Page 122 of I Dream of Dragons
“Don’t be. My name. Mars, the Jackal.” He pulls back, gives a rueful smile. “A name from a past I barely recall. Damn… I used to be called that, long ago. You spoke the name and something kind of… opened up inside me.” He rubs at his chest, a rueful expression on his face. “Inside my chest. Inside my mind.”
I wait for him to elaborate, but he’s quiet. And I’m still searching for answers. “Mars,” I whisper, “was gray-eyed, with white-blond hair. And he had no shadow magic.”
“I changed. My colors changed like everything else about me.”
“And I should just believe that?” I ask, even though his reaction to his name is proof enough. His true name. “After everything… should I just take your word for it?”
“The woman I loved had hair of ebony. You also changed, my ebony thorn.”
I wince. “You said it. I’m pale and white-haired like a dead thing.”
“While I absorbed the darkness,” he says softly. “The shadows entered me, infused me.”
“You didn’t used to have shadows.”
“But I did. They were mere wisps, but after losing you… They took over me. Soaked into me. Formed all these marks on my face, my neck, my chest, my hands…”
I lower his hands from my face, study the black swirls on them. “The king. He stole your memories by drinking your blood.”
He nods, confirming it. “He says he drinks my blood not like fated mates do to share memories, but to quieten my mind. I never gave much thought to the similarity. Never thought that by drinking my blood, he absorbed some of my memories. And he used them to ensnare you.”
By the sleeping Gods…
“Talk to me, Rae.”
“I can’t. This is too much. Is it really you? I spent all this time thinking you were dead.”
“It’s really me.Makhair… I still can’t believe you’re here. I loved a girl once, and I thought she died. But I was wrong. You came back.”
I don’t dispute it. He knows I didn’t survive or I wouldn’t be here. I can’t focus on that now, not when he’s right here, the man I once loved, and the colors may be wrong but the character, the voice, the kindness, it’s all Mars.
“I told you. It’s always been you,” he says softly. “Only one woman, one mate for me. Always you.”
If anyone I’ve met since coming to shore fits my memories of those light-drenched days, it’s him. Not the appearance, but the character, the person.
The man.
Against all odds, all despair, I’ve found him, and I can’t absorb this new truth. I can’t exist with it.
“Eyes on me, my love. Breathe for me. You’ll be fine.”
I fall back into his arms, shaking. “Tell me,” I whisper. “Tell me of the time we were together.”
“Once upon a time,” he says softly, “I met this beautiful girl on the river shore. I didn’t know who she was. In all fairness, I didn’t know whoIwas, either. I still don’t. But she was a ray of color and joy, a source of thoughtfulness in a world gone flat and gray. She lifted me up from the mire, brought me cake and wine. Brought me pieces of herself—a story she’d read, a song she’d learned, a game she played when she was younger. She told me about her family in the castle on the hill, about her people, about their customs and legends. My princess…”
I sigh, my head resting on his muscular shoulder, my eyes filling up. “Yes…”
“She had a brother, she told me, called Flynn.”
“Remian Flynn,” I whisper.
“And he was a little rascal.”
I smile wistfully. “He was, wasn’t he?”
“He came to meet us sometimes. He liked to skip stones over the water, competing with us. But you were the best.”
“And he was a close second. You couldn’t do it.”
