Shit.
“I don’t know anything! And neither do you! So spouting platitudes isn’t going to help the situation!” Honor snapped. Could she be any stupider, admiring that jerkoff at a time like this? She wanted to smack herself. Instead she turned away from the sight of his perfect, stupid face, and said over her shoulder, “Why are you even here, anyway? Don’t you have a few skirts to chase, hound dog?”
“Beckett was here when you came in, and he’s always welcome in my home.” Morgan’s tone was gentle, but scolding. She rose and approached Honor, reaching out to touch her shoulder as she came to stand close. She lowered her voice, looking at Honor with pointed reproof. “You both are. As long as you’re playing nice.”
“I’m nice,” she grumbled, shrugging off Morgan’s hand. “He’s the assho—”
“So what do we do now?” Beckett, loudly, cut her off. It was Xander who answered.
“We have to get word to Magnus. Honor, can you tell Lumina what’s happening? You know, the way you two talk?”
“I haven’t been able to reach her,” admitted Honor reluctantly. “She’s offline, so to speak.”
Honor had been trying like hell to reach out telepathically to her sister ever since she’d awoken from the dream in which their mother told her of Thorne’s plans. The news had been horrible, distressing, but Honor sensed there was something her mother had been holding back. The way she’d looked at her was so strange, both proud and terribly guilty. Honor hadn’t been able to figure it out, and her mother hadn’t explained. Aside from the obvious imminent threat of her death, something else caused her to turn away when Honor asked what could be done to stop Thorne from moving forward with his plans.
It was almost as if . . . as if she knew the answer, but wouldn’t say what it was.
No, that can’t be it. If her mother knew of any way to save herself and everyone else in that prison, she undoubtedly would have told her. The only thing that could save them now was Magnus and Hope.
She still refused to call her sister Lumina. That was like calling a golden egg a turd.
“I’ll try again in a while, but I don’t expect much. When Hope’s being bullheaded, nothing can get through to her.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” muttered Beckett, turning to leave.
“Excuse me?” demanded Honor, halting midpace to stare at his broad, retreating back. He stopped, turned, stared her dead in the eye.
“I’m sorry, were you operating under the mistaken impression that you’re reasonable, Honor? Because news flash: You’re as reasonable as a cyclone.” He smiled, a grim, cheerless specimen that didn’t reach his eyes. “And just as pleasant.”
Her mouth dropped open. The nerve of him! “I’m not reasonable? You’re the one who’s being led around like a dog on a collar by your dick!”
“Will you knock it off with the dog metaphors?” he snapped. He paced forward, angry, a menacing look narrowing his eyes.
“That was a simile, genius. I know it must be hard to think with all the blood drained from your head—”
“Why can’t you ever be nice, like for one minute? Is that too much to ask?” He walked closer, his long stride quickly eating up the space between them.
“Nice? Ha! You mean like how you’re nice, spreading ‘cheer’ throughout the colony with your magical penis?” She made air quotes around the word cheer, and his face reddened.
Morgan stood from the couch, about to intervene, but Xander grasped her hand and pulled her gently to his side. He said something in her ear that made her smile.
“Pets, we’ll be in the Assembly room if you need us,” she said as Xander led her away.
Honor and Beckett barely noticed they’d left. His long stride had brought him face-to-face with her in seconds. She looked up at him, wishing for the first time in her life that she was over six feet tall so she could stand eye to eye with him. She felt at a disadvantage having to tilt her head back, and she hated that feeling.
He moved even closer, invading her personal space. He was big and imposing, radiating heat and a fury she’d never seen in him before. Blinking, she stepped back.
“You know something, Honor?” he said, his voice as hard as his eyes. “I’ve listened to this crap from you since we were little kids, and I’m sick of it. I’m done. Understand? I don’t care if you turn me into a fucking popsicle or a giant ice cube or make the earth open up and swallow me whole, I’m not taking it anymore. Find someone else to shit on, because I’m through being your personal toilet!”
