She nodded, then looked over her shoulder. “I have to go.”
“Dinnertime?”
She threw her head back and groaned. “I think I smell broccoli.”
Ben stifled a smile. “Listen, when I was your age, I had to eat a lot of broccoli.”
“Does it help you become a vampire?”
“Uh… yes. Because it makes your body really strong.”
She nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “I’ll eat the broccoli.”
“Good. It’s really important.”
“Okay.” She raised her hand to touch the button; then she stopped and held her little finger up. “Tomorrow night with Tenzin?”
If he didn’t deliver, he’d never hear the end of it. “I’ll do my best.”
“Okay.” She looked over her shoulder. “I’m coming.” She looked back to the screen. “I love you. Bye.”
Sadia hung up without waiting for Ben to respond. It was one of those little things she did that reassured him.
She didn’t wait for Ben to respond because she knew he loved her. Sadia knew she was loved. She knew he’d do anything for her. There was not a doubt in her mind.
Ben had never had that assurance when he was five. Not even close. But Sadia did, and he was a part of that. On nights where he felt especially bitter about never seeing the sun again, he reminded himself of that.
“Completely wrong and completely right,” Brigid mused over the phone. “Yes, that sounds like roughly half the decisions you have to make as an immortal.”
“Tanks.” He mimicked her accent as he moved a pawn on the chessboard, playing both sides. “Tat’s so helpful.”
“Feck off.” She laughed at him. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. We don’t live in a black-and-white world. Sometimes there aren’t any good answers to a problem.”
Ben tapped the white knight on the chessboard. “If Carwyn was human and dying, would you—?”
“Faster than you can fecking blink.”
The words tumbled out of Brigid’s mouth at such rapid speed, Ben had to rewind to catch her meaning. “You would?”
“Without a second thought.”
“Even if he didn’t want to be a vampire?”
“I think even if he hated me forever, I’d do it,” she said quietly. “Even if I had to do it myself and it killed the love between us, I’d do it. I’m not proud for saying it, but God’s truth, I can’t give you another answer.”
Hearing her answer brought a bitter taste to his mouth, so Ben was surprised when the spike in his heart eased just a little. “Why? How are you so sure?”
Brigid took a long time to reply. “My life was very dark for a long time. And then… this man came into it. This infuriating, glorious madman came into my life, and it was like seeing the sun break over the horizon—to put it in human terms.” She cleared her throat. “So it’s just to say I’d do anything to keep that sunshine, Benny. Anything. Because thinking about a world where Carwyn ap Bryn didn’t exist at all takes me to such a dark place in my soul that I wouldn’t emerge from it.”
Ben had nothing to say.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Brigid’s voice was intensely quiet. “Those of us who have been wounded cling to what gives us light or peace. Even if it’s not the right thing. Even if it hurts. Because the other option is not an option.”
“She did the only thing she could think to do when someone she loved was dying. How do you not fucking see that?”
“I get you.” Ben picked up the black queen and held the piece to his lips.
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He set the queen down on the board, moving her into position next to the black knight. “I understand what you’re saying.”
He walked across the camp and knocked on her door an hour before dawn. The fire had burned down to embers, and the immortals had retired to their day chambers. The only movement he saw in the blue predawn light was from the scattered figures of the humans on the edges of the encampment and a cat slinking through the long grass.
This time Ben waited for Tenzin to come to the door.
When she opened it, Ben’s body had the exact same reaction it always did, but something in his amnis had settled. The frantic, desperate feeling she’d provoked earlier was gone.
She said nothing. She leaned against the door of the trailer, blocking the entrance.
Ben asked, “Will you come to my caravan tomorrow night so Sadia can say hello to both of us?”
“Of course I will.”
“Okay.” Ben didn’t know what else he wanted to say, he just knew he didn’t want to say goodbye.
Brigid was right.
When you’d been wounded, you held on to the things that gave you light. Even if they weren’t good for you. Even if they hurt.
“I don’t know how to not be angry with you,” he said quietly.
“I know.” She opened her mouth. Closed it.
“New Year’s resolutions?”
“I told Chloe I might need to pause them, but I don’t think I have to,” Tenzin said. “At least not with you.” She stared over his shoulder at the horizon. “I told you I would wait.”
“It’s been two years.”
“And?” Her eyes drifted to his. “I have waited longer for things I want.”
Desire twisted in Ben’s belly, and Tenzin smiled.
He couldn’t hide his irritation. “Do you always know when I’m horny?”
“Yes, I always have.”
“Yeah? Well I knew too.” Ben thought about all the times he’d caught her looking at him with pure female appreciation. She loved looking at his body. “Want me to take my shirt off?”
“Yes.” She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Anytime you would like.”
Fuck. “Well… I’m not going to, because I’m not an exhibitionist.”
“A very damaged bedroom on Penglai Island says otherwise.”
Ben’s fangs dropped. If he could have blushed, he would have. “That wasn’t exhibition.”
“Well, it was not quiet.”
“Tenzin—”
“In fact, several vampires approached me later that night and asked if either of us had been injured.” She narrowed her eyes. “I now realize they were probably trying to embarrass me.”
“I can see that was supereffective.”
“I do not get embarrassed by sex. Every animal in the world mates, Benjamin. I have never understood cultures that try to hide it.”
He raised a hand. “Can we just agree that wrecking entire rooms and parading around naked isn’t something we need to make a habit of doing?”
“If those are parameters you want to set in our relationship, I am comfortable with them.”
“They’re not parameters. I’m not saying we’re going to… We just don’t need to…”
Tenzin frowned. “I truly do not know what you’re trying to say.”
Neither do I.