Flamebound (13 page)

A sinking feeling starts in the pit of my stomach. Even as I pray it isn't true, I'm reading the writing on the wall. Putting two and two together and coming up with the most terrifying four imaginable. “Did you do it?” I whisper. It feels like everything we are, everything we have depends on this answer. It isn't true—at least I don't think it is—but after our conversation yesterday, I need to hear him say it. Need to hear the word no fall from his lips.

He thrusts an impatient hand through his too-long hair. “Did I do what, Xandra? You're going to have to be more specific. Did I find you when you were in danger? Did I get you back here before you could be arrested for an unspeakable crime? Did I cover up the fact that we were in that damn room to begin with?”

He stops once he gets a good look at my face. From what I've seen these last few weeks, Declan's typical modus operandi is to go on the attack, to make whoever is opposing him feel and look so foolish that they back down rather than pursue their line of questioning. He isn't going to do that with me. Not now. Not on this.

“Did you
kill
Councilor Alride?”

He stares at me for several long, inscrutable seconds. His face is blank, his eyes as guarded as I have ever seen them. And I realize that the old Declan is back, the one I met eight years ago and the one I met again eighteen days ago. Not until his reappearance—not until this moment when distance once more yawns between us—did I realize how much Declan has softened in the last couple of weeks. How much he's let me in.

With that thought comes regret, real, powerful, overwhelming. “Declan—”

“No. Don't back down now, Xandra. You can't accuse me of killing Alride, and then take it all back like a bad case of buyer's remorse.” Without looking at me, he steps into the shower. Starts to wash.

My spine stiffens at his tone. “You don't have to be obnoxious about it. You're covered in blood. We just came from a murder scene where the victim was bled out—a victim who you have to admit is on a list of people you have every reason to hate. It's not so far-fetched for me to imagine that you might have killed him.”

“Not so far-fetched? After everything we talked about yesterday, it's not so far-fetched?” he repeats as he scrubs himself. The blood is gone. All that's left of it is the pink-tinged water that is even now circling the drain. Well, that and this conversation. A conversation I wish I'd picked any other day, any other time, to have. It's not like I'm at my most lucid right now, and, exhausted or not, Declan's proving to be a lot more adept at arguing than I am.

“Let me get this straight,” he says a couple of minutes later into the silence that yawns between us. He's shut off the shower, grabbed a towel, and is now in the process of drying himself off. He's gorgeous like this—all damp and dark and pissed beyond belief. My magic rises within me, responds to him even when my human side is frustrated, furious. Suspicious.

“You've been through hell tonight. You've had ridiculously awful nightmares that you awake from bruised and battered, you've had a seizure—after prolonged agony—in the middle of your kitchen floor, and then you ended up chasing after a dead guy in the middle of the night and reliving his murder, complete with pain and side effects.

“It's been hell for you to suffer and hell for Lily and me to watch you suffer. And yet you're going to stand there and accuse me of deliberately doing that to you. Of caring so little about you that I'd let you endure that and not even bother to be here to make sure you were okay.”

“I didn't say that.”

He prowls toward me and I've never been more aware of the spatial limitations of this room more than I am right at this second. Because Declan is all wounded, enraged male animal and I'm the one who caused it. Not to mention the only one currently in his sights. “You said exactly that.”

“No. I didn't.”

He's in my face now and I shove against his chest. He doesn't budge, doesn't back up, so I have to. Even as tired and messed up as I am right now, I still can't think when he's that close to me. “I asked a very legitimate question. I didn't accuse, I didn't condemn. I simply asked.”

“If I had killed Alride. If I had disregarded everything I know about you and what being in the general vicinity of murder does to you and just went for it.”

“Not everything's about me, Declan.”

“Yes, goddamnit, Xandra, it is. In my life, it is all about you. How could you not know that?” He brings a hand up, rests his palm on my shoulder while his fingers gently stroke the line of my neck. It's a possessive hold at the best of times. Right now, with his onyx eyes blazing into mine, it's a claiming of the most intimate kind, a declaration of intent that manages to be both comforting and sexy as hell. It's taking every ounce of strength I have not to give in. Not to just melt against him and say to hell with my suspicions. To hell with anyone or anything that isn't right here, right now.

