Empty of almost everything, my heartbeat slowed. I lay unmoving in my shackles, the altar cold and hard beneath me. Sluggish beats sluiced blood through my veins. Damn. Another of those tidbits I should have known and didn’t. Empty it all, and there was nothing left to survive on, apparently.
Hello, farm, I hope you’re pretty this time of year. Let me just get out my pocketbook.
My heart gave a mighty kick as shouting crashed into the room. “Addy!” Remy bellowed, and quieter, I thought I could hear Asher. A black film slid over my eyes. Hair tickled my face, scented with spicy cologne and sweet whiskey. The shouting grew distant and surreal. It would have been a nice dream if I didn’t hurt so much.
“You stay with me, Addison,” Asher’s voice called from across the universe, and Marcus’s weight disappeared from me. “Hear me. Stay with me. Please!” He sounded panicked, anguished.
He was alive. I’d saved him. My heart felt like singing with its last beat.
Chapter 35
The steady thump of a heartbeat against my ear eased me back to consciousness. I cracked my eyes open to find myself lying in the crook of Asher’s arm, his other hand stroking my hair along my back. His warmth, sweet scent, and pulsing energy soothed me. I could have fallen asleep forever in bliss.
“Oh, damn,” I said. “I must have died, because this has to be heaven.”
He flinched, withdrawing his hand from my hair. “I didn’t mean to wake you. You’re not dead, but you gave it your best shot.” I thought he was trying for humor, but the exhaustion and pain in his voice suggested he probably wasn’t exaggerating.
So he was really holding me? In a bed? A smile slipped across my lips. “How long have I been out?”
“Just a couple of hours. I stitched you up and injected you with a pain killer, but you’ll be sore when it wears off.”
I slid my hand up his chest, snuggling harder against him, terrified he might panic and leave. I wasn’t sure if he meant for me to find him caring for me this way or had intended to be gone before I woke up. Remembering the events of the day, I realized Asher must have been angry with himself. “There’s nothing you could have done, you know. No training or strength or smarts that would have prepared you for this, so don’t blame yourself for anything.”
His arms tightened around me, but I didn’t dare move so I could see what his expression held. “It was my job to keep you safe, and I was completely useless.”
“Marcus has been planning this for the last sixty-five years, and he has all of the secrets of the Machine and we don’t. This was my fight, anyway, and you kept me alive long enough to fight it.” I slipped my fingers between the buttons on his black shirt to reach his skin, wishing I could rip the thing off him.
He sipped in a breath, turning his head to press his lips against my temple. “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”
“What do you think Izan intends to do with us once the Machine is working again? You don’t think he really intends to use us as a weapon, do you? And what happens now? I’ve been so bent on finding the traitor, I haven’t really stopped to consider what would come after if we got it done.”
“I don’t know, but I have wondered if Izan has other plans for us once we conquer the wraiths. Now that you’re here and it seems you can talk to him, you’re going to have to ask and judge for yourself whether or not he’s telling the truth. We need to find the pages of the bible, and I think we need to find your mother. But don’t worry about that now. Just rest.”
The magnitude of what we’d done, and what we still had to do, hit me like a fist to the head. I was the Architect, and there were at least a few people in the Machine who weren’t going to accept direction from a rabbit in the grass. “It’s over isn’t it? We really did it.”
“You really did it. And there’s one more threat that needs to go before you can get those delicate hands working to fix the Machine, and only I can take care of this one.” The grief in his voice filled my belly with sick heat.
I tried to ease myself up, but he rolled me gently onto the bed, staring down at me with a sad expression.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Izan said there was only one traitor, and I’m pretty sure I just … oh God, I killed him.” I should have felt something after taking a life, but I felt … nothing.
“You did what you had to, and now I’m going to do what I have to.” One corner of his lips quirked up, but his eyes were glassy. “Marcus might have been a conniving, lying dirt bag, but everything he said about me was the absolute truth.” He cleared his throat. “The Machine needs you to be happy and whole the way Izan intended, and I’d only end up hurting you. If I keep letting myself get close to you, I won’t be able to resist finishing the bond we started. Marcus said it’s unbreakable, Addison, and I won’t take the chance that my rage will kill the part of you the Machine needs. You are perfect just as you are. I wouldn’t curse my worst enemy with an eternity with me, so I have to make you forget.”
