Page 91 of Reap the Night
“How?” I stared up at him, panic a yawning chasm filling the deepest parts of me. “How can we break the curse if I can’t be with you without wanting to kill you? How can I feel love when all I’ll feel is hatred?” The curse…the bitch Loviator…she’d known exactly what she was doing when she’d added her sprinkling to my reborn soul all those centuries ago.
“We don’t have to be physically together to be together,” Ezekiel said. “We’re together now. We have something that we’ve never had before in any of your incarnations. This ability to create our own vista.”
“I thought…I thought you could dream walk into anyone’s mind.”
“Dream walking is different from a vista. This is a place we created from our collective consciousness. I’ve never been able to do it with anyone before.” He was alight with excitement and hope, and it was infectious. “Loviator can’t come between us this time. And out there, in the real world, any people working against us will think that we’ve failed. But we haven’t. We won’t.”
“You’re saying we can meet here? Be together here?”
He stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Every night when you sleep, you can follow the path to our vista, and I’ll find you here. We can build on this place, and I will courtyou.” He leaned in, his mouth inches from mine. “I’ve missed you, little silver.”
He kissed my bottom lip, then my top one before claiming my mouth as if it was a succulent peach, and oh God, he tasted like honeycomb. His thumb grazed my jaw as his fingers sank into my hair, and I was lost in him. In the rasp of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth as he breathed for me and I for him and?—
My eyes popped open on an inhalation to find Hemlock hovering over me in the gloom. The clatter of wheels, the sway of the carriage?—
“No!” I sat up. “Ezekiel…”
“Is fine,” Hemlock said. “He spoke with you?”
“Yes but…” I shoved the carriage drapes aside to peer out at the road. The road to New Town. Tears clouded my vision. “I didn’t get to say goodbye…”
“You can find him when you sleep,” Hemlock said. “You’ll stay with Kaster, out of Old Town for now.”
As far away from Ezekiel as they could get me. I hated it. “I understand.”
He sat back in his seat with a heavy sigh. “Think of it as a long-distance relationship. People fall in love like that all the time.” His gaze was probing, and the question in his eyes was clear.
He wanted to know how long it would take for me to fall in love. How long to break the curse. “It creeps up on you, I think. From what I know…from what I’ve heard.”
“You’ve never?—”
“No. No, I haven’t. It wasn’t really an option so…But I want to. Now that I can.” I touched my arm. “Love can be a blessing too, right?”
“Yes, I suppose it can.”
“Then I’ll allow it to have me. To creep up on me and claim me.”
And that was all we could do.
Chapter 35
Kaster listened without asking any questions as I filled him in on what had happened that day. Cushioned in the large armchair, the ocher knitted throw I’d picked out over my knees, I told him about Ezekiel’s awakening, Ordell and the mating, and the rise of my darkness. I pulled up my sleeve and showed him my arm, free of my blessing now.
So that’s why you couldn’t have sex.
Yes. I trust you, Kaster. I trust that you won’t?—
Never.He sat forward in his seat—a matching armchair to mine—expression intense.Losing the blessing doesn’t change your relationship with the white wings or the Order. It doesn’t change who you are. So, you can’t wield the blade that kills cold ones, but you can still save lives. Still follow the edicts of honor that are the pillars of the Order.
I know, I just…I feel like I’m lesser somehow, and the darkness…I’m afraid, Kaster. What if it does more than turn me against Ezekiel?
You won’t let it, and the people who care for you will help you with that. We will ground you.
His words renewed my hope.
Now—He pressed his palms to his thighs and stood.Let’s get you some cocoa then bed.
My pulse quickened because I no longer had a blessing to stand between us. I could have him if I wanted, and he could have me. My thoughts must have played across my face because his gaze flared for a moment, but then he relaxed back into his seat, and my heart sank with foreboding.
