She sobered, giving him a thoughtful look. “I never wished you ill, Rhyian. Well,” she amended, giving him a grin, “not beyond a few fantasies of your painful demise.”
He laughed. “I deserved that and more.” Taking the chance, he held out a hand. “Shall we have our dance?”
This time she placed her hand in his, and he deftly slipped them into a space between whirling dancers. She moved with sensual grace, and the way his hand settled into the narrow of her waist felt far too familiar, reminding him sharply of those long-gone days. But those watchful eyes held little of the wide-eyed wonder she’d had in that first blush of womanhood. Salena the girl had embraced everything life had to offer with uninhibited joy and delight. Now the deep blue, bordered by a fine line of deepest storm gray, regarded him with a mixture of cynicism and uncertainty. She was waiting for him to hurt her again, and honestly, he was expecting that eventually, too.
“I’m sorry I said that about Bethany. It was cruel and wrong.”
He shrugged a little. “You had reason to think it. We both know I’m far from faultless that way.”
She was quiet for a bit, and he savored the feel of her against him. They fit still—possibly even better—after all this time. She had a hand on his shoulder, her gaze focusing there for a moment as she brushed something away. “It was kind of you,” she finally said, and he suspected it wasn’t what she’d been thinking about saying. “Considerate, of Bethany’s feelings to dance with her, with all of her friends watching. I realize that now. I just… didn’t expect that from you.”
No, of course she wouldn’t. He’d been far from kind and considerate back then. “It has been seven years. I’ve grown up since then.” He had to smile at her dubious expression. “Some,” he qualified. “Not entirely.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the stories,” she quipped with a saucy smile that faded at the edges as she looked away, realizing what she’d revealed.
That slip, however, more than anything else, gave him some hope that she might not have so thoroughly cut him out of her life as she’d like it to seem. Slipping his hand more to the center of the small of her back, he eased her just a little closer, dropping his mouth to near her temple. She smelled of distant rain, of sweet skin and nostalgia. Of moonlit nights and the flowers of Annfwn. Of his own innocence, and a time he hadn’t loathed himself. “Tell me the truth, Salena—have you been seeking out stories about me?”
She made a small sound, of distress or desire, he wasn’t sure. “No,” she said, her voice firm and breathless at once. Her breasts, so temptingly displayed in that luscious gown, rose and fell, brushing against him in a way that threatened to make him lose his mind. “But,” she said on a light gasp, “one can’t help hearing things, can one? The more salacious, the more people love to chatter on.”
Daring more, he brushed her temple with his lips. Not quite a kiss, but terribly, agonizingly close to one. “Tell me what you’ve heard,” he purred against the delicate shell of her ear. “The most salacious tidbit.”
She laughed, throaty and sensual. “Oh no, I don’t think so. Your enormous ego needs no further stroking.”
“Maybe that’s not the enormous part of me that does need stroking.” Needing to taste her, he licked just that little curve of her ear, and she shivered in his arms.
“I’ve seen your ‘part,’ remember,” she replied, pulling back to establish more formal distance between them, narrowing her eyes, “and it is not enormous.”
“You wound me cruelly,” he said. “I was a barely more than a boy. I told you, I’ve grown.” He lowered his voice to tempt her closer. “And I’ve been practicing my selective shapeshifting.”
Her lips parted in shock at his wickedness, and he enjoyed the glimmer of interest in her eyes—until she punched him in the shoulder. “Liar. You have not,” she scolded.
“You don’t know,” he protested, but laughed, spinning her so she had to use her hand on his shoulder to steady herself instead of punching him again.
“I do know,” she replied, almost primly, when he slowed them again. “Even this ignorant mossback knows that selective shapeshifting requires painstaking practice and that only the most talented—” She broke off, a furious blush crowning her cheekbones. “I didn’t mean…”
“That’s all right,” he replied, making sure to sound bored, which was easy since he’d become essentially numb to any references to his lack of talent and inexcusable refusal to apply himself. “You are far from the first or only person to make note of my startling lack of shapeshifting ability.”
“Gendra and Zeph both say it’s not lack of ability,” Salena continued, blithely poking at the sore spot. “Even I can see Moranu’s hand on you. You’re Her chosen. If you’d just apply your—”
“Salena,” he broke in, cutting off her words ruthlessly, “if I want a lecture on my laziness and feckless ways, there are any number of people I can go to for that.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said quietly, after a few moments of fraught silence.
“You didn’t,” he said with deliberate lightness, sending her into a twirl and snagging her back closer than before. “You’d have to work much harder to match the casual gossip and direct remarks from my nearest and dearest that I hear on any given day.”
“Oh, Rhyian…” Salena searched his face, sympathy in hers. Now that stung.
“Feeling sorry for me?” he asked coolly, layering in haughty disdain. “Don’t. At least I can shapeshift.” As soon as the words escaped his lips, he wished them back. But it was too late. Salena’s expression chilled.
“Was that supposed to hurt?” she asked evenly. “I’d forgotten how well you do that, go from charming to cruel in an instant. Thank you for reminding me.” She stopped, yanking her hands from his.