His words, his tone, his face all told her a story that made her stomach drop to her toes. “You think I would hurt you?” she whispered in disbelief.
He moved closer. She stepped back again, desperate to escape him, to escape that look, but her back hit the rounded cave wall, and she couldn’t go any farther. He leaned close and stared down at her with the worst expression she’d ever seen him wear. There was anger, yes, but beneath it was pain, real pain. To think that she was the cause of it made her feel sick.
His voice as gravelly as if he’d been swallowing rocks, he said, “You’ve been hurting me for years, Honor. And liking it. It wouldn’t surprise me if you took it one step further and did something permanent.”
“I would never,” she said, her voice small. “Beckett, I would never hurt you like that.”
He was breathing hard. His lips were thinned. He didn’t believe her. She didn’t know what to do or say to make him understand, to make him realize that what she’d said was true; she’d never hurt him. She’d rather die than see anything bad happen to him. To anyone in the colony, but especially him.
“Why do you hate me so much?” he asked abruptly.
“I . . . I don’t.” Honor swallowed. This close, he smelled amazing. His skin was golden and poreless, and there were beautiful flecks of yellow in his green eyes. Why did he have to look like an angel? Why couldn’t he have hair in his ears, bow legs, and bad breath?
Because he’s Ikati, that’s why, she sourly reminded herself. But even beyond that, Beckett was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at him.
So she didn’t. She glanced away, hiding from his excruciating attention.
“Honor.”
“What.”
“Look at me.”
“You’re standing two inches away, Beckett. There’s nowhere I can look that doesn’t include having you there.”
His voice gentled. “Staring at my feet doesn’t count. Look at me.” He put a finger beneath her jaw, and tipped her head up so their eyes met. He didn’t take his hand away, and he didn’t say anything, he just looked at her. Looked into her, with curiosity and the sweetest boyishness, a lovely vulnerability she never, ever saw in him. His anger had gone, and now he looked . . . open. Waiting.
For what?
Her gaze dropped to his lips. She imagined kissing him, what it might feel like—what he might taste like—and then, to her eternal horror, blood rushed to her cheeks.
She closed her eyes, hiding. Hands down, this was the most embarrassing moment of her life. The most embarrassing but also unexpectedly the best, because Beckett stroked his thumb lightly over her face, caressing the flame of heat on her skin, sending the most wonderful shivers coursing down her spine.
Then she wondered if this was how every girl felt when Beckett touched her, and her anger flared anew. She opened her eyes and glared at him.
“Okay. You want to know why I hate you, Beckett? Because you’re indiscriminate. We’re all interchangeable to you. Two legs, two tits, all the right parts. You don’t care about any of the girls you have; you just care about getting your rocks off. And it doesn’t matter which hole you stick it in which day; as long as you can have your fun and be on your way with no strings attached, you’re happy. I hate you because you’re a shallow, selfish user.”
Take that, man whore!
“And you’re a joyless, man-hating bitch,” he shot back without hesitation. And it stung. Oh, it stung like a nest of angry hornets had been dumped on her head! But then he said, “But it never mattered to me.”
Okay . . . what?
“Um . . .”
“You think you’re so smart, Honor, let me ask you this: Why do you think I’m the only male in this colony beyond the age of twenty-five—besides Magnus—who isn’t mated?”
Honor smirked. “I think we’ve already established that your penis has a mind of its own. Your seed-spreading tendencies automatically preclude anything so mature as commitment.”
“Wrong,” he growled, leaning even closer. “And unfair. I don’t, as you so delicately put it, ‘spread my seed.’ You’ve never seen me with a female in Fever.”
Well . . . he had a point. He usually avoided females in their once-annual Fever period like the plague, even though all the other unmated males in the colony became horny as tomcats around a female at that time. Usually they were kept hidden from the rest of the colony, for their own protection, as well as the males’; inevitably, fights broke out because the males’ testosterone levels went off the charts.
