EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES MUST BE PRE-APPROVED BY THE SYNOD.
It happened again. Colby was talking about the monk at the end of the line. I don’t even know how it happened or why it kept happening. I stared at the monk, not really noticing anything different about him. And then while I was eating the soup, I heard him speaking and somehow I knew it was him. It was similar to when I’d heard Colby talking to Rebekah, but I assumed it was a thing between the two of us.
The monk’s voice was hushed. He spoke not to a person, but as a person recording something. It was too much. Every time I turned around there was something else happening to me. I had to find more information. No wonder most of the stories centered on Eivan and his inability to handle all the powers being bestowed upon him at one time. Wasn’t it enough that I was the fluke male who could flash?
I didn’t want to put any more pressure on Colby. She was so benign about most deep things. I thought that was why she spent so much energy on superficial things—it was to deter her from thinking about things that really mattered.
Plus, she was a brat.
Collin wouldn’t arrive until later in the night. With everything that had happened, it sounded ridiculous, but I just needed one night with her. I’d been deprived of her presence for so long that I just needed my fill of her.
Even though she claimed we were together, she was still distant. Maybe it was just the stress of all this. I almost wish she hadn’t come.
Almost.
When we got to the valley, we flashed to the house.
“Are you tired?” I asked her.
“No. I thought maybe we could go somewhere tonight. Somewhere you like to go. We always used to go wherever I wanted.”
We had always gone where she wanted, but I’d never minded.
“Really?”
“Sure. Do you want to go to The Isle of Skye? Maybe just home? If you want to go spend some time with your parents, it’s fine.”
She was facing the bookshelves, packed with books that appeared to be as ancient as the mountains themselves. There was no TV in the whole place, not that Colby had ever been fond of TV, with the exception of the travel channel for obvious reasons.
“Let’s go to Catatumbo,” I suggested, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her against me.
“But that’s one of my favorites,” she said, turning so that I could see her pronounced pout.
“It’s one of mine too. This is the perfect season for the lightning storms.”
“I know. Let’s grab a blanket or two.”
A side effect of Colby’s lithe stature and purposefully kept low weight was that she was always cold, which was also another reason why she loved the beach. While other tourists baked, she was completely satisfied in the heat. I grabbed two blankets, both brightly colored, like the clothing of the Tibetan people and teased, “Beat you there.”
I hit our spot at the top of the cliff before she did. From our perch, the Catatumbo River could be seen for miles and miles. The lightning storms lasted two hundred plus days a year. It was Colby’s spot of choice next to Scandinavia. She said she felt close to our people when surrounded by lightning.
Her tenacity for the history and wellbeing of our people had been on my mind constantly, of late. She revered the tales of how our people came to be and if Xoana were alive today, Colby would be her biggest fan and greatest ally. Sable once told me, seemingly in jest, that she thought Colby was the spirit of Xoana herself, come back to avenge what started so long ago with the lightning strike on her temple.
If I was what I thought I was—she was my perfect mate.
She was my perfect mate—no matter what.
Colby took a little longer than I expected. Just as I’d decided to check on her, she arrived.
“I grabbed a sweater, just in case.”
I nodded and spread out the blankets. I wished we could just go back to the way things were, before.
I hoped it wasn’t because of what or who I was.
The last thing in the world I wanted was to be away from Colby for one more second.
“Meu amor, you think too much. Come, sit.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered as the lightning around us caused her already blonde hair to glow. That was how I always dreamed of her—it was natural—she belonged to the lightning and it belonged to her. This place always renewed her. It was like she was coming home.
There was no rain in this storm, only lightning and the dry, balmy winds. A loud, almost thundering bolt struck, but this one could be seen where the negative leader met the positive streamer in the middle of the sky. The light made her jump, and a smile ten times more brilliant than the electricity lit up her face.
Colby slowly proceeded to sit down next to me, but I wasn’t having any of that. I gripped her tiny waist and hoisted her up so that she sat between my outstretched legs. An electric sensation pulsed through me in waves at having her so near again.
