And then they were moving—where, she couldn’t tell, but they were no longer on the porch. She was in a room somewhere, one with different smells and new sounds. Dhara still couldn’t see anything but blackness and her breathing was ragged and rough, each breath she took shooting pain through her sternum. It felt like she was drowning but there was no water, and she vaguely thought that Nicolette’s description had been right—when she was caught up in the terror of the moment, she did almost wish for death because it seemed more appealing than the fire and fear rushing through her.
There were words coming out of her mouth. She didn’t know what they were or who she was talking to, but she could hear her vocal cords working. It might have been only screams and moans that were escaping her, but even if that was the case, she didn’t care. She was too far gone into the possession to care about anything like dignity. If she could scream the spirits out of her, then she would. All she wanted was release—release that would make her feel like herself again.
Not that she knew who shewas anymore.
The blackness got more intense, and she felt as though she would be lost in it forever, experiencing only the sensations of torment against her skin, and then, out of nowhere, it all disappeared in a second. It happened so fast that she didn’t even realize it at first. But then there was no pain, and she was staring up at a ceiling stained with mold and a couch with soft, broken-in pillows beneath her.
She could breathe and the pace of her heart had slowed down to a far more normal rhythm, easing the sense of panic that she had been existing in for a span of time that could have as easily been thirty seconds as a thousand years.
“Dhara.” Kean was kneeling beside her, his face a mask of concern as he bent over her to study her eyes. “Dhara, sweetheart. Say something. Can you hear me?”
Dhara coughed, lifting a shaky hand to touch his shoulder. “It left. It went away. Am I cured? Kean—did it work?” Surely that was the spell. Percy had chosen to help them, and he had, sending her deeper into the darkness than she had ever been before pulling her out of it, whole and healthy again.
Kean’s eyes were so sad, and she didn’t know why. “No, sweetheart. All he did was bring you back out of the fit you were in. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that you’re going through this.”
“It isn’t over?” she whispered, hardly able to bear the thought. “There’s more?”
“There’s no more.”
The voice was foreign to her, and Dhara glanced up, past Kean, and locked eyes with a man with narrow, sky-blue eyes, gray hair, and more lines in his face than there were in a Shakespearean play. Perhaps it was the fact that they had barged into his house, with her in the midst of a possessed fit, late at night, but he looked angry.
“What?” she asked, not understanding his expression or what he’d said. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that you muscled your way into my house, when I told your friend here that I’m out of business!” The man threw his hands up in the air, growing more irate by the minute. “What part of this is confusing to you? I. Do. Not. Do. These. Cleanses. Anymore!”
Dhara sat up, her head spinning slightly. Whether it was the lingering effects of the episode she’d just had or simply that she was at the end of her rope with all of it, she didn’t know. But she meant every word that came pouring out of her mouth.
“Listen, I don’t know you,” she told the man, pointing a finger at him as she used her other hand to push Kean away when he tried to calm her down. “And I understand that you don’t love the fact that we’ve just walked in here at nine o’clock at night. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to be upset about, and I apologize for the intrusion. In fact, I will pay you every single cent in my bank account right now to try to make up for the inconvenience. But your feelings are really not that important here. I am going to die because someone—I have no idea who—performed a spell on me—I don’t really understand why—and it's gotten corrupted. Two weeks ago, that sentence would have never come out of my mouth, but here we are, and if I’m being honest with you, I don’t like it any more than you do. In fact, I probably like it a hell of a lot less, given that it’s my life on the line. So I don’t really give a fuck if you don’t feel like helping me. I don’t even give a fuck if something significant happened to you in your past that convinced you that you would never go through this process again. From what I can tell, either this thing is going to kill me from the inside out, or it’s going to make me so miserable that I’m going to wish to die to the point that my body literally shuts down. I don’t know about you, but I think that trumps whatever you have going on. What do you think?”
“I think you should get out of my house,” Percy retorted, unmoved by her tirade, his arms crossed over his chest. “You don’t know what you’re on about. How did you even get here? Who sent you to me? Is there no such thing as privacy anymore?”
“Leitheia,” Kean said, sitting back from the couch. “She told me that you would help me, Percy. Do you know her?”
Percy’s narrow eyes narrowed further. “Where did you get that name?”
“She was a friend of my father’s. Do you know her? She said you were the person I needed to see. And another friend of mine—Cassandra—she said that you helped Nicolette, her daughter. We talked to her earlier today.” Kean was on his feet, openly pleading. “My girlfriend is in a lot of trouble. Please help her. We’re desperate. We’ll give you whatever you want.”
“It’s not that simple,” Percy said, taking a step back, holding up both hands. “It’s really not. You wouldn’t understand. Neither of you. I’m off that stuff. I’m done with all of it. Not even for Leitheia.”
“Who is Leitheia to you?” Dhara asked. “Does she matter to you?”
“She was my wife,” Percy muttered, not looking at her. “Years ago. It doesn’t change anything. I’m out of this business. It’s not worth the consequences, messing with people’s lives this way. That’s what none of you people get. There’s always a cost! And it’s not just a cost for you all—it’s me too.” He shook his head, taking another step back. “No. I’m not doing it again. After Nicolette—no.”
