Page 22 of You Only Love Twice
She was an enemy spy.
"She was an enemy spy," he whispered.
She deliberately seduced you, seeking to use you.
"She deliberately seduced you...." He couldn't say the rest.
She tried to kill you.
"She...."
He pressed the heel of his palm to his aching forehead. The fugue was coming, sweeping over him like a black tide. He had to get out of here before it overwhelmed him.
But...
Moonlight fell across her fallen figure, caressing the soft curve of her cheek. Gemma looked like a fairy-tale version of Sleeping Beauty, goose bumps pebbling her skin from the chill of the room.
She looked innocent.
And what had that flash of vision meant? Her words had unlocked something he'd not known was buried within him.
He needed to know what she meant about shooting her.
But not now. Not now.
Swinging his cloak off his shoulders, Obsidian draped it over her like a blanket. A blinding white light floated through his vision, blurring her face. The tingling started in his fingers.
He needed to get out of there before he fell.
Pushing away from her, Obsidian strode toward the scrolled gate that guarded the observatory and clanged it shut, the lock slamming into place.
It was only when he staggered down the stairs that the pain eased up a fraction.
And then the world vanished as he slammed to the floor.
Chapter 7
Gemma woke to darkness.
For a second her heart pounded as she tried to gain her bearings. What had happened? Where was she? The last thing she remembered was—
She sat bolt upright as memory returned, her hands tangling in fur.
Blood and ashes.
Dmitri!
Gemma nearly fell off the hard bed she lay upon, and then froze. There was no sign of anyone else in the room. Indeed, she could barely see a foot in front of her face. A thin sliver of light cracked through a glass pane high in the roof, revealing a single star, but she suspected the cloud of smothering London smog dulled its light.
Night then.
But what was...? She picked at the thing beneath her, feeling out its soft shape. A fur-lined cloak. And not one of her own.
She'd spent the past month wondering if the face she'd glimpsed in her state of semiconsciousness had been real. He'd saved her life in the museum when one of his comrades tried to kill her, but when she'd woken she'd thought she'd imagined it.
And then she'd been so certain she was being followed. Everywhere she turned Gemma felt him hovering there, like a ghost that haunted her. A glimpse of a face she thought she recognized before it vanished in the crowd. Gemma had wondered if she was going mad, stricken by years of guilt and nightmares. She hadn't dared say anything when someone broke into the COR safe house and killed Zero before she and the Duke of Malloryn could question thedhampirwoman.
It was him. It had to be him. I felt him in the house.But Gemma had long since learned Malloryn expected proof. And...