Thousands of bolts raced through the sky. One particularly close one shot down and startled her. She turned and held on to me.
“Are you worried?” I asked her, craving her negative response.
“Yes.”
“I’m scared for you. I’m worried about me with you and how that will complicate your situation.”
Another bolt made her scoot a little closer. I took advantage of the position and encircled her waist in my arms. She was as stiff as ice.
Must she make me work so damned hard?
“You are like the relâmpago,” I whispered in her ear.
“Why?” She leaned back and let herself get comfortable in my hold.
“Because you come from the heavens, from Paraíso, and you strike the sky making everything around you light up. And I’m just one of those streamers, hoping that you will reach down and touch me.”
She grunted out her aggravation. “I can’t do that, Theo. I can’t open my chest and let you know everything. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel it, because I do. It feels like peeling my skin off.”
I chuckled and she moved with me, my laugh jostling us both.
“Good thing I’m sappy enough for us both.”
“Sway,” she said and let her friend’s name float into the air without explanation or purpose.
“What about her?”
“Eivan could restore the Resin. She wouldn’t tell a soul. You could try your power on her.”
I let my forehead rest on her shoulder. I wasn’t ready for that. Being ready to try that meant I’d come to a point where acceptance was real. And it was nowhere near real. Eidolon in my head was still a childhood story like Robin Hood. Too good to be true.
“Can we just let it settle—find out more information before we go doing magic shows?”
She nuzzled her back closer into my chest, distracting me from the subject. I appreciated the gesture.
“I forced myself not to miss this.” She tightened her hold on my arms around her, and I obliged drawing her in the space between us. That was just about the most emotion I was going to get without pinning her down, but I’d take it. I could read between the lines.
My phone buzzed. I threw it on the ground next to me, silencing it, but Colby picked it up.
“Hello,” she answered in a sweet tone. She always answered my phone, mostly because I hated it.
“Already? Boy, you are so quick. Make yourself at home. We will be there soon.”
He said something else that made her giggle and slap her knee, breaking her free of my hold.
The bastard.
“Collin just landed. We should get back.”
“There’s no hurry. Collin’s a big boy.”
She tensed. I was no mind reader, but I could tell I was about to be on the receiving end of a Colby attack.
“What’s your problem? You’ve never shown the least bit of jealousy before. And that was when we were in high school. That was when I expected you to be a jealous little ninny. Now you’ve chosen to grow
a green tail over a man who is old enough to court Rebekah. Give me a freakin’ break, Theodore.”
Her eyes squinted. The splotches on her neck and chest were in full force.
Plus, she’d called me Theodore.
She always got formal when she was angry.
It kinda got me going.
But I’d never tell her that.
She’d never do it again.
I had to admit, the jealousy thing had taken me by just as much surprise as it had her. But there were only so many things a guy could suppress. Right at that moment, for instance, I was squashing down the urge to kiss her senseless.
“In high school I knew you were mine, that’s the difference.”
I’d also become a little piss ant, apparently.
She didn’t say anything and I didn’t expect her to. I caved, “I’ll lay off the snide remarks, okay?”
Nodding once, she tucked herself back into place. My heart throbbed against my ribcage. It was the same throbbing I got when I kissed her under the boardwalk.
Colby reached back and tousled my hair, pulling me down to rest my chin on her shoulder. These little gestures were her language. She spoke so many things to me through her mannerisms, which was why I hadn’t minded her lack of loving words over the years.
In my arms was my heart—a respiração em meus pulmões.
“Maybe the lightning is just meeting the streamer in the middle. It can’t help itself. It would leave the beauty of heaven to be with the streamer if only for one second.”
The skin on her neck pebbled as I breathed warm air against it and fair hairs on the back of her neck rose to the challenge.
“Can you be my rock, Querida? Will you be my Sevella if all of this is true?”