“Forget what?”
He leaned in and kissed my forehead, to hide his expression, I thought.
“Wait, are you talking about the kisses?” I drew in a panicked breath, clutching my shoulder when pain stabbed me. “Please, Asher, please don’t make me forget that.”
He shook his head, teeth clenched. “I can’t be what you need, and I love you enough to make sure you never love me back.”
“So it’s true? You really …” I couldn’t say the “L” word. I still didn’t quite believe it. I felt it, but didn’t believe it. “We’re supposed to be together, another of those things written into the universe that won’t be denied no matter how hard we fight it, like my inevitable induction into the Machine. Marcus was just pushing your buttons. Tell me you don’t believe him.”
“It’s not written in stone. You’ve seen how the Machine works—when one of us falls, another steps in to take his or her place. I won’t let us be, but not because I don’t want this. I’d give anything to shout at the world that you’re mine, to have you waking up all sleep-tousled from spending the night in my arms, throwing on one of your plaid shirts and sitting in my kitchen while I make you breakfast.”
His grin warmed me further, and he brushed a few strands of hair over my ear. “You’re so at peace when you’re in your element—adorable. I can hardly breathe every time you walk into the room, especially when your hair is down, and it takes every ounce of willpower I have to not take you in my arms, to strip you bare and explore every inch of you. To kiss and nip you while you giggle and sigh and squirm. That’s my vision of heaven, Addison, one I don’t deserve. Back there in the woods, I actually started to imagine we could have a life together while we fight this war. Once I finally had you within reach, it became so much harder to keep my hands off you. You’re not only the wraith’s Sun, but mine as well, and only through you do I truly live. But Marcus reminded me why I hid my feelings for you for so long. I won’t risk you or the Machine no matter how much I want to be with you. With me, it—and you—would only be broken.”
I was choking on shock, but I managed to say, “Izan saw something in you, something you clearly don’t see yet, but I do during those odd times when you allow it. Let me help you see that you’re a good man, my man. And what risk? You’ve taken care of me since forever, and I didn’t even know it. You grump at me, but you’ve never really hurt me.”
Bringing a bundle of my hair to his nose, he said, “My mother was like you, soft of heart, kind to a fault. My father worshipped her when he wasn’t angry. He was always cold and distant to my eyes, but he kept his temper for years until he lost his job. He almost killed her that night. It wasn’t until the next time he raised his hand to her that I found the courage to intervene. Every broken bone he gave me, every drop of blood he spilled, every icy word from him, slowly infected me with his rage.
“I’ve seen what happens to a woman like you who falls for a man like me. And I am a monster at my core, just like he was. You were right abou
t that.”
“You’re not your father, Asher, and I’m not your mother. How can you think you’re like him? Even if you used to be, didn’t you feel the change in you after you let your walls down back there in the woods? That rage might be in you somewhere, but I can help you let it go, change it into something that will help the Machine. And if I can kill Marcus while chained up, then I think I can handle your temper.”
“I’ve done things, terrible things then and since that destroyed who I might have been. I’m not useful for anything but a hired gun. You deserve someone who will make you happy. I’ve ruined everything I’ve ever touched, and you would be no different. So this one time, I’m going to be a man. I’ll act as your conduit while I keep my distance and leave you untainted by me, and find the courage and strength to let you go when Izan finds a better match for you.”
My own anger rose, and I let it show in my face. I struggled to sit up, but he swung his leg over mine, holding me down gently. “I’ve seen further into your soul than I think you have,” I said. “You are not like him. You did what you had to, to protect your mother. Someone like him wouldn’t have done that, or have watched over me like my own personal guardian angel. And as for those other things, you did them while you were lost, trying to find your way out of a life your dad left you with. You feel remorse now, and that’s enough for me. You don’t get to choose who I spend my eternity with, and I want you. I love you.” I hadn’t realized it until the words came out of my mouth, but it was true. Maybe some part of me knew he’d been with me all along, recognized his scent and his presence from all the times in my life he’d stood next to me when I couldn’t see him. “You are my safe place, Asher.”