Moranu curse his stupid tongue. “Salena, listen—”
“No,” she flung over her shoulder as she plowed a path through the dancers. “I’m done listening to you.”
He caught her arm but continued on the same trajectory. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he said through his teeth, “as you’ve avoided any real conversation with me for seven years.”
“There’s a reason for that,” she shot back, face set in furious lines. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
“What does that even mean?” Spotting a small salon off the main hall, Rhy poked his head in, verified it was empty, and dragged Salena inside.
“Stop dragging me around,” she spat as he closed and locked the door.
“Stop running away from me,” he snapped back. “Either that or stop blaming me for not chasing after you.”
She pulled up short, her fury cooling. “You have a good point. Just leave me alone, Rhyian,” she said wearily.
“I did,” he said simply. “Didn’t we both do that? We left each other alone for seven years, and it didn’t fix anything.”
She sat heavily on a plush chair by the fire, holding out her hands to its warmth. “Maybe some things are too broken to fix,” she said in a quiet voice to the cheerful flames.
“Your heart?” he asked, not sure if he wanted to ask sincerely or make a joke to lighten the mood, so his words came out somewhere in between, uneven and raw.
Salena looked up at him, no poise in her face, only sorrow, blue eyes glimmering with unshed tears. “Don’t laugh at me. You know you broke my heart. You did it on purpose.”
He raked his hand through his hair, deeply regretting he’d forced this conversation. This was why he hadn’t gone after her to begin with. But, as always happened when Salena was near, he couldn’t seem to resist her siren call. “It wasn’t like that,” he said, knowing it sounded weak and cowardly as he spoke the words.
“What was it like, Rhyian?” she asked. “Here’s your big chance to explain.”
He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Sometimes he didn’t even understand why he’d done what he had.
“Let me tickle your memory,”
she said in a quietly lethal tone, standing and stalking toward him. If Salena were a shapeshifter, her First Form would be a predator for sure. Probably a wolf. “I gave you my virginity. After months of spending every moment together—as best friends and more. We were lovers in every sense but that. Intimate in every way.”
“I remember,” he said. He remembered those heady days all too well.
“You were so romantic, so attentive, you made my head spin. I thought you loved me.” Her voice cracked as the tears spilled over, and Rhy, wracked with guilt, stepped toward her. She stopped him with an upraised hand and a ferocious glare. “I know you never said it, but I thought ‘Oh, Rhyian, he’s just not expressive that way. It’s the Tala nature.’ I made all the excuses for you, so you didn’t have to. No, don’t say anything yet.”
Her fury had returned, building as she finally said everything she hadn’t before. Rhy sat, burying his face in his hands, telling himself he’d asked to hear this. That he deserved having his heart cracked open and fed to the fire.
“You showed me love, Rhyian,” she continued, the words burning. “In countless small ways. I thought I didn’t need the words, but that maybe you did. So I told you that night. Do you remember that night?”
It was seared into his memory. Lifting his head, he made himself meet her fulminous gaze, the sense of a distant storm gathering. Lightning about to strike. She had her hands clenched into fists. “I will never forget that night,” he said, more or less evenly. “It meant something to me, too.” He took a deep breath and made himself give her the truth. “Because I was in love with you.”
~ 8 ~
Lena stared at him, beyond infuriated that he could say those words—the ones she’d ached to hear and convinced herself she never would—and that he could say them now, in the past tense, with such cool remove. The emotions of the past blended with those of the present, and she wanted to simultaneously weep and rage. Worst of all, she hadn’t learned. Some foolish, self-destructive part of her hoped—actually hoped—that Rhyian might love her still.
Rhyian could always do that to her, lure her in with his sensual teasing and flattering attention. When he looked at her, she felt like the most beautiful woman in the world. The intensity of his regard had always turned her head, sweeping everything else away until she lost all of her good sense and only wanted. Well, you can’t want Rhyian, she told herself firmly. She’d had him before, and she’d paid the price. He was like a dragon, so beautiful and enticing with his jeweled scales, that seductive dark magic in him shimmering, luring her to warm herself in the heat of his unwavering regard—until some little thing annoyed him and he turned her to ash with a cruel remark that breathed fire.
“How can you say that to me?” she demanded, but it came out as a broken plea. “I don’t want or need your lies.”
He stood, raking a hand through his hair again, more agitated than she’d ever seen him. Starting to reach for her, he jammed his hands into his pockets instead. “I’m not lying.”
“Then why did you—” She’d thought it would do her good to say the words, to make them both relive that terrible morning. How she’d awakened in his bed full of bliss, transcendent with happiness. Rhyian had been gone, but she’d lingered, happily anticipating his return with the Nahanaun coffee she loved and pastries they could feed each other in bed. It was the first time they’d spent the night together—and the first time they’d made love all the way—but they’d stayed up until dawn plenty of times, cuddling and sharing those intimate breakfasts.
And after a while, her joy had chilled as his spot on the bed cooled, an ice of dread forming on the edges. Even then, she’d known, though she’d denied it. Just as she’d denied everything she understood about Rhyian and didn’t want to. When she dressed and went to find him, she’d tried to hope she was wrong.