“You walked away from me once.”

“You were a child.”

“I was nineteen.”

“You were a
child
. You didn't see yourself in that forest. You were terrified, traumatized. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Tell me the truth.”

“Really? I'm telling you the truth now and you don't believe a word I'm saying.”

“I didn't say I didn't believe you.”

“No, but it's written all over your face.” He puts his hands on my shoulders, pulls me close until his face is only inches from mine. “I didn't kill those guards. I didn't kill Alride. And I sure as shit didn't bleed him dry. I have spent nearly your entire existence trying to protect you. And now that you're mine, there's no way I would ever do anything to hurt you like that.”

He steps back and for just a second, his guard drops. I see past the anger to the hurt my accusation has caused him. Remorse fills me, but it's too late. He's stepping back, clothing himself with a wave of his hand.

“Get some sleep,” he tells me. “I'll call you later today.”

Then he's gone, walking out—walking away from me—without a backward glance. And stupid me, I just stand there and watch him go.

I
'm exhausted, but I can't sleep, can't do anything but toss and turn as I try to get comfortable despite the bruises. And try to figure out why I was stupid enough to just stand there as Declan walked away.

There's a part of him that scares me—and a part of who I am when I'm with him that scares me—but that doesn't make him a murderer. Yes, he lives in shadows and yes, he straddles the line between good and evil every day of his life. And yet, this man, who for so many years has lived on the fringes of eternal darkness, has a more fixed moral code than anyone I know. He sees things, even himself, in black and white. No excuses, no apologies, no such thing as extenuating circumstances. And yet when it comes to me . . . when it comes to me, he isn't exactly rational. Those lines become even more defined, until anyone who puts so much as a toe over them won't be tolerated.

The ACW put a whole hell of a lot more over that line than their toes.

Finally giving up on sleep, I push back the covers and stumble into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Normally I play around a little, foam the milk, make a cappuccino, but today I don't care about fancy. Don't even care about taste. I just need a caffeine-delivery vehicle.

Lily stumbles into the kitchen a few minutes after I do. I pour her a cup and hand it to her—a dollop of cream and two sugars, just the way she likes it—and try to decipher the garbled words that come out of her mouth.

“You're speaking in tongues again,” I tell her, pouring myself a second cup of coffee.

She flips me off, then goes back to mainlining her coffee. Finally, after another cup and five minutes of total and absolute silence, she pins me with eyes that are surprisingly bright and sharp after the night we had.

“Why did Declan leave last night?”

Trust Lily to cut right to the chase. “We had a difference of opinion.”

“You argued? How the hell did you have the energy left to form words, let alone argue?”

“It wasn't an argument so much as a total inability to merge life philosophies.”

“At four in the morning?” She stares at me incredulously. “After everything that happened last night? What gave you the idea that you could merge
anything
, let alone life philosophies? What the hell is wrong with you?”

And that's one of the many reasons I love my best friend so much. She has a way of putting things in perspective without even knowing she's doing it.

“I freaked out. Completely lost my mind, I think.”

“Do tell.” She gets up and pours herself a third cup of coffee, then reaches into the top cupboard for the secret stash of mini chocolate doughnuts. She doles out four of them for each of us because “It's definitely a four-doughnut morning.”

I couldn't agree more.

She settles back at the table, coffee in one hand, doughnut in the other, and just looks at me. And looks at me. And looks at me.

I scramble to get my thoughts in order, to try to find a way to explain the jumble of emotions at work inside me. In the end, I settle for just letting the words tumble out in whatever order they want to. “I'm crazy about him and terrified of him all at the same time.”

She cocks her head, studies me. “You think he'll hurt you?”

“Yes! But not in the way you're thinking.”

“I'm not thinking anything, except that that man is devoted to you. You should have seen him last night when you were doing your trance thing. I thought he was going to lose his mind.”

“That's part of the problem. The feelings between us, they're just so . . . intense. More intense than anything I've ever experienced.”

