by Dean Murray
It had never occurred to me to doubt her feelings, but I've known Kat for more than two hundred years. This wasn't about her and Patrick, this was about Kyle and me.
I've known for a long time that she doubts my decision, that she thinks that I picked the wrong brother, but this is the first time in decades that she's said as much. We argued and she stormed out as she so often does.
Thankfully I know she'll be back tomorrow and all will be forgiven, but I wish that I could make her see what I see in my Kyle. I had…not a realization exactly, more like a reminder of something that I've known for the longest time, but which I sometimes take for granted.
I could never be as happy with Jace as I am with Kyle. Jace is good and tender, considerate and kind. Any woman, highborn or low, would be lucky to have him, but he's not for me. Kyle is brilliant and powerful, but more than that, he's full of life and emotion. With Kyle I never have to worry that I'm too much, that I feel too much, that my rage will lash out and hurt him.
Kyle is his own person, complete with or without me, powerful and shielded by a rage as strong as anything contained inside of me. Kyle is strong enough to allow me to be as strong as I could ever want to be. With Kyle I'll never have to stifle my potential, and I'll always have a mind that is my equal with which to share the burden of protecting our pantheon.
Kyle understands me in ways that Jace never will because in many ways he is me. We are two sides of the same coin and he sparks a desire inside of me so intense that it can't be described. I've been happy with Kyle for more decades than most people get in two or even three lifetimes.
Our fights are spectacular, but we always come back together in the end and I'm always glad that we do.
Chapter 15
I'd paged through a number of entries in French before making it to that first English entry, and when I surfaced from reading I felt like I'd run a marathon. There was something to her narrative that went beyond the words on the page.
The woman who had written that entry hadn't been able to imagine jet fighters, cell phones or the internet, but she'd likewise done and seen things that I couldn't wrap my mind around. Despite our differences, there were similarities between us that I hadn't expected to find. She was desperately loyal to her family, to the little pantheon that she'd spent so many years with, and she was terribly afraid of the burden that she was forced to carry.
She hadn't wanted to be a researcher any more than I did. She played with the forces of creation, risking her existence in the process, for one reason and one reason only. Because it was her best chance of keeping the people around her safe. And even then she wasn't sure that she was going to be smart enough or powerful enough to protect them.
She was just as worried that she was going to come up short as I was. She was worried about not being enough.
The lure of someone else to share that burden with was nearly overpowering to me three centuries later—there was no way she could have withstood that kind of temptation back then. I wasn't her though. I was tempted, but I also knew things she hadn't. I knew that I'd eventually picked Jace, and I knew that Kyle had turned into someone darker than he'd been, someone who researched solely for the power it brought him, someone willing to sacrifice Jace and Kat without a second thought—someone willing to sacrifice even me if it came to that.
I was shaking, as much from hunger and exhaustion as from the extreme emotions coursing through me, but I reached for the book again anyway. The next several entries were in French, which was depressing. If all of my journals were a mix of two or more languages, I was going to have to expand my knowledge of other languages a lot more than I'd ever planned on.
Sometimes it seemed like it was all I could do to read and write in my native tongue—the idea of trying to cram French into my head made me want to slit my wrists. Being some kind of all-powerful demigod was supposed to be fun; so far it had just been a lot of danger, and even more studying.
Kyle moved next to me under the comforter, and for a second I thought he was waking up, which would be good—except for the fact that the only thing I was wearing was one of his t-shirts. Now I had yet another reason to get out of bed, but I didn't. Instead I picked my journal back up and resumed flipping through the pages in search of something written in the only language I understood.
I was halfway through the book—and still hadn't found a second entry in English—when I realized that I was starting to get hot. I absently shoved the comforter away, and in the process my left hand brushed across the bare skin of Kyle's chest and I realized that he was burning up again.
It had to be the poison—nothing natural would have caused him to develop a fever again after the first one had finally broke—and I finally had to face the fact that I was the biggest idiot in the world. I'd wasted the last hour with a journal—most of which I couldn't even read—instead of doing the smart thing and getting some food into me.
I pushed my journal to the side and rolled out of bed and onto what had to be the world's shakiest feet. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have had a prayer of getting Kyle to the bathtub, but I just reached for my anger—there was still plenty of it there for the asking—and amped up my strength to the point where it was a simple matter to grab Kyle's ankles and pull him toward me.
The bathroom was an absolute mess. I hadn't bothered to clean it up, my wet clothes were still piled on the floor and Kyle's jeans were still floating in the half-full tub. I fished his jeans out of the water and slung them over the nearby glass-walled shower in the three seconds it took me to climb into the water and submerge both of us.
The water was only a shade below room temperature, but Kyle started shivering instantly as the lukewarm water started sucking heat out of him. I turned the cold water on full and then pulled Kyle back on top of me, trying to conserve my energy.
Unfortunately once I was lying there motionless in the water there wasn't anything to distract me from the fact that I had one of the hottest guys in the world pressed up against me.
