After spending his whole life hiding his visions, it was remarkably hard to break the silence. He forced his way through it, saying through gritted teeth, “I’m—I guess you’d say I’m psychic. I see things before they’re about to happen. Sometimes I can change things just enough, so that something else happens instead.”
The alarmed concern in her eyes turned to fascination. “You have the second sight?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Always have. I . . . saw what happened on the beach a long time ago.” Unable to look at her, he averted his face. “Not everything. I never see everything clearly.”
“I’ve had several conversations with previous Oracles over the years,” she murmured. “Every one of them said that visions can be terribly difficult to interpret.” She asked gently, “What did you see?”
“Blood, dripping from my chest wound. The white snow, the black rocks, the water—some kind of high building. Heart’s blood. Hart Island, only I didn’t know it was Hart Island until I got there. I’d never been to the place before, outside of my vision.”
She laid cool fingers against his cheek. “When did you first see it?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose hard, and whispered, “Two hundred years ago, when I saw you at the Vauxhall masque.”
“Two hundred years ago.” She sat up so that she could stare down at him, her expression filling with horror mingled with wonder.
He deserved her horror. It would serve him right if she walked out of the hospital room and never came back. He saw Constantine again in his mind, and another wave of pain washed over him.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “All that time ago, you saw what you thought was your own death, and you still offered to help me?”
His jaw tightened. He nodded. “I didn’t see anybody else, or any details. If I had only seen Constantine, I would never have agreed to let him come. He died because of me.”
She twisted around to face him fully, some kind of extreme reaction tightening her face and body. Whatever her initial reaction was, she held it back until she calmed and looked more balanced. He respected that so much about her, how she found her own ballast and considered her words carefully.
After a moment, she said in a slow, deliberate voice, “First things first. I think you must be the bravest man I’ve ever known.”
That was the last thing he had expected her to say. Frowning, he opened his mouth to reply, but she slipped her hand over his lips to stop him.
“Graydon, you saw what you thought was your own death, and you still stepped forward without hesitation to offer to help me. You never backed down. Not once. You confronted Malphas at Wembley, you waited all this time.” Her voice wobbled until she firmed her lips and continued. “You spearheaded the investigation, you set the trap for Malphas—you drove this whole thing forward, all the while thinking it would probably kill you.”
“I had to,” he whispered. “I don’t back down. I can’t live my life that way. And besides, I wanted you so badly.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I think I must be the luckiest woman in the world,” she breathed. “Second point. You need to put the blame for this exactly where it belongs, on Malphas.”
Breathing raggedly, he closed his eyes. She was only saying to him what he had said to other people before—don’t blame the victim. Or, in this case, victims. Yet he had such difficulty internalizing her words.
When she spoke again, her voice had turned very gentle. “Third point. Don’t take away from Constantine or Soren the power of their choices. Or Rune and Julian, either, for that matter. Maybe they didn’t have the second sight, or a vision from two hundred years ago, but they could still see pretty well. They knew how dangerous it was to fight a first generation Djinn, and they chose to do it anyway, just as you did.”
He said quickly, “I wouldn’t take anything away from them. That’s not what I meant.”
Her voice gentled even further. “Are you sure? Can you tell me that what they did was all that different from what you did?”
He ran her words over again in his mind, trying to find some fault with her logic, but he couldn’t find any.
“Graydon,” she said tenderly.
He looked up at her. There was so much love in her expression, so much compassion, a lump rose in his throat.
“I know how insidious survivor’s guilt can feel,” she told him. “Why did they die, and not me? There must have been something—anything—I could have done to stop it. Those kinds of thoughts will consume your soul, if you don’t stop them.”
While he listened, he forced himself to breathe evenly. In and out, the raw, simple effort of living. If anybody knew about survivor’s guilt, it must be Bel. What demons had she been forced to confront and exorcise over the last six months?
She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth in a soft caress. “I’m not trying to take away your feelings. Gods, how could I? You need to feel what you feel, and grieve in your own time, and in your own way. The only thing I’m trying to say is, please, don’t carry the weight of this on your shoulders. Not this, not when it doesn’t belong there.”
Unable to speak, he nodded, and he had to cover his eyes.
As soon as darkness pressed against his eyelids, he saw it again—the spike bursting out of Constantine’s chest. Pain burned through his muscles like acid.
He also remembered something else. Con had been shouting something at him. Grabbing him, yanking him around.
Hauling him out of the path of danger.
“I didn’t change the vision,” he rasped. “Con did.”
His words shook her visibly. Even though the battle was over, terror flashed across her face, and her slender dark brows drew together. She breathed, “What did he do?”
“He pulled me out of the way, and pushed between me and Malphas.” Grief, like stones grinding together, roughened his voice. Malphas had driven that spike so hard, it had not only torn through Con’s body, it had also impaled him—just not deeply enough to puncture his heart. “He took the strike meant for me.”
“He saved your life?”
His lips formed a soundless word. “Yes.”
