“It is not so much that I do not trust him or do not want him—” Noah broke off and looked back out the window he had been gazing out of before the conversation had begun. “It is a complicated situation. There are things involved in this type of union that could be painful for my sister.” Noah looked back to the Lycanthrope woman. “What brother of any substance would greet the idea of his sister’s potential hurt with open arms?”
“One who did not love his sister as much as you clearly do,” she agreed graciously. “It is almost…almost uncanny how alike we are after all. I was raised on stories of Demon savagery, told how uncouth and barbaric you were. Stories that included the Druidic Wars and a long list of other opinions from other races holding other grudges.” Siena paused to shake her head, the motion of expressed regret accented by a twitch of her ears. “When I got to know Gideon and began to see the depth of your morals and the culture that surrounded them, I realized how untrue it was. It was wise of you to trust him with the task. You should not lose your wisdom now, Noah.”
Noah drew in a deep breath, and then released it in a long sigh.
“You are correct, Siena. And I have said the same thing to myself many times. Perhaps, soon, I will actually begin to listen to myself.” Noah gave her a charming smile and with it changed the focus of the conversation. “For the moment, I should like for us to complete the details of the ambassadorial exchange.”
“I have been considering something else first,” she announced. “I believe we should have a social gathering before the exchange of our diplomats. Perhaps it will relax everyone to begin the integration in the same casual style we began ours.”
“An excellent idea. I propose Beltane. There will be weddings, a festival, and we will have sporting competitions.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea. Perhaps I can suggest some of the things we do on Beltane to make it a truly blended occasion?”
“Of course. Please,” Noah indicated two plush chairs that faced each other next to one of the shelves. “Let us discuss it.”
Chapter 13
Gideon approached Legna quietly, not wanting to make any distracting sounds as she sat deeply entrenched in her meditation. He sensed clearly the order she was putting her mind into, the thoroughness she used to catalog the new infusion of his power she had been adjusting to ever since they had become fully Imprinted.
By meditating as she was, she was helping to keep at bay anything other than the focus on her approaching foray into enemy territory. A visitor in her mind so regularly, Gideon had a renewed respect for the strength and mental discipline it took to manage her empathy. Without that impressive will, she would have been driven insane by the sheer amount of random emotion people were constantly projecting every minute of every day. Her control was perfect and kept everything about her neatly restrained.
Everything, perhaps, except how beautiful she looked to him. Better yet, she was being beautiful in his home, the place where he had spent so many solitary centuries never truly realizing what he had been missing. She sat centered on an antique Persian rug, the design unfolding all around her as she maintained her cross-legged position. Gideon realized then how much his passion for her seemed to be growing with every day and every minute they spent together. Even this separate togetherness, when she was deep into her own tasks and he was in his, was a prime example. Of course, his task at the moment consisted mainly of looking at her and admiring all the details of her beauty, both inner and outer. She had the most perfect skin in the world, luminous even though she was clearly a little tired. Her coffee-colored hair snaked all around her body, just a happenstance of how it had settled around her, and he could not help following the winding path as it traveled her breathtaking figure. It was like a spark to tinder, and the heat for her that was always only banked within him flared to new life.
“You are distracting me,” she whispered, opening one eye to look at him.
“I am sorry,” he said, grinning in a way that belied his apology. “I will attempt to refrain.”
“You do that,” she giggled, closing her eyes again.
He didn’t leave, but he did try to keep from thinking in less than seemly ways. It was not an easy task. His gaze kept wandering over to her, drinking her in. He noticed she had a beauty mark on the bottom of her left foot and it made him smile. He had somehow missed that one in his methodical task of learning every inch of her body.
“Gideon!” she hissed softly.
He laughed, covering his irrepressible smile with a hand movement. Her thoughts might have been kept distant from him, but it was clear she was very aware of his. He began to contemplate having a little fun.
As he mused over the possibilities, Gideon felt an eerie change in the room. He went still, trying to name the source of the strange sensation he was feeling. It was cold, paralyzed, and bearing a level of emotion that was far too deep to belong to him.
That left Legna as the most likely source. Her eyes suddenly opened and she looked up at him, but she did not seem to focus on him. Gideon’s brow furrowed as he tried to see what she was thinking, but barriers had flown up around her mind that, combined with the distancing of meditation, kept him in the dark.
“Legna?” he asked softly, crouching down to come eye to eye with her.
He became aware of the fine vibration that was humming through her. He reached to analyze her body chemistry and physiological reactions for a definition of what she was feeling.
It was fear.
Not just any fear, he realized as he reached deeper, but a solidifying terror unlike anything either of them could have conceived. Adrenaline was racing through her, causing chaos in her biorhythms to the point that Gideon hardly knew where to start to help calm her. Whatever this was, it was probably the worst thing that could happen so close to her undercover assignment.
“Legna, what is it?” He used a firmer voice, demanding an answer from her.
“Mama.”
The single word completely obliterated the Ancient Demon.