I started reciting a litany of Kyle's faults. He was selfish, he was cruel, and he was heartless. When that short list of character defects didn't serve to distract me from the feel of his rock-hard abs shaking underneath my right hand, I moved my hand higher up on his body and added to the list.
He was probably a bad kisser…only I didn't believe that. In fact, I didn't believe most of the things I was adding to the list, and as I acknowledged that truth I was forced to admit my doubts about the first three flaws on my list.
Pretending Kyle was someone other than who he was wasn't going to magically change his character for the worse any more than it would change his character for the better…any more than it would make the smooth, bulging pectorals underneath my hand anything other than swoon-worthy.
The truth was that Kyle's chest was as incredible as the narrow hips peeking out over the top of his boxers, and I had no idea what he was really like.
I moved my hand back down to his stomach and pulled him even closer to me. I told myself that I just wanted to be able to tell the instant his fever broke so that I could get him out of the water before his temperature plunged too far, but that was just an excuse.
"You'd better come back to me, Kyle. We've been through too much together for you to slip away before I've even had a chance to figure out which half of the story you're telling is the lie. You owe me that much. I owe you that much."
Chapter 16
By the time Kyle's fever broke again I was shaking even worse than he was. The water never got that cold—even with the tap going full out the entire time we were in the tub—but the temperature wasn't the only reason I was trembling.
Somewhere along the way I'd managed to tear myself away from the ache inside of me enough to realize just how dangerous of a situation I was in. I was developing feelings for Kyle that put everything I had with Jace in jeopardy, but none of that mattered if Fenrir and his henchmen broke through our wards sometime next week and killed Kyle and me.
As bad as that was, the threat of our wards collapsing didn't matter in the slightest if I let myself become too weak to take care of Kyle. If that happened then Fenrir would break in to find a couple of several-day-old corpses waiting for him.
I didn't know how I was going to accomplish everything that needed to be accomplished, but I had to at least try.
I got Kyle out of the water and dried him with one of the two remaining dry towels, the towels that I'd used as a blanket for him while I'd gone upstairs to get the comforter. Then I tucked him inside the comforter while I dried myself and pulled on another of his t-shirts.
There was no telling how many more cycles of freezing and fever we were in for, but if we didn't have dry towels then there wouldn't be any coming back the next time his fever broke. I grabbed all of the wet towels and my clothes and hung them over any surface I could find that looked like it might serve to dry them over the next few hours.
That took less than four minutes, but by the time I climbed into the bed with Kyle I was worried that I'd taken too long to get him warmed back up.
I had vague thoughts of trying to find the thermostat for this room, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes open while I cuddled next to Kyle's shivering body. Luckily, sheer exhaustion seemed to have at least temporarily cured me of the desire to lose myself in the thrill of running my hands up and down Kyle's muscly chest.
Based on the clock near Kyle's bed it took nearly an hour for him to warm back up to where he wasn't shivering, at which point I climbed out of bed and ran upstairs. I knew there were a couple of cans of soup left, but Kyle was going to need them.
I was more than a little worried that I was going to have to run back downstairs and harvest from the garden if I wanted to eat, but I didn't have that kind of time, so I was hoping that Kyle had stocked up on something else during one of his recent trips to the outside world.
I'd already checked the freezer so I knew there weren't any microwave meals hiding in there. I went through the rest of the cabinets that I hadn't checked the first time around when I'd been looking for the soup, and was nearly in a panic by the time I was halfway through still with no sign of any high-calorie processed food.
I did however find a couple of heating pads. They were the kind that you could put in the microwave, which gave me a great idea. I put the first blue square into the microwave and turned it on while I searched the rest of the cabinets for something I could eat.
Jackpot. About the same time the first heating pad came out of the microwave I found two boxes of cookies and tore into one of the sleeves of cookies like I was a starving savage—which was actually not too far from the truth.
I crammed three cookies into my mouth and then put the second heating pad into the microwave. My dad would have frowned and told me that cookies weren't a meal. Ari would have gasped and told me that they were going to go straight to my hips, but for the first time in my life I didn't have to worry about what I was eating. By that point I could have gone through both boxes in less than twenty-four hours and still not replaced the calories I'd lost shivering in the cold water with Kyle.
Speaking of which, I'd already been gone for too long. I zipped back downstairs with both heating pads, and after checking Kyle's temperature to make sure he hadn't spiked another fever, slipped the heating pads under the covers with him to help make up for the fact that I wasn't there with him.
I still wasn't free—not really. I still had to worry about Fenrir, and I still couldn't leave Kyle's side for very long without risking another sudden fever, but I was a lot more free than I'd been in hours.
I ran back upstairs for what I told myself was going to be the last time for a while and heated up one of the last two cans of soup. A few minutes later I was back downstairs with warm soup and cookies.
Feeding Kyle hadn't exactly gotten any easier, but at least now I knew what to expect. He got all of the chicken broth and I finished up the noodles to balance out my meal of cookies. I tried really hard at first to keep from getting crumbs everywhere, but then the ludicrousness of it all caught up with me and I decided if Kyle complained about some cookie crumbs when he woke up—if he woke up—then I would just strangle him myself.