“And that's a problem because?”

“Because I've never felt like this before. But we're so different, we look at the world in such opposite ways. I mean, Lily, he thinks murder is an acceptable way to end a disagreement!”

Her eyebrows practically touch her hairline. “Alride?”

“He says no—”

“And you don't believe him?”

“No, I do.” That was one of the conclusions I came to as I stared up at the ceiling in the early morning hours. “But it very easily could have been him.”

“So now we're condemning guys based on what we think they're going to do?” She shoves a whole doughnut in her mouth, contemplating while she chews. “I've got to tell you, Xan. That's not the best idea you've ever had. How am I supposed to ever get laid again if I'm constantly worried about something the guy might or might not do six months or six years down the road?”

“I'm not talking about some mythical maybe, Lily.” And then I tell her everything Declan has told me in the last few days.

When I'm done, she does the last thing I expect. She kicks back in her chair and says, “I knew there was a reason I liked that man.”

I gape at her. “He told me he has every intention of killing people, Lily.”

“People who had every intention of killing you. Declan's an eye-for-an-eye kind of guy. You didn't really expect anything different from him, did you?

“Think about if someone tried to kill him. If they beat and tortured and emotionally devastated him. How would you feel?”

I'd want to fry the bastards. I don't say as much, but from the way she bursts out laughing, I'm pretty sure she can read the expression on my face.

“Still, wanting to do it and actually doing it are two very different things,” I insist.

“I'm sorry, but has he actually killed anyone to avenge you? Even Kyle's alive and that sorry excuse for a warlock should be wiped off the face of the earth. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed Declan hasn't taken care of that already.”

Her vehemence shocks me. “You don't mean that.”

“Yeah, I really do. If I could figure out how to do it without getting caught, I'd probably end him myself.”

Silence falls between us as I really don't have anything to say to that. I think of my earlier thought, about wanting to destroy anyone who hurt Declan. I wonder if I was too harsh on him last night. If I used my fear of his darkness as nothing more than an excuse to push him away.

After all, he was dark when I fell for him.

“When I was looking at Alride's body,” I say slowly, “there was this moment when I was glad that he was dead. Glad that he had suffered.”

“That seems perfectly understandable to me.”

“But it isn't. Understandable, I mean. Even as I was feeling that way, I knew something was wrong. I could sense it, feel it. Like there was a darkness pressing down on me, taking me over.” I shudder at the memory.

“You think that darkness came from Declan.” Again, Lily is nobody's fool.

“Maybe. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be the whole soulbound thing.”

“Because your souls are connected, you think Declan's bringing you into the dark?” She tilts her head as she thinks. “But that theory only works if you're also bringing him into the light.”

“I don't think so. Remember what you said when you were researching what it means to be soulbound?”

“That was just one book. It doesn't have to be that way.”

“I think it does.” Being soulbound sounds like a good thing, but the fact of the matter is, it's pretty much the worst thing that can happen to two people. An Anathema born of the darkest magic possible, the only way out is death or the complete and total destruction of one of the pair's souls. It's why Declan planned to kill me all those years ago. He obviously didn't follow through with it, but that just means we have this problem now.

“The longer he and I are together, the worse it's going to get,” I tell her.

“So, what are you going to do? Be apart? That didn't work for either of you and you know it.” She reaches across the table, squeezes my hand. “There are some things you're going to be able to fight, Xan, and some that you aren't. There's nothing you can do about your connection to him. It's time to accept it and try to live with it.”

“That's the whole point—only one of us is going to be able to live with it! And Declan won't hurt me. Not like that. He'd never allow me to lose my soul.”

“That's a two-way street, Xandra. He would never do anything to harm your soul and you would never willingly destroy his. That's a good thing. It's why I believe you're both going to make it out of this and have an awesome future together.”

“That's the point. We don't
have
a future. I can already feel him going darker. That's what I felt at the Council's headquarters last night and that's what I sensed in him when we got back last night. He had blood all over him, Lily. Even if it wasn't Alride's, it was somebody's.”

“What did he say when you asked him about it?”

