But Xander Daxx does not see me. He does not look my way. He stays where he is, chatting to his friends. He has a glass of champagne in his left hand, and his right arm is looped around the waist of the beautiful Princess Caroline. She looks just as perfect as in all of her photographs. She is looking up adoringly into his face. He turns to her and says something, and she laughs, looking like she is standing in the center of the world.
And she is standing in the center of the world. Because anywhere her love is must be the center of her world.
A laugh in my ear draws me back to myself. It came from Freddie, who is looking at me with both amusement and jealousy.
“You’re not the only one,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Look around you. Look at all the women. Half of them are staring at him like you were. One would almost think he’s got some wizard to put a spell on him.”
“A spell?” I murmur.
“A love spell, of course.” He looks at me as if I am naïve. “Or something to make him extra charming. They use it to facilitate their business deals, you know.”
I flush indignantly at his patronizing tone. I’ve not been a complete recluse. I have read in magazines about ordinary people who were found out after using spells to make celebrities fall in love with them. Mrs Colton hated magic. Every time she saw a beautiful young woman with an old rich guy, she blamed magic. If she’d had magic I bet the first thing she’d have done was snare a rich guy.
But it seems unlikely to me that Xander Daxx would resort to using such tricks. He has so much confidence in himself that he doesn’t even feel the need to refer to himself as a prince. He doesn’t need spells to make women want him. He probably has powerful angelus blood — strong enough to give him a natural magic all of his own. It’s likely that which is making me feel so odd when I look at him.
Better not to look at him at all. Better to not yearn for the stuff of dreams. I try to focus on what Freddie and his friends are talking about, all the while concentrating on not letting my eyes slide back towards Xander Daxx and his friends. My Hunter is not there. I do all the nodding and smiling that I am supposed to do, but all the while I feel like a big fake. I need some air to clear my head.
“Excuse me,” I say to Freddie. “I just need to take a moment.” I gesture randomly across the room.
Freddie looks disappointed. “You’re not going so soon?”
“Of course not. I’ll come find you.”
He pouts. “You don’t need to mingle. You’re with me.”
“I just need some air.”
He brightens. “I’ll take you for a stroll around the garden.”
“No Freddie. I just need a moment to myself.”
Freddie looks around at the crowd worriedly, as if I might disappear into it.
“Okay,” he says hesitantly. “While you do that, I’ll go to get you a drink.”
I nod at him gratefully. He marches purposefully towards the bar, and I slip away into the garden.
Outside, it is getting dark, but lanterns and strings of fairy-lights strung up among the foliage give a magical glow. The air is redolent with the scent of roses.
Beyond the first row of flower bushes and hedges it is quiet. There are plenty of dark recesses, probably meant for couples to hide away in. This makes me feel even more melancholy. At least there is no one here to witness my misery. The people in the terrace are still too busy mingling to have come out here yet.
The sound of tinkling water draws me to a large circular fountain towards the middle of the maze of bushes. Water is tinkling out of the central spray and falling in glimmering droplets over statues of two leaping mermaids. I perch on its wide stone rim. It is so peaceful. I never imagined there could be so much beauty in the world, or that I could feel so sad and confused when I was right in the middle of it.
I close my eyes and picture my Hunter in my mind. I have been waiting my whole life for something special to happen, so I dreamt him up and let myself believe he was real. I need to stop obsessing about my stupid dreams. If I don’t want the bad ones to be real, the good ones can’t be real either. And there have been far more bad ones than good.
I need to relax. To stop worrying. Worry always makes my nightmares worse. I should avoid Xander Daxx while I am here. I shouldn’t even look at him. I should look for happiness in real things. I am not trapped in some attic anymore with only dreams of life to look forward to. I am finally in real life. I am living it. And it is pathetic to be sitting here alone in the dark by a fountain and mooning about a dream lover so perfect and unreal and so far out of my reach that he might as well live on the flipping moon.
I have better things to do. My life has started this very night. I came here to escape the Coltons and live a little, and that is what I am darn well going to do!
I take a deep breath and I get up from the side of the fountain. I brush off my skirt. The last thing I want is dirt clinging to it, making me look shabby. Freddie is probably back with my drink by now. I mustn’t leave him hanging.
I make my way back towards the terrace. I walk fast in my eagerness to get away from my maudlin thoughts. I am going to dance with Freddie. Maybe he will make me feel like I felt in my dreams. I am so wrapped up in my thoughts that I don’t see the man until I bump into him.
My face collides with his chest. I jerk back, muttering, “I’m so sorry.”
And then a gunshot rings out, so loud that it stuns me. The man jerks as if hit. In the glow of fairy-lights, a blot of dark blood blossoms across his pristine shirt, spreading so fast. Inches from my face.
