Page 31 of Love Lives
"You're under no obligation to stick around," Talon reminded him.
Aldrich didn't know what to say to that, so he chose not to say anything at all.
Talon wouldn't get it anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
I staredat the carpet by my feet, only half-listening to the conversation going on around me. Aldrich was so convinced that he could change things... I wished I had that kind of confidence. But he was literally trying to beat death.
The thought sent a chill down my spine, almost as if I'd just noticed that I'd put sugar instead of salt into a dish that had already gone out to our guests.
Almost as if I'd just been told that I had about six days left to live.
I couldn't wrap my head around that, though. It seemed unreal.
"It might not be counting down to your death," Puck said, pulling me out of my thoughts.
"What else?" I asked, desperate for any other kind of theory. Anything with a better outcome for me, because I wasnotready to die in six days. That couldn’t be real. I refused to believe this was real.
At the same time, though, I knew that bad things were headed our way. Hadn’t I seen it in my dreams?
I swallowed. My throat was so dry it hurt.
"This could mean any number of things." Puck gave a small shrug and I wanted to punch him for being so damn relaxed about all this. "It's arrogant of us to assume to know the way a God's mind works,” he said as if it was no big deal. “It's possible he's trying to give you a message."
“That has to be it,” Elle agreed, squeezing my shoulder.
"If he's trying to give me a message, he's doing a piss poor job of it," I said, because I had no clue what I was supposed to take away from this. Other than chest-tightening panic.
"Time will show."
I wanted to tell Puck to shove those words up his ass, but as much as I hated it, we still needed him. So I bit my lower lip and said nothing at all.
"It's got to have something to do with the prophecy," Elle said, her voice unusually small. She was still blaming herself for all of this. I would bet on it, but there was little I could do about her guilt now.
Not dying would be a good first step.
Puck studied the rings on the fingers of his left hand. "It did say something about a mark, did it not?" He recited the prophecy from memory. "On the day the marked dhampir loses his heart to a child of night, a sacrifice shall raise the veil of sleep, and death will lift the curse of the vampire from this world."
I couldn't tell you why, but every time I heard those lines, the hairs on the back of my arms stood up. There was just something unnerving about hearing a prophecy that had been made about you centuries before you'd even been born.
"Did you know?" Puck asked. "I used to think prophecies were all on the same level as party tricks as far as real magic was concerned... But Atlus believed in them quite fervently. He dedicated many of his later years to understanding the secrets behind foresight. It seems that even before his death, he knew that some sort of prophecy was going to be made about his offspring."
"So because Atlus believed it, you do?" I asked, because that was the only part of all of this that was easy to process. God, I kind of wished I could just vanish into the kitchen and work on a really complicated recipe to take my mind off everything that related to magic in any way, shape or form.
"Believe it or not, I am open to changing my mind," Puck said. "Only a fool believes he's right about everything."
Elena spoke up, bringing the conversation back on topic, much to my chagrin. "You think the mark in the prophecy is the one on Remy's stomach."
Puck wriggled his fingers, making his rings catch the light as they moved. "It might be, or it might not. That's the problem with prophecies. They're never very specific. If you just want to believe hard enough, you can make almost any incident fit."
I grimaced at that. Prophecies might be unspecific, but I'd had many dreams that weren't. Truth be told, I kind of preferred the unspecific ones. At least most of the time.
"What are the chances that this isn't part of the prophecy?" I asked.
"Not low enough to risk not considering it," Elena responded before I could. "And let's think about the rest of that line too. What if 'death' actually refers to the God?"
I shuddered again. This was lining up way too well. "You mean like Dad said? He wanted us to speak to him…"
