“Then help me understand.”
“I met Three,” she said, watching the expression change on his face.
“We wondered.”
Her thin shoulders lifted as she tried to explain, as gently as she could. “He can’t recover what he’s lost. Neither of us can. I know about your war. I know Three needed Christan to be terrifying and she used me to do it. I thought I was saving him, Arsen, but I changed him when he didn’t want to be changed. Christan doesn’t realize it, but he’s a symbol now, bigger than what we tried to have.”
Arsen would have interrupted but Lexi carried on, squeezing down hard on her hands.
“She told me about the jungle, what she made him do, the eighteen days of dying. I know it destroyed him and my heart breaks. It wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t his fault when Gemma died. It was her sin. But I remember the look on his face that night in Zurich when Six attacked me. I can’t do that to him, Arsen. I can’t ask him to watch me die again.”
“That’s a choice he should make, Slick. Don’t you remember how you felt when he made a choice for you?”
“I know why he did it. Why all the warriors committed to the Agreement. Three didn’t give anyone a choice then, and maybe that’s my point. She manipulates circumstances. Gives options. She says the choices are always his, but they aren’t, not really, because she sets up those circumstances with only one option, the one she wants. Now I’m ending her manipulations.”
“No, Slick, you don’t get off that easy. I won’t let you get off that easy.”
Lexi hated the trace of anger, wanted him to understand and knew that he didn’t. “You’re the brother of my heart, Arsen. I know you love him. I’m setting him free.”
“He doesn’t wish to be free.”
“Not now, maybe, but you know what I’m saying is true. They would always find a way to get to him through me. Three told me how she’s always used the girls—Renata was right when she said we were just a used thing, with no choice of our own. You wonder why Katerina is frightened every time she sees you? Maybe that’s why.” It was the cruelest thing she’d ever said to him, and it broke her heart to do it. But they all needed to understand the truth. “It was why they forced the Agreement in the first place, to take away the choice. He needs to move on with his life and he can’t do that with me.”
“You don’t need to do this.”
“Yes. I do.” He was so silent, so far away she couldn’t let him go without one more thing. “You’ll always be in my heart, Arsen.”
“Will he?”
“He needs to become that dragon again and make them tremble. All of them.”
“Slick—”
“Please… tell him that for me.” And it was all she could say before her throat closed and she was crying, standing in the middle of the kitchen with tears running down her cheeks.
Arsen pulled her into his arms. Carefully, and with tenderness, he stroked the pale hair from her forehead.
“I’ll tell him.”
Lexi first noticed him a week later, as she walked along the deserted footpath that followed the cliffs, high above the ocean. He was simply a presence that brushed against her skin, and she grew angry that he would come after everything she’d said. She pulled her jacket tighter around her throat, glaring into the shadows before she ran back to the cottage and slammed the door, sitting huddled in front of the fire for two hours before she felt capable of moving. She checked the locks on all the windows and doors, but couldn’t relax in the total dark, curled on the mattress in the guest bedroom. When night was at its darkest she dragged her blanket to the couch and threw more wood on the fire, left a light burning in the hall. She didn’t sleep, but neither did she dream, and things evened out in the end.
Two weeks later Lexi went to the trees to think. The air was damp, the ground still wet from the storm that crashed against the cliffs during the night. She huddled against the trunk of a wind-twisted pine and stared out at the ocean below. He crouched several yards away, just watching. He was in his lion form, the color of the dusk. Lexi pulled her shoulders up, turned her face into the setting sun and hoped he wouldn’t try to reach her telepathically. She wouldn’t be able to endure it.
But the silence stretched out, and when Lexi heard nothing she wondered if it had been an ability she’d only had at the villa, a temporary effect from the surge of power that he’d pushed into her mind. It was then that the wave of loneliness became profound. She didn’t feel him approach but shuddered when he slowly lowered himself at her side, placed his head in her lap. She stretched out her hand, let it settle, her fingers stroking his mink-soft ears.
She couldn’t look at him, continued to stare out to sea. But she took comfort in the low rumble deep in his chest while her hand moved across the soft fur.
Lexi didn’t sense his presence again. Days, and then weeks passed, and it made her angry that he would come and then disappear—who the hell did he think he was?
But she missed him. Missed his deep laugh, the feel of his arms. She wondered if they could find a way around the manipulation. No, probably not, since Three anticipated everything. The immortal used human emotions to achieve her desired result; nothing Lexi felt could be trusted to be real. Perhaps she and Christan merely suffered through the same obsession in every lifetime. That was why they’d slipped from bad to worse and then to total destruction. A dream built on smoke could never last.
During the day Lexi thought about the villa, wondered if he was there or if it had been completely destroyed. If Gemma’s garden had been trampled into blood and mud.
During the night she thought about Zurich, wondered how it ended when he’d gone to war. She wondered if he’d found Kace, or if the slimy bastard had gotten away.
But she hoped Christan had killed him, long and slow. Then she hoped Kace would come back to life so Christan could kill him again.
Her anger grew irrational. She didn’t care. Maybe it was the effect of the blood bond. Three mentioned Christan wasn’t the only one to benefit from the bond—she’d gotten something from it, too. She should have asked what those benefits were, besides the suggestion that she could shield herself. Lexi had no idea what that meant, and her anger grew irrational again, until she didn’t care about anything except learning how to forget.
March arrived, and Lexi sat outside more often. The weather was still horrible, but she loved sitting in the Adirondack chair wrapped in a mohair throw, with a cup of coffee in her hand. Loved watching the waves and the birds always looking for something, swooping over the silvered, foamy water.
She hadn’t felt him close for over a month. She tried to hold him in her heart, but the feeling was elusive, as if he was drifting away. She wished she was brave enough to love him even though her mind told her it was time to let him go. To just open her hand and let... go.
She closed her eyes, struggling with the emotions—and the coffee mug was no longer in her hand. It had sailed through the air to smash against the wall, knocking loose a cedar shingle and disintegrating into tiny shards. Stunned, Lexi looked at the wreckage, then down at the tingling sensation moving around her wrist. She hadn’t thrown the mug; her arm never moved from the wide armrest of the Adirondack chair or dislodged the mohair throw wrapped against the chill. And her heart began to thud.
It happened again a day later. A book she was reading went sailing out of her hand.