Her fingers tightened on his flesh, digging into his arms. She whispered, “Then I’ll always be grateful to him.”
He thought of how much strength and hatred had gone into Malphas’s massive blow, how close he had come to losing his life. He thought of that wry look in Con’s eyes at the very end. Con had known, and he had done it anyway. A wordless sound came out of him, as if he had just been struck again.
As the wave of pain passed, he grew aware of other things. Bel had gone nose-to-nose with him. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t flinch away. Her gaze was so naked, so full of emotion. He did not make this journey alone. Where he went, she went with him, right down into the darkest place. Everything he felt, she felt too.
How could she have lost everything that she had lost, and still have the strength to remain so open and compassionate?
“If I didn’t have you to hold onto right now, I think I would be going more than a little crazy,” he whispered.
“If I didn’t have you, I know I would be more than a little crazy.” Reaching up, she kissed his forehead. “What can I do for you, my love?”
A wave of tenderness washed over him. “You’re doing everything.” As he took a deep breath, he remembered something else. “Did I . . . dream that you and Dragos argued?”
With a snort, she buried her face in the pillow by his head. “No, you didn’t dream it. He was here, and we—we sort of did.”
He slipped his fingers underneath her chin, urging her face up. His voice deepening, he whispered, “You said I’m yours.”
Color darkened her cheeks. “Yes, and I-I might have told him that I’m moving in with you. Pretty much. Essentially.” She bit her lip. “Unl
ess you have a problem with that?”
“Gods, no.” He locked his arms around her. “I’m never going to let you out of my sight again.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, but she didn’t contradict him. Instead, she clung to him, arms around his neck, drawing one slender leg over his hips. The reality of her presence pounded into him.
She was here, really here with him. For the first time in two hundred years, they were free from all constraint.
Free.
His hot burn of grief turned into raw need. His cock stiffened so hard, it felt agonizing.
Struggling with so many powerful emotions, he rasped, “I need you so much, and yet after what happened, it feels almost wrong.”
“Reaffirming love and life can never be wrong,” she told him softly. “That’s survivor guilt. This is a gift, Graydon. An incredible, precious gift. Everything you do—everything we do—from here on out is a gift. It would be so terrible to waste it.”
When everything inside him threatened to shut down, somehow she opened doors, and she made it okay for him to walk through them.
Yes, this was a gift. And if events had happened the other way around, he knew for damn sure Constantine wouldn’t waste it. In fact, Con would be the first to shove him forward, back into life.
She’s your chance, man, Con had said. You’ve got to take it.
His animal surged to the forefront. With a posssessive growl, he rolled her over so that she lay on her back on the hospital bed. So recently healed, his muscles shook with need and strain.
He gritted between his teeth, “Tell me not to do this, and I won’t.”
If she told him no, somehow, he would find a way to stop, if it killed him.
“I would never tell you such a thing,” she breathed. “I could never tell you no.”
Meeting her gaze, he tore off her clothing with the sharp talons that had grown to tip his fingers. Her gaze filled with fierce light. She looked like the Elven warrior who had once walked out of the shadows toward him.
She took his soul out of his body. He couldn’t bear not to give it to her.
Then her clothes were gone, thrown in a ruined pile of fabric to the floor. The sight of her beauty slammed him. Dark, luxuriant hair spread everywhere, and the slender, tensile strength in her body was unutterably lovely.
In an agonized clench, the monster whispered, “I may not be able to be gentle.”
“I don’t need your gentleness,” she said, as she reached up to touch his face. “I need your truth.”
Her words rocked him. Truth.
This is truth:
You tear away everything but my essence.
I need the light you carry more than I need air, food or water. I need you more than life.
I treasure the breaths we take together, and I am stricken with envy for them, for they mingle closer and more completely than our bodies can join.
Your beauty makes me fall out of the sky and want to stay tethered to earth. Let me follow you everywhere, my love, through the lightest moments, and the darkest. I can only be happy if we share all our pain.
Don’t leave me, I beg of you, for my spirit will go with you, and then I will truly become clay.
He whispered things against her body, the monster. He did not even know what. They were raw and naked, words that came from wounds of the heart, blooming like roses.
She sobbed and twisted underneath the caress of his lips, his deadly hands. He could not make his talons retract, and so he found gentleness after all, for he would die before he could ever mar her delicate beauty.
She tasted exquisite, like every dream he’d ever had of bliss. He tongued her plump lips, plundered the private recesses of her mouth, licked at the slender stalk of her neck where her life beat, strong and sure, underneath the velvet-scented veil of her skin.
While he lost himself in doing to her everything he had ever imagined, squandering the yearning daydreams of centuries, the flow of her body coursed underneath his hands, twisting and turning to match the needs of his body.
Like an enchanted mirror, her gaze told him he was the most beautiful lover in all the land. He had always known he could only be beautiful through the gaze of someone who looked at him with true love.
