“Aramke…” he said, running a finger down one plait, then giving it a little tug. “These pretty beads give you away. I don’t need to watch for you, I just listen.”
“Maybe I wanted to be caught, have you thought about that?”
“This? Your body against mine?” His eyes grew heated as he looked down where our bodies touched. “I have thought of that every night before I sleep, every morning when I wake aching for you. When I see you across the Mother’s table, when I train you for those damn trials. There is no part of you that is far from my mind, aramke, love.”
I was an awkward hanger-on as his lips came down on hers, feeling the warm press, the heated parting, the slip of tongue against tongue until the temple faded away and I was dumped unceremoniously back into the training room, just me and Duke.
He jerked away from me when he realised, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. As if that would remove the feel of his mouth against mine. My lips tingled, marking where he’d been.
“You have questions,” he said, his old, calm voice returning. He was packing away whoever aramka was and putting Duke back on.
“Yes, I have fucking questions. For both of you. You set me up.”
“No, not that. I knew what was coming with Lucas, but not how. Fuck, girl, I’d never have taken you to that damn place if I knew what… I wanted you to stay here, remember?”
“But it wouldn’t have worked if I did. Luc wouldn’t have been fucking forced to take Sky Daddy’s power.”
“Nope, and millions of women and children would have suffered as a result. We would have found a way. I was trying damn hard to find a way… This has always been how it goes, that I can tell you. It doesn’t make it ache any less.”
“Why?!” I snapped, jerking away from him as my question reverberated throughout the room. “Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t you tell me about you and Lilith? Why do I have to be led around by the nose from one thing to the next? To one fucking awful pain to the next? Do you know what happened to Aen?”
“Do you?” he shot back.
“No, not yet.” I shook my head, feeling the tears come. “But I will, won’t I? I’ll feel it, every fucking thing they did to her.”
“When she’s ready, yes. We don’t tell you anything because we can’t. We don’t intervene in the important things because we can’t. Free will exists, Kira. Without it, this fucking aberration of a process wouldn’t be bearable, but those of us that witnessed the last time the choice was made, all the times the choice was made, we have to stay silent. You have to be free to make your own decisions. That’s the only fucking rule. You don’t have many choices, but those you do, we have to respect.”
“So how do I do this? You made me connect to them, well now I am. I feel them in my fucking heart.” My fist slammed down on my chest. “I felt their pain when the Rutherglen was trying to break them into nothing and they felt mine. They’re in me, he’s in me, Luc…”
“They’re your aramka, your loves. It’s what always happens, Kira, and I’m so sorry for that but I can’t regret it. Without love, this is nothing. Just a scramble for power, to get to the top of the tree before the other does, and we all know how that works—absolute power but no love in your heart to soften that.”
“Sky Daddy…” The words slipped from my lips unbidden.
“The sky father.” He nodded.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I shook my head, my hands rising and then falling limply. “All I can feel is them—their pain, their needs, their feelings, their love. How the hell do I go out into the world and do whatever mysterious bullshit you need me to do carrying that?”
“It’s not a burden, Kira. It’s a gift. You carry them in your heart, despite the pain it causes, because that’s what love is. Because they’ll do the same for you.”
I walked back into the room on kitten feet, thinking I wouldn’t wake anyone, but his head popped up. Liam. He’d always sense a disturbance in the relationship Force, I realised now, with that geas pressing down on him. His gaze was wary, even I could see that in the gloom, but there was more there. No longer slathered over with a thick coating of arrogance, there it was, exactly as Duke and I had talked about—that pleasure-pain of love.
I shook my head, pulling off the sweats and coming to the bed naked, because I’d always feel that way, I realised. I had no skin with them. They made me feel so fucking raw. But the look on his face when I crawled over beside him, that nuclear flare of joy and pleasure and desire and exultation when I lay down in his arms was why I did it.
Stay with me, Kira.
I heard it clear as a bell, those same damn words he’d said to me in that dream, but so very different now. He expected me to rage, kick him to the curb, decimate him, and maybe that’s what he deserved, I was still to make that decision. I covered his hand with mine, snuggled in as close as I could, and exhaled. For now, there was only this, the connection, because goddess knew when that was going to be ripped away from me.
Chapter 33
“I don’t want to go.”
We were dressed, about to walk into a meeting with the Sisterhood delegates and from there into one with the sentinels, but Aen lay on the bed in her sweats, her hair somehow duller and stringy for the first time since I’d met her.
“Baby, you don’t have to.”
I could feel the guys shifting uncomfortably behind me. They felt the pull to help Aen, but knew they couldn’t, not yet. I stroked her face and her arm until she softened.
“But you need me.”
“I always need you, Aen, you know that. Always destined to love you.” Her head jerked up when she heard the tears in my voice, her hand raising to touch one. It balanced on the end of her finger, glistening in the diffused light that filled the room.
“You don’t have to cry. They didn’t rape me. They just…” She shook her head. “No one’s ever been able to hurt me or touch me like that. I could always shift into something bigger, stronger, and then…”
“And then you couldn’t.”
She wanted to cry. I could see the crumple of her face, the tightening of the skin around her beautifully formed lips.
“I was powerless.”
“But not anymore.”
“No, but…”
It spiked inside me, hard, a brief flutter of memories, of hands going everywhere, despite her thrashing and screams, despite her desperate pleas. They did what they wanted, and she was forced to endure it.
She rolled into a seated position so fast, she was a blur, her clothing and messy hair replaced by a fresher faced Aen, now clad in elaborate metal armour.
“This is a war meeting. You’re telling them about what’s to come,” she said, getting to her feet.
“And trying to work out a way to help those who were hurt by what happened. The power stones might be gone, but these communities have learned something about some of their members that they didn’t know before—their capacity for abuse,” I said.
She nodded sharply, then reached out for my hand. I took it, treasuring the warm feel of her skin under mine as the gauntlet vanished.