Gasping, I stagger back from him. He puts his hands on my bare arms to steady me. On his chest the blot of blood shrinks, disappears away into nothing.
“Are you okay?” he says in his soft deep voice.
I stare up into the face of Xander Daxx.
Chapter 13
DIANA
Up close Xander Daxx is exceptionally handsome. The shadows and the dim glow of the fairy-lights play on his face, caressing his chiseled nose and brow, his strong jaw. It glints in his sweptback bronzed chestnut hair. He looks younger than I’d thought, late twenties at most, though one never knows with otherkind.
I stare up at his face. I saw him bleed. I heard the gun shot. It wasn’t real or he’d be dead. Day time visions are rare for me, often triggered only by a person or object coming into my vicinity. I should have expected this.
His warm hands are still on my arms, holding me steady. I realize my hand is on his chest where the blood stain had been, pressed flat, and I can feel his heart beat. I remove it quickly.
He gazes down at me, those intense grey eyes staring into mine as if he recognizes me. His hand rises to stroke my cheek gently.
“You,” he says softly, as if he knows me. As if we have met before.
“Me?” I ask him, my voice emerging slightly hoarse. Does he know me? Was he part of my life before the car crash took my memories away?
“… Are beautiful,” he finishes, the last word coming out ever so slightly slurred.
I step back, disappointed, and unable to contain a little huff of mortified self-disgust. He is not remembering. He’s intoxicated!
He hides it well. He is completely steady on his feet and mostly in command of his voice, yet he is thoroughly drunk. Someone else might not have noticed, but I do. He is gazing at me as if I am the only thing he wants to see in the world. With or without that magical spell of his, most women would be gazing back.
Well he’s darn well not going to intoxicate me! No wonder I knew just by looking at him that he was too dangerous too tangle with. I feel slightly disappointed to be meeting an idol of mine in these circumstances. He is supposed to be perfect, inspiring, worthy of my admiration. Not drunk.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, pulling my arms out of his gentle grip.
“Don’t go, little bird,” he says. A note of melancholy in his voice makes me pause.
“You’re drunk,” I tell him.
He nods, smiling a little, and yet looking half sad. “I think I’ve drunk enough to drown an elephant.” He laughs at this, as if it is funny.
I scowl at him. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have.”
“I agree,” he says, almost to himself.
He takes a deep breath of the cool evening air, and he savors it beautifully, expanding his chest and stretching his arms upwards as he pulls that breath into his lungs.
He gazes up at the night sky and the twinkling stars. “So glorious,” he marvels. “And so fleeting,” he adds almost bitterly.
“What’s fleeting?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“This moment.”
He seems sad at this reflection. It is like he is barely aware of my presence. His eyes are unguarded, and inside them I glimpse a soul that is so old and so young and somehow… lost. I know it is something I was not supposed to see. It strikes me as odd. How can he, Xander Daxx, prince, billionaire, adored philanthropist, enviably engaged to the adored Princess Caroline, possibly be sad right now?
He wanders over to the fountain that I had been sitting at, and he almost collapses onto its ledge. The way he lets his body weight drop so suddenly shows me that perhaps he’s not as steady on his feet as I thought he was. I worry that after I leave he might fall backwards into the water and not bother to get back up.
I shiver. I don’t want someone to shoot him, or stab him, and I certainly don’t want him to accidentally drown.
I go to sit beside him, close enough to put my arm behind his back to steady him so that he does not fall backwards. He’s a big man, well-muscled, and far heavier than my slender self. I’m not sure that I actually could catch him if he fell.
I should tell him about my vision. Get it over and done with. And then my duty here will be done. Except I don’t want to. I don’t want him or anyone else here looking at me like I am mad, or or worse, a danger to him.
“Where are your guards?” I ask.
“Caro’s guards.” He shrugs. “They’re around somewhere.”
“Aren’t they supposed to stay with you?”
“I have protection wherever I go,” he says almost self-mockingly. He holds up his wrists and I see two flat metal bands around each one. They are inscribed with finely lettered symbols. Sigils, I realize. It is some kind of magical armor.
It makes me feel better. It is not my job to save him. He has it all under control. Never-the-less, I don’t want to leave him here to accidentally drown.
“Should we go back in?” I ask him tentatively.
“It is terribly boring in there,” he whispers in a confiding manner. “You don’t want to go back. Stay here with me.”
He raises his fingers to my face. I stiffen slightly, but he only tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. He doesn’t let go of it. He runs his fingers down its length, and stares at it.
“Your hair is like the moonlight,” he says. “I feel like I’ve seen it before. In some other life.”