“That speaks more to your commitment issues than anything else,” Honor countered. “God forbid you get saddled with a mate and offspring—”
“That’s not how it works with us, and you know it!” he roared. “We mate for life, because we’re bonded and in love, and we have children out of love, not spite or tricks or to trap one another! Why do you have to make it sound so meaningless?”
He shocked her into silence. She stared up at him openmouthed and wide-eyed, dimly aware of her fluttering heart and the pulse of heat surging between them, unable to look away from his face. His anger made her ashamed of herself, and so did his words, and suddenly her sister’s plea intruded into the stillness of her shock-addled brain.
I want you to tell Beckett how you feel about him, because I think there might be something there. If I have to be courageous, you do, too.
Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck!
Honor closed her eyes, gathered her courage, and said in a whisper, “I have to make it seem meaningless because it’s all I’ve ever wanted, and everything I’ll never have.”
Silence. The sound of his ragged breathing, and her own. Then his hands settled on both sides of her face, and Honor opened her eyes to find Beckett staring at her with something she would have sworn was hope, had she not known better. In a whisper to match hers, he said, “Why can’t you have it, Honor?”
No, those were not tears welling in her eyes! Stammering, wretched, she said, “B-because the p-person I want to have it w-with is . . . he’s . . .”
Beckett’s face was so close to hers. His eyes were pleading. “He’s what? Say it, Honor. Tell me.”
She felt her face screw up into an ugly grimace. Those hideous, traitorous tears spilled over her bottom lids and tracked down her hot cheeks. “He’s a whore!” she bawled, breaking. “And he broke my heart because he wants everyone else but me, and he’s been parading around like a peacock with his harem of hens since he was ten years old, and I hate him!”
The last part was shouted into Beckett’s face. Feeling as if she would die of mortification, Honor buried her face into her hands, sobbing.
Suddenly Beckett’s arms came around her. He squeezed her against the warm hardness of his chest. He stroked his hand down her back and, with a low chuckle, sighed into her ear, “Jesus Christ. It’s about fucking time, woman. You’re harder to crack than an atom.”
Huh?
Honor couldn’t respond coherently. She couldn’t even think coherently. So she just kept blubbering into his shirt, hoping this was all a terrible dream she would soon awaken from, her dignity magically intact.
Courage was so overrated.
Beckett’s chest expanded with his deep, slow inhalation. He nuzzled his nose into her hair and spoke in a low, soothing voice. “So. Picture the scene. Two children, a boy and a girl, playing an innocent game of Jacks. The boy is winning, until another little girl comes over and begins to watch. She keeps her distance, though, as she always does. And, as always when she appears, the little boy feels funny, like he’s being tickled all over, inside and out. He can’t concentrate, and soon he’s lost the game.
“Because this new little girl is so spectacularly beautiful, he can’t look right at her. He thinks to do so might make him go blind, like when you look directly into the sun. So he’s learned to look around her, to keep her in his peripheral vision. And because he knows how to do this, he sees her smirk when he loses the game. And he feels something he’s never felt before in his young life: despair. To manage it, he does the only thing he can think to do, and that is to get revenge.
“He kisses the girl he just lost the game to. His plan is successful: He sees the other little girl turn and run away, her face as white as the dress she wore.”
Gooseflesh rose all over Honor’s body. She fell still. Beckett was telling the story of what happened all those years ago, of the day she saw him kiss Sayer in the playroom, and her whole world came crashing down around her ears.
Because she’d always loved him. Ever since she could remember, she’d loved him.
But he wasn’t done speaking yet.
