Page 97 of Crossroads Magic
Her eyes filled with tears. “But Ilikeit here. I like everyone. And you’re…a witch or something, which is so cool, and you should stay here and get better at it, and I could run the network. Besides, your cooking is amazing now. And…and I like my bedroom!”
Her tears fell, and I had to close down my thoughts, and ignore my aching heart. “I’m sorry, Ghaliya. It doesn’t matter how we feel about it. For the good of the people here, I have to leave, and so must you, because you’re my daughter, and the Town might come after you if I’m not here.”
“But everyone says it doesn’t matter!” Ghaliya cried. “Trevalyan says there’s things they can do to make sure you’re okay!”
I pressed my lips together, and waited until I thought I could speak without my voice shaking. “But we can’t ask that of them,” I said as gently as I could. “We can’t ask them to take that risk. Do you really want everyone here, everyone that you like, to be in danger because you want to stay?”
“You don’t know that they’d be in danger!”
“I don’t know that they won’t be,” I replied. “And that’s why leaving is the only option. It’s the only sure thing.”
Ghaliya’s shoulders slumped. She’d run out of arguments. She stalked over to the car and got in. I winced as she slammed the door.
Benedict got to his feet, and came over to me.
I held myself still, schooling my face to give away nothing. I took in his appearance one last time; the thick, dark brown hair, his straight brows and the planes of his cheeks. His eyes.
He gave me a small smile. “My family has a tiny house in Rome, which has been handed down for generations. There is a room in the house where we have stored old scrolls and codex going back centuries. Many of them came out of Pergamum, when it was a medical center, around the time of Christ. Many of them are Arabic, filled with eastern medicine.”
“You’ve read them?” The idea of reading books from the first century sent a small, warm finger up my spine. Oh, how awesome that would be!
“I read some of them, when I was much younger,” he admitted. “But I haven’t been back to Rome in…quite a while. But something I learned from those readings….”
I waited.
“Did you know that ‘Thamina’ means ‘precious’ in Arabic?”
I shook my head.
“And ‘Ghaliya’, the name you thought was pretty,” he added. “It also means ‘precious’ in Arabic.”
I let out a gasp.
“Your family bloodlines run through the women,” he said. “Whether you knew it consciously or not, your instincts have always known it.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
Benedict picked up my hand. My flesh sizzled where he touched it. His hand was warm and large. “I would have you stay, too, Anna,” he said very softly. “I would have you stay so that I have time to show you that you can trust me.”
“Because trust is hard to earn,” I whispered, my eyes stinging.
“And easy to break,” he finished. “Unless there are other bonds there to strengthen it.” He gave a sigh. “You and I are both old enough to know that those sort of bonds…they take time. We’re too scarred, too wary.”
He bent and kissed my cheek. I could feel the touch of his lips even after he straightened and let go of my hand.
“Have a good life, Anna,” he told me.
“You, too.” My voice was hoarse. And before I made a fool of myself, I moved around the car and got into the passenger side and shut the door.
Olivia looked at me. She didn’t smile. “Ready?”
“No, but let’s go, anyway.”
Ghaliya made a soft, despairing sound in the back seat.
?
Our departure was undramatic. Olivia turned the big car onto the main street, rolled it slowly to the crossroads, where she cautiously stopped and looked both ways. No one was standing on the sidewalks. The town was as still as it had been the day we’d arrived.