“Why did I go from your arms to someone else’s?” he asked, the words bitter, his shoulders rigid.
“Yes.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks, amazed that she could still cry over it, over him. “You wanted me to find you.”
He met her gaze, his eyes deep blue with turbulent emotion, his face ravaged. “Yes.”
And there it was, the admission she’d craved and dreaded. “Why?”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
She gaped at him, cleansing rage rushing in to displace the old, festering hurt. Launching herself at him, she shoved him hard. He staggered back, eyes flying wide in surprise. “Don’t you dare!” she shrieked at him. “Don’t you stand there and snigger at me and say you were in love with me but don’t know why you did the one thing certain to break my heart and drive me away.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” he shouted back. “I was stupid and I was terrified. You said you loved me and I-I panicked.” He raked a hand again through his already wild hair. “I knew it was the worst thing I could do to you. And when you found us…” He turned away to stare into the fire. “I’ll never forget the look on your face. And when I heard you’d left Annfwn, I was…” Blowing out a harsh breath, he met her accusing gaze. “I was relieved.”
She huffed out a bitter laugh, reliving that rending pain, the betrayal. “A relief to be rid of me, I’m sure.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Relieved that I didn’t have to face you, to justify actions that couldn’t be justified.” Dragging his hands from his pockets, he swept her an elaborate bow. “And thus the feckless bastard before you was born: lazy, useless, loathed by one and all.”
Staring at him, she found herself dry eyed at last, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”
“Good,” he said, jamming hands back in his pockets. “Because I don’t deserve any sympathy, least of all from you—the one person I cared about most and the one person I’ve hurt the worst.” He took a deep breath. “But I want to apologize to you. I don’t expect you to forgive me, and certainly not to forget, but I am sorry, Salena. I’m so very sorry for how I hurt you and betrayed your trust.”
Her heart turned over, a painful wrench that made her dizzy. “You never apologize,” she said faintly.
“Yes, well, I saved them all up for this.” He gazed at her, longing in it. “I only wish I could do or say something that means more.”
“Do you know what I threw in the fire?” she asked, the question jumping from her lips.
He assessed her cautiously. “I’m afraid to find out.”
“You,” she said bluntly, rather enjoying his flinch. “I wrote down your name and burned it, because I just want to be done with you, Rhyian. With this.” She flapped a hand between them.
“Fair enough,” he replied. “Do you think it worked?”
“Obviously not,” she ground out, “or I wouldn’t be locked in this room with you, rehashing the worst experience of my life.”
“Maybe we have to wait for midnight,” he suggested, “when Moranu will magically wipe the slate clean.”
It seemed absolutely impossible that she wanted to laugh at that. But that was Rhyian, too—irreverent and cynical in all the same ways that she was.
“Amusingly enough, I burned something similar. A rune,” he explained when she raised a brow, “representing the past self and all its myriad flaws. I’m fully confident that sunrise will see me as an entirely new person.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way,” she commented drily.
“No? Alas for that. I doubt that anything less than divine intervention could make me into a worthy person at this point.”
She considered him, taken aback by the level of self-loathing in his words. He wasn’t being flippant, either, but brutally honest. “The goddesses can’t change us, Rhy,” she said gently. “We have to do the hard work to change ourselves.”
“Ah. Hard work,” he replied in the same tone. “Also not my forte.”
“It could be, if you want it enough.”
“Hmm.” Moving slowly, he edged closer to her. “Maybe if t
here’s a tempting reward?”
She didn’t step back—couldn’t make herself—but she stopped his approach with a hand on his lean chest. “I can’t be your reward. That’s all in the past. I can’t… go through that again.”
He grimaced, then searched her face. “But we both burned the past. It’s gone. What we have is the present. Tonight. Right now.”
“I—” She hated how she faltered, how she so wanted to hope. How foolish it would be to let him hurt her again.
“I have something for you,” he said, drawing a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Taking her hand, he placed the square in her palm and closed her fingers over it, holding her gaze all the while. “I can’t change the past, Salena, but I can try to change the future.”
With shaking fingers, she opened the tightly folded square, the Tala rune shimmering with promise. “The moon?”
He quirked a smile. “I always forget you know everything.”
“When your mother is a proficient linguist and practically lives in the library…” she commented with a smile. “You’re giving me the moon?”
Breathing a laugh, he touched her cheek. “It’s my wish for the future. It’s you. Your name means the moon. It was the only thing I could think of that I want, that I felt was worth wishing for. I know I don’t deserve your love or regard—I never did, and that was part of the problem—but I wish that…” He trailed off, sounding so wistful that she couldn’t help moving into his touch. “I’d like to give you some joy and pleasure, Salena. To at least leave things in a better place between us. Instead of ending as we did. Would you let me try?”
She shouldn’t want this. She couldn’t seem to refuse him.
“How about just tonight?” she breathed. “One night when we forget the past.”
“I would love that,” he answered, long fingers trailing over her jaw. His eyes focused on her mouth, and he tilted his head, slowly closing the distance. Lena held her breath, anticipating.
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