She may not be a powerful immortal, but she would be another enemy of that madman. And if Cole died, she would find a way to make him pay for his death.
Turning away from the window, she retrieved her thick, white robe from where it lay on the end of her bed and left the room. Lexi had no idea where she was going as she descended the stairs, but she couldn’t stay in her room.
Light filtered out of the library. She was usually the one awake and roaming around in the middle of the night, but when she stepped into the doorway, she spotted Brokk sitting in one of the chairs, staring at the fireplace. She stood uncertainly for a minute before padding toward him.
For a minute, she suspected he’d fallen asleep in the chair, but as she came around the side of it, she saw he was awake. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix sat on his lap.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“No.” She settled onto the cushion of her overstuffed love seat and tucked her feet beneath her. “You couldn’t either?”
“No.”
“He’s been gone for over a week.”
“For all we know, the trials could take a year.”
“A year?” she squeaked.
“They won’t. I’m pretty sure we would have heard if it took my father that long to complete them, but it could still be a while.”
Though he spoke to her, he continued to stare straight ahead.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
A small smile curved his lips before he leaned back in the chair and relaxed a little. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Do you have to feed?”
“I hunted a deer after the lycans left earlier.”
“What about… what about… ah… you know the, ah… dark fae side of you?”
She fought the blush burning its way up her neck as she asked the question. She felt like an idiot for blushing over this conversation, but it wasn’t one she wanted to have with him.
“I mean,” she said, “I don’t know about the dark fae… well, I do know about the dark fae, but I don’t know about you since you’re only half, but it’s been a week… and… and….”
It took everything she had not to bolt from the room as Brokk grinned at her.
“And as a dark fae, I must be ready to go insane?” he asked.
Was her face on fire? It took all she had not to try to cover her burning cheeks.
“I’m fine,” he assured her.
“If you have to… if you have to go somewhere for a little bit, we’ll be fine here.”
“I can control my deviant ways for a little longer.”
His teasing only caused her to blush more, something she wouldn’t have believed possible until her face burned hotter. Shifting her attention to the fireplace, she tried not to think about Orin down there.
She didn’t have many friends, but she considered Brokk one, and she didn’t want to lose him. For a second, the urge to tell him was so strong she almost blurted her secret, but she clamped her lips together.
She couldn’t tell him before Cole. Cole was already going to be pretty pissed at her for this; if she spilled everything to Brokk first, he’d only feel more betrayed. No, her guilt was her penance, and she would have to live with it until she could unburden herself.
“Besides, Cole would kill me if I left you here unprotected,” Brokk said.
“I’m sure he would understand. He is half dark fae himself.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
Lexi didn’t argue with him, but they both knew he would eventually have to go somewhere for the dark fae to feed.
“How do you like the book?” she asked.
He shrugged and fiddled with the book’s binding. “I haven’t been able to pay much attention to it.”
“You miss your father.”
“I miss my whole family. I once had eight other brothers and my father. Now, it’s just Cole and me.”
She hadn’t lost as much as Brokk and Cole during the war, but she knew what it was like to feel almost entirely alone in this world. Before Cole entered her life, she only had Sahira. And though she tried to remain optimistic he would survive the trials, she couldn’t stop the niggling doubt festering in the back of her mind.
The war had already stripped so much from them; it couldn’t take Cole too.
“He’s coming back,” she whispered.
“He is,” Brokk said. “After my father, he is the most powerful being I know. He killed a dragon, Lexi. By himself and with no weapons. I’ve never heard of anyone accomplishing such a feat.”
“He killed a dragon,” she murmured more to herself than to him.
Right now, she needed the reminder.
“I know this is going to sound cliché, but your father does live on in you,” she said. “He always will. My father lives on in me too. Sometimes, I open my mouth, and my dad comes out. One day, when I have children, the same thing will happen to them. Except, they’ll think it’s me coming out of them, but it’s really my dad. It makes you wonder how many generations of our family, that we never met, influence our lives and actions.”
When Brokk didn’t say anything, the tick of the grandfather clock in the sitting room filled the silence. The passing of those seconds was a constant reminder of time marching steadily onward.
As an immortal, she still had plenty of time left to her, but she also resented those passing seconds. Each one of them was another second without her dad and Cole.
Each one of them was one more tick toward her forgetting more about her dad. And it would happen; she did not doubt it. No matter how many times she replayed her memories of him in her head, it was impossible to remember everything, and some of them were slipping away.
The memory that mattered most, the one of his unconditional, enduring love for her, would never fade. That love lived in the center of her soul and always would.
“It’s an interesting concept,” Brokk finally said. “Some of our habits could be those of a being who lived thousands of years before us, and we don’t even know it.”
“I like to think at least a few of our habits are. We may be immortal, but we can die, and this way, at least a part of us truly does live on forever.”
“I had some insane ancestors then.”
Lexi laughed and rested her head against the back of her chair. “Me too.”
They fell into a companionable silence, and as she listened to the ticking clock, her eyes closed, and she finally slept.
Chapter Thirty-Four
As he ran, Cole gathered the air rushing over his fingers and pulled it around him. The water had put out the cherufe’s flames, but it hadn’t dissolved the creature. It had taken time to kill Auberon. Unfortunately, Cole didn’t have time.
He didn’t dare touch the cherufe again as his broken foot continued to throb. Touching it might get him killed. Instead, he pushed the air ahead of him until it became a wall of pulsing, unseen fury building before him.
When the creature turned toward him, Cole lifted his hands and held them up in front of him as he pushed the air forward. He bellowed as the wall of air slammed into the creature. The impact lifted the cherufe and flung it backward.