monster who killed innocent people in order to live.
Yet Phoebe didn’t see a Daimon to be feared or a demon to be hated.
Phoebe saw a man.
A hero.
God, how he wanted to be that. To see the good in others, even though he knew them for the evil they were. To be anything other than the shattered, unfeeling shell who’d been walking this earth for so long, hurting and aching and lost. Wanting to feel something more than abandoned and forgotten.
Wanting to be part of someone.
To be loved and claimed.
It’d been so long since anyone had really cared.
Unable to resist her or the part of him that was still human, he reached for his last lifeline and pulled her against his chest for the one true psuché.
Phoebe closed her eyes as she tasted a passion the likes of which she’d never imagined. This was what she’d read about in those books Nia kept hidden from their mother. What the poets went mad trying to capture on paper. The passion that Hollywood never quite got right.
Savoring the taste and smell of her beautiful Daimon, she reached up and freed his white-blond hair so that it fell loose about his shoulders. Then she buried her hands in it.