Stunned, he fell back onto the floor, wiping an unsteady hand down over his shocked expression. He tried to think, but he couldn’t. Now it was his fear that was rising. Gideon had no idea how she was recalling that day. He had no access to her mind the one time he needed it the most. All he could do was feel the painful wrenching of his own terrified heart as he watched her eyes grow wider and wider.
He didn’t need new power and new skill levels to remember that day. It was clear as crystal for him. That day. That terrible day when Gideon had looked up from his position over Legna’s mother to see the equally wide eyes of a four-year-old girl who was seeing something no child should ever see.
She was seeing her mother’s mutilated body, and a male Demon who was drenched in her blood from silver hair to booted feet, clutching the dead woman to his chest as he leaned over her.
Nothing compares to the scream a babe makes in a moment like that. There was no way to explain to her that there was only so much a healer could accomplish. No way to explain how a beautiful and beloved mother could end up looking like she had looked in that instant. He had been over seven hundred years old at the time, and there was no explaining it to him either. And knowing that had been the first time the child that was Legna had ever laid eyes on him had haunted him for the next two hundred and fifty years. It was that moment alone that had kept him at a distance from her when they had actually belonged together all this time. That child was the child he had seen for so many decades every time he had looked at her. Looked at her looking at him as she was subconsciously trying to remember what it was they had decided to take away from her in order to preserve her precious mind.
Gideon turned his face to the heavens, tears of pure agony burning in his eyes as he prayed for a miracle he couldn’t even begin to guess at the nature of. All he knew was that he would be destroyed the moment she stopped loving him, the moment she rightfully began to blame him for his inadequacies, for his failure to save that
life, for his failure to protect her young eyes by having the forethought to seal off the room. The thought alone was enough to stop his heart from beating. He heard her begin to weep, but he could not bring himself to look at her. He felt his soul shredding, flayed away from him bit by bit, seemingly with every tear she shed. When she was suddenly on him, wrapping herself around his throat, he was pretty much expecting it. He didn’t fight her. He had no right to.
It took him a long minute to realize she was hugging him, not throttling him. Numb with incomprehensible shock, he dared to allow himself enough hope to lay a hand on her back. It was at that moment he realized he had expected never to touch her again, making the contact feel like a miracle cure.
“Legna,” he whispered hoarsely. “I am so sorry.”
She said nothing, instead sobbing as if her heart were breaking. He let her go on, thinking to himself that she could cry until next Samhain if she wanted to and he would be the last to gainsay her. This moment was almost three centuries in coming, and she deserved to mourn.
Noah had lived not only with the weight of his mother’s murder and the responsibility of raising his sister after his father’s Summoning, but he had lived with the knowledge that he had made a decision for his sister that he’d never found the courage to reverse. He had always dreaded this moment, just as Gideon had.
Gideon wanted to ask her a hundred questions, but this was not about him, so he did not. He enclosed her in his embrace, soothing her as best he could with his presence and his warm touch. He brushed her hair from her damp, flushed face, gently tucking it behind her ear over and over again, a rhythmic stroking that carried with it silent words of love and understanding. Her cheek was nestled into his shoulder, her tears soaking through his shirt, her sobs held deeply in her chest so that they sounded like the painful cries of a small animal.
It was almost an hour before she spent herself completely, an occasional shudder wracking her as she drifted into an exhausted sleep. Gideon still did not move in any way. He let her rest, ignoring his own comfort completely. Nothing could make him more comfortable than the feel of her arms around him, even limp with sleep as they were.
She made a sound, jerking slightly as she woke some time later. She lifted her head, searching for his eyes. He obliged her, not even trying to hide the uncertainty within himself. She reached to touch his face, drawing her lip between her teeth as she moved her fingers over him in a strange pattern.
“You were crying,” she said at last, her voice hoarse from emotion.
He instantly understood that she was not talking about the here and now, but about that tragic day so far in the past.
“Yes, love,” he said simply.
“Why would you cry for my mother?”
“Because no one should have to die like that,” he said. “Because for all my ability, I could do nothing for her. As I was for your brother, I had been her Siddah, and it destroyed me to think I had done so poorly by her that she had not known how to properly defend herself.”
“That is not true. It is because you were Siddah to my brother that he was able to become both the man and King that he is. No one could do better than that, and I know you did just as much for Mama.”
“I was older when I fostered Noah. It was different.”
“Mama was a Body Demon. Female Body Demons are the least powerful of our society.”
“I know. And that was why she was chosen by her murderer. He knew she had no hope of…but if I had taught her…something. Anything.”
“You were the one who found her?”
“Just before you did, sweet. I thought I would turn to stone when I looked up and saw you there, looking at me as if I were something straight out of hell.”
“And you and Noah had my memory altered.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not tell me sooner?” she asked at last, the one question he had been truly dreading.
“I made a promise. A promise I have kept your entire lifetime, Neliss.”
“A promise to Noah.”
“Yes. But you cannot blame him for that.”