“After that, the little boy felt bad, like he’d done something wrong. But the next time he saw the beautiful girl, she acted like she smelled something terrible and turned her nose up at him. All the other children laughed, and the boy felt like a part of him died. He wanted so badly for her to notice him, but the only way she ever did was when he tried to get revenge. So he began to kiss a lot of girls, and felt better when the beautiful one looked sad, and soon the only way she ever showed any emotion at all was when the boy was near another girl. And so, because he hoped in his heart of hearts that her sadness meant she cared for him, the boy . . .” his voice broke, and lowered even more, “the stupid, senseless boy set out to try and win her by making her jealous.”
Her heart must have stopped beating, because her blood had stopped circulating through her veins. Slowly, Honor raised her head, looking at Beckett through tear-sticky lashes.
He looked back at her with a bottomless depth of regret in his eyes. “It didn’t work, though. Years went by, and the boy didn’t have the courage to change his senseless game, and by the time he realized it would never work, it was too late. The beautiful girl was lost to him, and all that was left was the game. The game that had no winner, that was a maze with no exit, only a million cold dead ends. It was the only thing he knew.”
Honor stared at him long and hard, hope flaring in her chest like a Roman candle. Was he playing her? Was this part of an elaborate scheme? Was this how he did it, how he ensnared all those women, with emotional confessions that sounded too good to be true because they actually were?
“I’m not blind, Beckett. I saw how you looked at my sister,” she said, grasping at straws.
“Because she looks like you,” he replied immediately, his voice breaking. “But she’s not. There’s only one you, and that’s the only one for me. It’s always been you. You’re my beginning and my end, Honor. I’ve been in love with you since I could walk. I’ll be in love with you until the day I die, and after, whether I go to heaven or hell, I’ll still be loving you. Forever. Until the end of time.”
After a long time in which she did nothing but examine his face, Beckett softly pleaded, “Say something.”
What Honor said was, “If you’re lying, so help me God I will turn you into a popsicle. A big, stupid Becksicle, which I will devour after turning into a dragon. And then I’ll shit you out and freeze you again and throw your frozen, chewed-up, shitty self out into the ocean, where you will float on the waves until you get eaten by fish and birds, and shit out by them, too.”
Beckett threw back his head and laughed, squeezing her so tight
against him she couldn’t breathe. Then he looked down at her, his eyes shining, exultant. The glow appeared around his head, flaring into nimbus, warming all the dim, cool corners of the cave.
“Ah, you sweet talker, you,” he said, grinning. He kissed her.
And for the first time she could remember, Honor was engulfed by happiness, bright and burning as the summer sun.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When he was a boy, Magnus adored story time. A weekly event where all the children of the tribe would gather around the great bonfire in their colony deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle, story time consisted of various elders taking turns thrilling and horrifying the children with tales of magic and adventure. His favorite story was a dark fable that starred a poor farm boy who was visited one night by an angel, who warned him he would soon face a terrible trial, and his faith was the only thing that could save him.
The angel was exquisite and fearsome, a creature of terrible beauty and awesome power, with white wings that burned with smokeless fire, painting vivid blurs of color on the air as they moved. She was a seraph, the story went, one of “the burning ones” of the human Bible, and Magnus’s boyhood self imagined her so vividly she came to life for him, as tangible as his own hand held in front of his face.
Years later, still fascinated by the story, he’d looked up the term seraph, and was intrigued to find them described as “dragon-shaped angels” in a Christian Gnostic text dealing with creation and end times.
Now, with the room aflame around him and the roar of a conflagration in his ears, Magnus realized the seraph of that long-ago story was no creature of mystic fantasy. The dragon-shaped angels that burned with smokeless fire were real.
They had to be. He was holding one of them in his arms.
“Lumina!” he rasped. “Lumina!”
Her eyes drifted open. Bright-orange licks of flame were reflected over and over in their depths. Behind her, fire burned and churned hellishly bright. Superheated air lifted her hair to float around her head, a golden halo of light. A chair coasted by in slow motion, weightless, turning, along with the pillow and other suspended debris: Books. A framed picture. A pair of boots he recognized as his own.
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