“Nothing. That's another problem—he won't talk to me, really talk to me, so we can try to figure this out. I know he thinks he's protecting me, but . . .”

I can feel tears welling up, but I refuse to let them fall. Tears won't help Declan, won't help us. So they're worthless to me right now. “He's so much stronger than I am, Lily. So much better at magic. There's no way I'll be able to fight him when things start to get worse. No way . . .” My voice breaks. I take a deep breath, force the words past the sudden tightness in my throat. “No way that I'll be able to save him.”

And there it is, my worst fear, worst nightmare, out on the table for everyone to see. This is the terror that has haunted me for the past eight days, the nightmare that comes even after I've banished thoughts of Kyle and the ACW and what they've done to me. It's not just my fear that Declan's own shadows will overwhelm him, but that being soulbound to me will cast him irretrievably into the darkness. I could see it in him last night and it terrified me. That's why I pulled back from him. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I was afraid for him. The longer we're in contact, the closer we get, the faster one of us will be destroyed.

“I can't hurt him like that, Lily. I can't. It will end up destroying me as surely as I'll have destroyed him.”

For a long time, Lily doesn't say anything. Not that I'm surprised. There's not much she
can
say. I've spent the last eight days examining the problem from every side I can think of and I've got nothing. I know Declan, who is so much more accomplished in Heka than I am, has done the same thing. If he'd come up with a solution, he would have said something. He hasn't. Which leads me to believe that there really is no solution.

“It's not done yet, Xandra.”

“You're the one who told me there was nothing I could do about the Anathema, nothing anyone could do. You did the research.”

“I know. But those are just old books. What do they know?”

I stare at her, my mouth open and eyes wide. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with Lily?” My best friend is a historian through and through, one whose powers are linked to her constant quest for knowledge. Currently working on her PhD in ancient symbols, she all but worships books, and we both know it.

“I'm serious,” she tells me. “Yes, in the past, no one's managed to undo an Anathema like this. But then, there's no proof that it's ever been used on people with the kind of power you and Declan have. You're the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the most powerful priestess who ever lived. You have more talent, more magic, in your blood than anyone else living today. And Declan . . . Well, he's just Declan. He can do anything. Who says he can't do this, too?”

“Don't.” I get off the couch and cross to the window. Stare outside where it's starting to rain yet again. With the gray sky and grayer clouds, it looks almost as dark and bleak as I feel. “Please, don't give me false hope. I can't take it.”

“It's not false if there's a chance.”

“But there isn't.”

“There could be.” She sighs gustily. “Are you feeling weaker? Is Declan?”

“No, of course not, but that's the whole point. When we're near each other, being soulbound amplifies our power right up until—”

“No until. So your magic is good and so is Declan's. How about your soul? Do you feel like it's fracturing?”

“I told you about the darkness last night.”

“How do you know that wasn't just you? After what they did to you, you have every reason to want Councilors dead. Maybe that's what you were feeling.”

“And maybe pigs can fly.” But she's got me thinking, hoping. Which is somehow a million times more painful than accepting.

“Well, how do you feel now? Do you feel dark? Broken?”

“I feel exhausted.”

“Of course you do. But that's not the same thing.”

“What about Declan, Lily? There's so much darkness in him already. And now, with this revenge thing, it's just getting worse. But is that because of his anger or because of me? Does he have a handle on it or is it spinning out of control because of our connection? I can't tell the difference. The only thing I do know for certain is that he won't tell me if he's in trouble.”

“So what? Are you going to spend your life waiting for shit to happen? Like that chicken?”

I turn to stare at her. “What chicken?”

“You know, the one with the sky. She ran around screaming that it was falling, except it wasn't. It was an acorn or something.”

“Are you talking about Chicken Little?”

“Yes! Chicken Little. She wasted her life worrying that the sky was going to fall. Don't be Chicken Little.”

“Lily?”

“Yeah?” She looks so proud of herself that I almost hate to burst her bubble.

“In the end of that story, they all died.”

“They did?”

“Yep. A fox ate them all because they were so worried about the sky falling, they forgot to be afraid of him.”