“No. I would not. Noah has protected me all of his life. This is no different. I would not be the soul I am if not for his choices in this. I understand now why he was so upset to find out we were Imprinted. Both he and Hannah must have suspected this would happen. You must have as well.”
“Yes.” He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I did not know what to hope for…that you would find out before we made love…or after. I was terrified you would feel abused in some fashion. Or worse, would turn away from me before even learning who I am.”
“I see.” Legna reached to push back his hair, pressing her forehead to his, putting them eye to eye and nose to nose. “I know you,” she said in a whisper. “Just as I know myself. How could you ever be afraid that I would think you capable of such a monstrous act?”
“Because I am afraid of anything that might mean I will lose you,” he confessed.
“I told you, my love, I am not going anywhere. I am here, right where I belong. My heart lives with your heart, my soul with your soul. I love you, Gideon. You have to start believing that, and believing that you deserve it.”
“I will never deserve it,” he said roughly. “But I will endeavor to do so for the rest of my days. I love you, Neliss, as I have never loved in the whole of my life. You are my heart, my breath, my every thought and every aspiration. You are the true source of my power, because without you I am utterly powerless.”
“Love,” she whispered softly, setting his heart to flight as she pressed her mouth to his tenderly. “I need to know only one thing, and then we will never need to discuss this again.”
“I know,” he agreed hoarsely. It took him some time before he began to tell her what she wanted to know. “He was the only Demon besides you to ever be retrieved from a Summoning pentagram. We thought we had saved him in time. By the time we realized how wrong we were, four females, including Sarah, your mother, were dead. Jacob executed him eventually, but it was a poor compensation. There was a time I thought Noah might never recover. He could not do for himself what he and your father had done for you.”
“No wonder he has been almost maniacal in his protection these past months. The Summoning must have brought up so much in his mind. I think I finally understand why he could never discuss it with me. I think he was afraid that if he did it would give him away, that it would dredge up enough emotional memory to trigger what everyone had repressed within me.” Legna reached up and stroked her fingers along the line of his jaw. “And then he was forced to let me go to you, knowing so much that I did not. He even tried to warn me. It makes sense now, when before it seemed so irrational. And Hannah. She knew also and was so afraid for me.”
“They love you, sweet. So many of us love you. Even that acerbic little Druid you insist on being friends with.” He winked, softening the remark enough to make her laugh. She reached to hug him with all of her strength, and he basked in it gratefully.
“Well, I am going to protect that little Druid because she is my friend, and she once did the same for me.”
“Which definitely elevates her in my esteem,” he said, kissing the top of her head through the depths of her hair. He reached up and touched the silky mass with both affection and purpose, closing his eyes and concentrating as he stroked it. Then he lifted the entire mass of it into his hand.
Legna felt a twinge of feedback along her scalp and pulled back from him to look at her hair in his hand. She gasped when she saw the black tresses, a full three feet shorter than they normally were, and the cropped coffee-colored remains fluttering down over their close bodies like dozens of feathers.
“Tell me you can fix that later,” she said nervously.
“Love, I once regrew your hair from scratch after it had been burned off. I can do anything.”
“Show-off,” she said dryly, touching the alien locks. “How did you change the color?”
“Ju
st a rudimentary tweak of pigmentation chemistry. Straightening it was even easier. But this is not the end of my tricks. If you are up to it, we can find a mirror so I can show you.”
“I am fine. Puffy eyes aside, as long as I have you, I am fine.”
“You have me,” he assured her, helping her to her feet. “And as for puffy eyes, you will not have them by the time I am done.”
“Remind me to stop if you catch me touching my face,” Legna whispered to the Lycanthrope Queen.
“I don’t blame you if you do. I never suspected Gideon was capable of such an alteration. It is remarkable.”
“He said it was easy. He always says that. He explained that it was simply a matter of changing musculature structure and bone malleability. So now, I have a whole new face.”
“I think choosing an Asian appearance was a brilliant touch,” Siena whispered, glancing up at a woman who passed their table. “That’s the second time she passed us.”
“I noticed. She is feeling a little nervous, but it does not seem to be directed at us.”
“Well, so long as she doesn’t jump us the minute we leave the restaurant.”
“No. No hostility or negative intent,” Legna remarked.
“Ah, there’s Anya,” Siena said suddenly, reaching to wave to an exotic-looking young woman with hair that, if just a few shades lighter, would be as fiery red as Corrine’s.
It was wrapped into an intricate chignon, but it was clearly held in place by only a single long hairpin made of heavy silver, or what looked like silver.
Legna noted that the Queen had also bound up her hair, and by the way she repeatedly gave it a covert touch, it was clear she wasn’t used to it. That was when Legna realized Lycanthropes were actually uncomfortable with their hair up. Their enemies might potentially know this, and so the Lycanthrope women had indulged in the extreme to further throw off suspicion. The sense she was feeling from them told her it was akin to a near strangulation for them. She had lived so far removed from the war, again by Noah’s design, that she had not learned this interesting detail.
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