Passion rose underneath her skin, so that she burned with the kind of luminescence that could only be seen with his soul. He followed the path it showed him, licking along the curves and hollows of her body, suckling at each of her nipples, until the graceful way she touched him grew broken and demanding.
The hunger in her voice as she cried out sounded like music to him, silvery and passionate, like watching the sun glint off a starling’s wing. The salt of her aroused scent was earthy, addicting. He rubbed his cheek down the flat, shaking line of her abdomen, drawn inevitably to the most secret part of her.
She parted her legs, granting him access to her most sensitive, fragile flesh. He fell into licking and caressing her with his tongue, tracing the silken, delicate folds with the kind of reverence such treasure deserved. The musk of her arousal slicked his lips.
His own body felt molten hot, his erection so thick and tight, it jutted straight out from his body. As he sprawled on his stomach, pushing down lower on the bed to feast on her, the slight friction of his cock rubbing on the coarse sheets caused him to ejaculate.
Gritting his teeth, he endured the unsatisfying pulse of pleasure/pain. He needed to be inside her oh gods so badly, yet he couldn’t leave the sensual wealth spread underneath him.
Carefully spreading her plump, ruby-tinted flesh, he found her clitoris. When he put his mouth over it, a breathless cry broke out of her lips. She lifted off the bed, head arched back, while the long, shapely muscles of her inner thighs clenched.
That was what he wanted. He needed to hear her scream. Contentment eased the fire of his own need. It wouldn’t last, but he would make it last long enough.
Suckling at her tiny, powerful peak of flesh, he stroked the petals that surrounded her entrance, caressing the dainty folds. More of her liquid arousal coated his fingers. She sank shaking fingers into his hair, sobbing, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
What don’t you know? the monster whispered in her head.
“It’s so intense, I don’t know if I can stand it.” The confession tumbled out of her trembling mouth.
Trust me, he murmured. You can take it.
She was stronger than she knew. She was stronger than almost anybody he knew.
Briefly, deliriously happy, he flicked her clitoris with tense care over the edge of his teeth. Finally he was able to make his talons retract, as he plunged two greedy fingers deep inside of her. With his invasion, he felt her convulse.
The climax rippled out from her core to the rest of her body, and it was so fucking beautiful. So fucking beautiful, suddenly, he could barely wait for her to finish. Somehow, he did, massaging her internal passage to help her through it.
When her pleasure ebbed, he pounced. Crawling up her body, he brought the tip of his cock to her entrance. Her hand collided with his as she reached to help him in.
Savagery returned. As he thrust into her tight, hot sheath, he sank his fingers deep into the mattress, clawing at it from a pleasure so deep, it was like agony.
He needed her so badly, he started ejaculating again with the first thrust. His face twisted, his back arching. Eyes wide, she stared up at him in wonder. As she stroked both hands down his chest, he shot harder into her.
It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
She’s your chance, man.
Take it. Take her.
“You’re mine,” he growled into her face.
She whispered through lips swollen from his kisses, “Yes.”
Almost apologetically, he confessed, “I can’t stop. I’ve got to do it again.”
At that, sh
e wound her arms around his neck again. He could never get tired of how passionately she held him. She said against his mouth, “Take everything you need, my love. Everything I’ve got is yours.”
She’s your chance, man.
He took everything she had to give.
Such a precious gift.
NINETEEN
The day before the masque, they cremated Constantine’s remains. Everywhere in New York City, flags were flown at half-mast. Traffic was muted, and many shops closed their doors.
The weather had warmed as well, and a light drizzle fell from the gray sky. It felt as if the whole world mourned his death.
Dragos had ordered a special brazier created, one large enough to hold a man. It was set on the roof of the Tower. The sentinels took Constantine’s body, dressed in simple, everyday clothes, and laid him gently on it.
Then everybody who could fit onto the roof of the Tower came. Those who couldn’t fit on the roof stood on the stairs, all eighty flights down to the street, where people gathered around the building on the sidewalks. Bel heard later that the crowd extended for several blocks in every direction around the Tower.
She took her place beside Graydon in a circle of the sentinels, holding his hand. Rune and Carling joined the circle. The harpy Aryal wept openly, while her mate Quentin rubbed her back, his jaw tight. Grym and Alexander stared fixedly at Constantine, while the fourth gryphon Bayne bowed his head, covering his face with one hand.
Dragos, Pia and Liam stood nearby. Pia’s eyes were puffy and red, and Liam kept wiping at his face. Pia kept her arm around the boy’s shoulders. Occasionally she whispered in his ear and tightened her hold, hugging him against her side.
And Dragos . . . Bel did her very best not to stare, but she couldn’t help stealing a glance or two at his bleak expression. The fierce gold of his eyes had gone dull, and she thought she saw something hot and smoking on his lean cheeks. It was almost as if the dragon cried tears of fire.
The Great Beast could feel love and loss. He could feel grief. Her understanding of who and what he was metamorphosed into something new. While she could never imagine becoming close to him, she could finally accept he had grown into someone else. He was no longer the animal that had preyed on the Elves so long ago.