Once we were both fed I wanted nothing more than to just fall asleep and never wake up, but I forced myself to take the opportunity to prep for future emergencies. I broke my promise to myself and went back upstairs again, but this time I swapped out my dirty dishes for clean dishes, the last can of soup, the can opener, and the microwave.
I probably made quite the sight lugging it all downstairs inside of the microwave, but it all fit perfectly once I cleared off one of the end tables and it meant that I could warm up a heating pad without ever even having to leave the bed. In my mind that was worth looking stupid, especially when there wasn't anyone around to see it.
I debated cleaning myself up, but in the end exhaustion won out. I fished the heating pads out and crawled under the comforter with Kyle. I was still too tired to turn into an over-sexed lust bunny, but that didn't mean that it didn't feel nice to wrap my arms around his bare chest and stomach.
Too bad I fell asleep before I really had a chance to appreciate my situation.
Chapter 17
I'd fallen asleep prepared for a sudden change in Kyle's core temperature to force me out of bed after just a few hours. Instead, I actually managed to get a full six hours of sleep. If I'd been human that wouldn't have been anywhere near enough, but as an Awakened I'd basically just slept for twenty-four hours straight.
My journal was waiting for me on the edge of the bed when I woke up. It was tempting—even more tempting than the half-naked man sleeping next to me—but I wasn't sure I could handle any more revelations. I was already struggling when it came to my self-control. It wasn't like I was really going to assault Kyle while he was sleeping, but the things that I was feeling right now were going to make things difficult once he woke up.
Another journal entry or two talking about how Kyle was the perfect boyfriend—the perfect husband—wasn't going to make things any easier.
In the end I heated up both of the heating pads and then rolled out of bed and headed into the bathroom for a long overdue shower. It was the most awkward morning ritual I'd ever performed. I kept coming out of the bathroom half-dressed or midway through brushing my teeth to check on Kyle, and it took a lot longer than I'd expected it to, but when I was finally done I looked at least somewhat presentable and I felt a ton better.
My clothes were dry, but they weren't exactly clean, so I pulled on another of Kyle's t-shirts and then hunted around downstairs until I managed to find the decades-old washing machine and dryer. It was silly to run it with just my clothes, so I grabbed some of Kyle's laundry from the pile the chute deposited them in, and threw them in too.
By that point I'd been out of bed and left Kyle unattended for the longest single stretch since he'd been injured. I was super nervous I was going to come back and find him burning up again, but if anything when I made it back to the bedroom he was starting to get a little cold.
I reheated the heating packs and propped them up against his chest and back, and looked over at the innocent-looking white leather of Genevieve's journal. Talk about tempting. I told myself I was better than that, popped a couple of cookies in my mouth, and left the room.
I headed downstairs planning on getting some fruits and vegetables, but I ended up stopping off in Kyle's lab. It was hard to say what pulled me there. I would have expected it to be the egg-shaped pseudo-artifact, but once I made it inside I just ended up staring at all of the equations on his chalk boards.
It was funny. My mind usually shut down when faced with anything more complicated than 3x = 9. I wasn't that girl, that woman, who'd spent decades unlocking the secrets of the universe. I knew less than nothing about what any of Kyle's equations meant, but they still somehow looked right to me.
Rather, most of them looked right to me. I felt like the amnesia patient who'd
been told that she was still capable of doing routine, familiar mechanical tasks if she didn't think about it. It was like I'd been handed a pen and I'd signed my name, but while the signature looked right I didn't know what I'd just signed or who I actually was.
I walked past blackboard after blackboard that looked utterly alien and yet still completely familiar, but the last two looked wrong somehow. I must have stood there for almost twenty minutes before remembering that I was on a deadline. After that I hurried the rest of the way down to the garden and picked an assortment of fruits.
I stopped off at Kyle's bedroom on the way back upstairs to check on him and reheat the heating pads, but he seemed to be doing all right so I went on up to the kitchen and washed the fruit clean. The ancient, industrial-sized blender that I'd seen on one of my earlier trips was more than up to pulping the fruits and I managed to find honest-to-goodness refined sugar and added half a cup into the mix to give it some extra calories.
I probably would have added in ice except for the fact that the ice cube trays were still down in Kyle's bathroom. I would have felt like a terrible house guest if not for the fact that I was dealing with such extenuating circumstances. It was hard to feel guilty about trashing Kyle's place when I'd been playing round-the-clock nurse for the last two days.
The last forty-eight hours had been some of the most exhausting of my life. I was worn out, half-starved, and wound more tightly than I'd ever been wound, but it had also been incredibly satisfying—especially the last few hours. It just felt right to be taking care of Kyle.
It was kind of funny. Here we were three hundred years after Genevieve's journal entry had been written. Women could vote now and own property, but this version of me had probably done more 'women's work' in the last two days than the last version had done in a decade. She'd been nobility. It didn't matter whether she'd been born that way or if she'd used transmuted gold to buy her way in, the pantheon had probably never lacked for anything. She'd had servants who'd taken care of the cooking and the cleaning.