Dhara and Kean exchanged glances, frowning. “What are you talking about?” Dhara asked. “Nicolette is cured. It worked. How are there bad consequences to that?”
Percy let out a loud, barking laugh. “What consequences? What consequences? Did she not tell you that it took three days to get her cleansed? Did she not tell you how many times she almost died? Did she not tell you what kind of power was expended to keep her on this side? That kind of power comes with consequences! I was taxed fifteen years of my life!” His voice was loud and almost panicked, his hands shaking as he held them out, taking another step back from them. “I’m fifty-five years old! How old do I look to you?”
Dhara realized for the first time that he did look a great deal older than his reported age. If she’d had to guess, she would have put him in his seventies without hesitation. A pang of guilt hit her. Was her life so important that it meant she had a right to cost him his? That was a question she didn’t know how to answer.
“Is it the only way?” Kean asked, advancing on the man even as he backed up. “Is there another way that isn’t as taxing?”
“Of course there isn’t,” Percy spat. “You think this is some kind of common process? You think it’s as simple as a cleansing? It means healing a person’s soul—their very being. It means piecing them back together and restoring pieces of them that are dead. Bringing those pieces back to life. I didn’t ask to be given that kind of power, you know. I was just a mystic. I was like Leitheia. I helped people. I did good things. I lived a good life. I didn’t ask to become a part of all this.”
“How did you?” Dhara asked, standing up too. “What was your first time?”
“It was years ago,” Percy said, shaking his head and looking away, like he couldn’t bear to talk about it. “After Leitheia and I parted ways. But we’ve been frien
ds. We’ve stayed in touch. Talked about things over the years. She knows what kind of trouble this has brought me—what it’s done to my life. It was an accident. All of it. I didn’t know what was wrong with the first boy I first helped. I just wanted to help him.” Percy shook his head, turning his back on them. “All I wanted to do was help the boy, and now …all these years later. It’ll be the death of me.”
Dhara turned to Kean, not knowing what was right. “Maybe we need to go.”
“No,” Kean said, his voice firm. “We’re not leaving here. There isn’t another way, Dhara.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s his responsibility to give up his life for mine.”
“We don’t know that that will happen again.”
Percy whirled on them. “Of course, it will. It happens every time. No, not fifteen years at a time, but at this point, every day counts. I’ve given away two decades of my life doing this—and for what? What did I gain?”
Neither of them spoke, and Percy shouted at them again, jabbing his finger in Kean’s face.
“Tell me! What did I gain?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Kean
Kean had been fighting all of his life. It was ingrained in the members of the Celtic Dragon Clan from the moment they began transitioning, and they honed their skills throughout their early years. He had fought both supernatural and natural forces. He had fought against weather. Against energy. He had fought against anything that stood in the way of what he had felt was just and right.
But never had Kean had such motivation to fight as he did right now, standing in a stranger’s house, making demands from him that he knew might not be considered fair by some people but that he wasn’t going to walk away from.
He was doing it for Dhara. He would do anything for Dhara.
“What you have to gain?” Kean asked, walking up close to Percy, so that they were almost nose to nose and eye to eye. “Do you know how many people give more than twenty years of their lives to save other people? It’s called being a hero. It’s called sacrificing. What about all the people who have served in the military while you’ve been alive? Haven’t they been fighting to help keep you and others safe? Do you think that they would stand here, shouting like this, demanding to know what they gained? No—they gave their lives to help save other innocent people.”
“They signed up for that,” Percy said, jabbing Kean in the chest with his finger. “I didn’t.”
“Maybe they did,” Kean agreed. “Or maybe they were drafted. Or maybe it’s someone not even in the military. Someone who finds themselves in a certain moment or a certain situation where they have a choice to make. Who do you respect? The person that sacrifices for others or the person who cries in the corner, demanding to know what’s in it for him?”
Percy glared at him, and Kean could see that the man was determined not to see things his way. It meant that he was going to have to make a hard decision.
“Nobility is all fine and well,” Perce said coldly. “But I’ve given my share. Now get out of my house before I call the police.”
“I wouldn’t do that. There are some things that might be difficult to explain.” Kean said, taking a step back. He glanced at Dhara, flashing her a warning with his eyes that he could only hope she would understand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her step backward, but he was already mid-transition, his dragon form unfurling and his tail swinging out, crashing through the furniture in the house as it landed heavily on the couch.
His wingspan was as big as the room, and the ceilings were much too low for him to stretch his neck all the way out without breaking the structure of the house, but Kean knew that his presence was intimidating. To add to the impact, he opened his mouth, breathing out a cloud of fire that hung around Percy’s frozen body, the flames flickering closer and closer to him as Kean’s yellow eyes glared down at him.
In case he hadn’t made his point, he lifted up one front foot and stamped it down so hard against the carpeted floor that the entire house shook and the carpet shredded beneath his sharp claws. Percy shuddered in front of him, his jaw hanging open and his eyes as wide as they could get.