My breath catches in my throat. Has he seen it? Perhaps we did meet in passing before I got my amnesia? Or maybe he knew someone who looked like me. Someone who might be my family. Someone who might now what I am. My mouth opens to ask him.
“But you girls are like that,” he says accusingly. “You always make a man feel like he’s seen you before. As if you were his first love.”
It is like a dash of ice water on my face. He isn’t talking about me. He is talking about girls. Plural. I lean away from him in annoyance. He sees me do it, and he laughs.
“Beautiful little bird,” he says. “Are you angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry?” I tell him a little coldly, this man who is in serious danger of dropping off my very short list of idols.
“Indeed, why would you be angry? Is it a game, little bird? Are you playing one of your games with me?”
I snort in derision, and stand up, moving away from him. It is him who is playing a game, or he is teasing me, or he is so drunk he doesn’t know what he’s saying. This guy is clearly used to women falling at his feet. And he can damn well save himself from drowning.
“Why would I be playing a game with you?” I demand.
“That’s what you succubae do, don’t you? And oh, how I’ve enjoyed your games over the years.”
My mouth drops open. He looks amused, so I snap it closed quickly. “I’m not a succubus!”
“Of course you are. A girl as beautiful as you? I thought it was a good idea to invite you girls, but perhaps that was a mistake. I never thought I could fall for one of your charms again.”
“I told you that I am not a succubus,” I snarl.
“No more games, my alluring little bird,” he says with a sigh. “I’m so tired of games.”
He does seem tired, his eyes heavy, his strong shoulders drooping with weariness.
And then he tugs me towards him and hugs me, his arm going around my back, his head resting at my waist. He doesn’t seem aware of the intimacy of the act, or how vulnerable it makes him seem. Like a lost baby bear. I sense that he has closed his eyes. I find myself putting my hand on the back of his head, resting it on his hair.
“It’s okay,” I say, feeling oddly like I am holding his life in my hands. Of all the years where people have demanded from me things I never wanted to give, taken it like it never belonged to me, no one has ever sought comfort from me like this. As if it was my gift to give.
He gives a short abrupt laugh that seems filled with pain. “It feels like I’m making a mistake,” he whispers.
“What mistake?” I ask.
“This wedding–” But then he cuts himself off, as if regretting having said it.
It hits me that for some reason he needs reassurance. For a moment there he trusted me to guide him in the right direction, even if he doesn’t realize it. He trusted little old me. I sense that he is not used to being vulnerable. That he won’t ask anyone again. And maybe tonight he’ll do something that he’ll regret and destroy his chance at happiness.
“I don’t think a man like you makes mistakes,” I tell him softly. “Even if, when he’s drunk, he feels like he is.”
He pulls back so that he can look up at my face for a long moment. He nods, and then laughs ruefully at himself.
And then tugs my hand gently, pulling me down until I am sitting on the ledge beside him. His lips brush my cheek softly. “I’m glad I found you, little bird.”
His forehead leans against my temple, and there is a moment of stillness that feels like peace. As we sit like that, a movement behind him startles me. It is the Princess Caroline, and she looks furious.
Chapter 14
DIANA
I jerk back from Xander as if I have been doing something that I should not have been doing. I immediately know that my sudden movement has made me look guilty when Princess Caroline’s look of anger gets more intense.
Xander turns to look behind him, and when he sees Caroline he throws back his head and laughs. I cannot believe that he is laughing. He stays where he is sitting, and pats his thigh. He holds out his hand towards her.
“Darling,” he says.
That is all that it takes for her. His one word. She comes to sit on his lap, perching her slender self on his thigh where he had indicated. I take a couple of steps away from them but her eyes pin me, promising retribution if I flee.
She wraps her arms around his shoulders as if claiming him. She lowers her head and kisses him on the mouth, deeply, lips and tongue tangling with his. She kisses him unashamedly and possessively, showing me that he is hers.
His hands stroke down her bare back and come to rest on her waist. She is every inch the peaches-and-cream princess, wearing her perfectly fitted peaches-and-cream dress, embroidered with lace and tiny pearls, so elegant and classy, like her.
She makes me feel gaudy and obnoxious in my brightly floral-print dress. I feel like a leper standing there as if my heart is burning in jealousy, yearning for a man who is kissing his bride-t
o-be. Because that is what she thinks of me. I linger, obeying her unspoken command to stay, wanting to explain to her before I leave. Nothing happened between us. Clearly he adores her, and I was only trying to help him remember that.
But the longer I stand there watching them kiss, the more out of place I feel. Obscene almost, like I am disturbing a deeply private moment. I should leave. Xander will set her straight, explain to her that nothing happened. Unless of course he actually does think I was trying to flirt with him…
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