A growl rumbled from him. “Don’t say that. You’re a pure soul, like your father, and that’s what the Machine needs to undo what Marcus has done to us. It’s my duty to keep you that way.”
Holding a finger over my lips that had parted to argue, he let out a shaking breath and swung his leg over to straddle my hips. “And now I’m going to kiss you once more, and then you’ll forget that I adore you and every moment I let slip that showed you I do. And since all pretenses are off, you have the most incredible eyes I’ve ever seen. Every time I see them, I’ll remember this moment when there was nothing but truth between us.” His next kiss was savage in its need, deep and desperate as he moaned. I spread my fingers into his hair, held his shaking body as he held mine.
We were light and darkness, beginning and ending, two halves of a whole that would never be right apart. Why couldn’t he see it? He had to have felt our cogs clicking together before Marcus came and ruined everything. How could I prove to him that nothing else in my life had ever been so right? That Asher wasn’t the evil he thought himself to be?
The kiss went on for an eternity that was probably seconds, and it wasn’t nearly long enough.
My lips were swollen and wet, both from the kiss and my tears that fell freely. “Say my name,” he said. “Let me hear it on your lips just once more. It kills me every time you call me anything else. Say it, Addison. Say it for me, please.”
“Asher,” I said. “Asher, don’t. I need this, you have no idea how much. I need you! The Machine needs us. Don’t let Marcus win. He knew your fears and played them. Listen to me!”
His hidden tattoos rose to the surface, glowing deep blue. Strangled by panic, I shoved against him, ignoring the burning ache in my shoulder. “Let me go. Please, don’t! You promised you’d never leave me!”
He held my face in his hands. “And I won’t. I’ll always take care of you from the shadows where I belong, even while I make you hate me. I’ll find someone who will cherish you the way you deserve. Watching you fall in love with another guardian will be the hardest thing I’ll ever do, but I’m going to do this one thing right if it kills me. Good-bye, Addison. I’ll always love you.”
His power slammed into me like a concussion wave. I tried to lock my mind up tight, but it was like trying to stop a broken dam with a finger, he just kept pouring around me, through me, filling me up like a large hand into a small glove.
I clung to the memory of our first coconut kiss on the dock, but he shattered it, sent it glittering out into white fog like pieces of a broken mirror. Every little moment I caught him staring at me, my stuff at his house, and finally, everything he’d just said to me, spiraled out into that nothing.
The last thing I felt before rolling under was Asher’s tears raining down on my face. And then he took those from me, too.
About the Author
Jocelyn is an office grunt by day and creator of romance and intrigue by night. Born a farmer’s daughter with a vivid imagination, she spent her childhood dreaming up stories that remained untold until 2010. With no formal training, she relied on the honest feedback of her writing group to take her from that first short story all the way to THE END of her first novel. When she isn’t slinging words, you can find her shooting her bow or enjoying the serenity of family life in her little house in the woods.
Acknowledgments
What started out as a simple idea for this book developed into one of the most complicated worlds I’ve attempted, which I didn’t fully appreciate until it came time to hand it over to beta readers and editors. If not for a few awesome people, both old friends and new ones I’ve met during the publishing process, this story might never have made it out of my laptop.
To Amaleen Ison, who has a keen eye for both detail and the bigger picture, who makes me a better writer and person with her insights and thoughtfulness, I thank you from the far reaches of my heart.
To Jennifer M. Eaton, whose encouragement gave me the strength to keep my head up through the piles of rejection letters and helped me sort out Addison and Asher’s world, I appreciate you more than I can say.
To Anna Simpson, who found the courage to tell me the truth about the book’s flaws, you showed me another side to the story I hadn’t considered, and it—and me—are all the better for it.
To my incredible editors, Tracy and Karen, thank you for taking so much time with this crazy author, for helping me bring this book from okay to awesome, and for the endless encouragement that left me smiling.
And lastly, to the staff at Entangled Publishing, thanks for seeing the potential in this story and giving it a chance to shine.
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