“Shit!” Percy said, stumbling backward, his hands searching behind him to brace against the walls. “Shit! What the hell is going on here? What the fuck!”
“Kean!” Dhara shouted, moving toward him. “What are you doing?”
He brushed her back with his wing. He knew, and he admired, that she wouldn’t feel right about demanding that Percy help her, despite the cost to him, but that was why he was there to do it for her. They might have lost sight of it over the course of the past two weeks, but she was his client. He worked for her, and he was there to make sure that she got what she needed.
Without warning, Kean shifted back into his human form, taking no notice of the fact that he was standing in the man’s room, completely naked, his clothes now in shreds around the room, wherever they had landed.
“What about now?” Kean asked, not giving Percy even a moment to readjust to there not being a dragon in his living room. He just moved in on the man, letting the full impact of his intimidation factor radiate from him. “Are you ready to help us now?”
Percy swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Yes, all right. Okay. God! What the fuck are you?”
“None of your business,” Kean said. He needed the man’s help, but he’d lost respect for him when Percy had gone on and on about trying to figure out how saving innocent people’s lives helped him in any way. Besides, he had broken the rules again, revealing himself to someone. There was no need to go into details and give Percy potentially more ammunition against him once this was all over. “Now tell me what you need to help my girlfriend.”
For a long moment, Percy just continued to stare at him, clearly at a loss. But when Kean narrowed his eyes at the man, Percy shifted back into gear, clearing his throat several times before answering him.
“Uh, right. Uh, okay. Uh, we need to create a circle. A circle first. Yes.”
“How about some clothes for me too?” Kean suggested, and Percy went scurrying off to fetch what he needed.
In the meantime, Kean looked over at Dhara, ready to face her reaction, no matter what it was. “Mad at me?” he asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“I know you’re having second thoughts, Dhara,” Kean said, walking over to her and taking her hands in his. “But what’s more important? Your life, or maybe a year or two of his?”
“He’s an old man.”
“And you’re a young, beautiful, intelligent woman who never asked for any of the things that life handed you,” Kean said gently, leaning down to kiss her. “You matter. You’re worth saving.”
Her arms slid around him, her head tucking against his neck. “I don’t know if that’s true. I’m afraid.”
Holding her close, he closed his eyes and ran a hand over her hair. “So am I, sweetheart. So am I. But we’re almost there, aren’t we?”
“I hope so,” she whispered. “I’m so tired of all of this. I just want to lie down and sleep forever—sleep that’s uninterrupted by fear of what will happen while I’m not paying attention.”
“We’ll go to bed and not get up for weeks,” he promised her. “For a number of reasons. You’re going to pull through this, and then we’re going to have a very long time together.”
He felt her tense against him, and he knew that she was still thinking that he meant to take his mate despite the relationship he had with Dhara. There had been no time for him to tell her that he was reconsidering that, and now wasn’t the moment. That would be his gift to her when she came out of what was about to happen with her life and her health fully intact.
“Come on,” he told her, tilting her chin up and smiling down at her gently. “Make me believe that you believe it’s all going to be okay.”
Her returning smile was weak, but she did manage it. “I want to believe. Is that enough for right now?”
/> “That’ll be enough,” Kean agreed, stroking her cheek. “I’ll believe enough for the both of us.”
Chapter Forty
Dhara
Dhara was all alone. She could see Kean, and he wasn’t that far from her, watching over her as always. But there was a barrier between them now—one made of salt and crystals and a dusted powder that Dhara couldn’t identify. It was in a circle around her prone body, and she lay on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling with her hands clenched at her sides.
The only light in the room came from the candles that lined every surface, the flames supposedly lending power to Percy as he sat cross-legged at the head of the circle, his hands firmly planted beside him. There were other sources of power set all around him—plants, charms, and runes littered the floor beside them, all serving to accentuate the inner source of power that made Percy the healer that he was.
She could hear him chanting his preparation rituals, murmuring words she didn’t understand under his breath and rocking back and forth slowly. As he did, Dhara kept her eyes on Kean’s, taking comfort in the steadiness of his gaze. He couldn’t reach out and touch her without breaking the sanctity of the circle, but the way his eyes stayed on her, she could feel his touch everywhere and it helped to soothe her jumbled nerves.
After such a long journey to this point, she could hardly believe that she was about to be rid of what had been planted inside of her without her knowledge or acceptance. At least, she hoped that she would be freed of it. There were no guarantees, which Percy had told them over and over again as he’d set up. What she was about to go through was going to be—
Her thoughts cut off as a sharp, searing pain overtook her, making her body arch up as a scream ripped from her throat. “Aaaaaaaarghhhhh!”
“Fuck!” Kean said, on his feet in an instant. “You weren’t supposed to start until you warned her!”
“I haven’t started,” Percy said, his voice tense. “I’m just centering my power. My power doesn’t like the power that’s in hers. They’re like matching ends of a magnet. They’re going to push against each other.”
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