"They are free to live their own lives."
I turn to face him. "You rescued them?"
He nods, brushing a lock of hair from my face gently. "Of course."
He leans down and kisses me softly, the act sending shivers up my spine. His kiss deepens and I melt into him, into the darkness he cocoons me in like a warm blanket on a winter night.
When I pull away, he sighs, closing his eyes and flicking his tongue over his lips. "You taste as I imagined you would."
When his eyes open, they are luminous. "Eve. Do you have any idea what you and I could do together? Who we could be with one another?"
I don't answer, but I can feel it, and I want it. So bad.
But…
Shit.
I drop my hands.
"I can't. I can't be that person." I turn to Nicholas. "And he doesn't deserve a quick death. He deserves to pay for his crimes. We must tell your brothers and let them turn Nicholas over to the Enforcers. The girls you freed will testify against him. He will finally get the justice he deserves."
"As you wish," Cole says sadly. "But it will not end the way you hope."
The Darkness
The dance between darkness and light will always remain— the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen, the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars. ~C. JoyBell C.
In my room later that night, I find myself in a restless state despite my exhaustion. After hours of pacing, I sit on the patio and watch the Dragon's Breath dancing in the sky as I consider whether I made the right choice.
Will the Collector get justice? Will justice be enough? Will he have a chance to harm others in the meantime? Should I have killed him when I had the chance?
Derek wasn't happy that Cole had brought him here, but the Enforcers came and arrested the Collector based on my statement of his illegal activity. Cole didn't say another word about it, but I could see on his face that he felt this plan was doomed to failure.
He might not be wrong, but just because I might fail doesn't mean I didn't make the morally right choice.
So why do I feel so hallow?
"Why so glum, sis?"
I whip around, the voice behind me startling me out of my thoughts. "Adam?"
I stand, my heart fluttering at the sight of him. I still can't believe he's back. He's alive.
He reaches over and hugs me, and I smile into his shoulder, despite everything, then I guide him to the chairs in front of the fire. "How did you get in here?" I ask.
"Magic," he says, with a flourish of his hands and a chuckle. He leans in and takes my hands. "You're so much more powerful than you realize, Evie. You have no idea." He studies my palms as if they might give him the answers to my powers, but he says nothing about what he sees. Then he pulls back and leans against the chair, crossing his left leg over his right. He used to cross his right over his left, I realize. It's a stupid observation to make, but it strikes me there is a lot about my brother I no longer know. And a lot about me he doesn't know. This is the longest we've ever spent apart from each other, and our experiences since his—well, death—have shaped us each differently.
"I have something for you," he says, pulling a small package from his cloak and handing it to me.
It's wrapped in a blue silk cloth and tied with a silver ribbon. "What's this for?" I ask.
"It's my Christmas gift to you," he says. "Or, Midwinter gift, I guess. You seem to have acclimated to this new world quite well."
His words aren't accusatory at all, just an observation, and yet I feel the sting of them just the same. What does it say about me that I was able to slough off my old life without a glance backwards?
Still, I unwrap his gift and find a small velvet box. Within is a stunning silver ring with a shiny black stone in the center in the shape of a rectangle, and red stones on either side.
"It's black onyx," he says. "It will protect you."
I slide the ring onto my finger and I actually feel a shift in the air around me, like a barrier forming. "This is so strange," I say, my mind drifting. "I had a dream about this ring. I'd forgotten it but it's all come back to me now. I found a ring just like this in a marsh surrounded by ancient trees." I look up at my brother. "It's uncanny that you would get this for me."
"We're twins," he says with a shrug. "We've always had an uncanny connection, don't you think?"
"Yes, of course, you're right." I shake off the feeling of unease with the memory of all the times our lives interconnected in strange ways. We often had the same dreams or nightmares…sometimes we'd even appear in each other's. The next day we'd remember what we did in the other person's dreams. I haven't thought about that in so long, and the memory causes an ache in my heart.
Tears fill my eyes and I reach over and grab his hand. "I've missed you." I sniff, then swipe at my eyes with my free hand. "Your remains are still on my mantelpiece."
He laughs and glances up at them, just above the fireplace. "I noticed. But you don't have to miss me anymore. I'm right here."
Then he stands, a small, sad smile on his lips. "And I will be back," he promises. "But for now, I have to go."
I stand and hug him again. "Why?"
"You know why. If I'm found here, the truth will come out about who really killed Mary and her baby and I'll be arrested. I can't risk it when there's so much to do."
"We have to talk soon," I say. "I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the moral conundrum you've created."
He kisses my forehead. "We will. For now, keep that ring on and be careful. I love you, Evie."
"I love you, too," I say, but before my sentence is out, he's gone. He hopped over the balcony and seemed to vanish into nothing.
A moment later there's a knock on my door and my heart beats so hard in my chest it feels like it's going to crack a rib.
If it's Liam… if he heard anything, that will put me in a sticky situation. He needs to be focused on himself. On the case that could end his freedom for good if he's convicted. Finding out the truth about Mary and my brother's roll in her death could be a fatal distraction for him. I tell myself I'm keeping this from him for his own good, but, of course, I also have selfish motives. I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to lose him. What if, once he finds out, he sees my brother every time he looks at me?
But when I pull open the door, it's not Liam standing there.
It's Cole.
"Bonsoir, Eve," he says, with a gallant bow. "I hope I'm not disturbing you." He glances behind me and frowns. "I thought I heard you talking to someone."
I try to look as innocent as possible. "No. I mean, I sometimes talk aloud to myself." I shrug as if this is totally normal.
He grins. "Did you know one of the gifts of working with the darkness is the ability to tell if someone is lying?"
Well, shit. "No, I didn't. But I thought you were a light Druid?"
I hold the door open, letting him in, and we both sit in front of the fire, where Adam and I had just been sitting.
"I was. But I found that light without darkness is an imbalance of nature. I wasn't utilizing my power to its fullest potential, limiting myself to just the one element. Once I opened myself to darkness, I grew more than you can imagine."
I frown. "So now you're a lie detector?"
He nods.
"That would be handy," I say, thinking of the ways I could make good use of that skill. With clients. With witnesses. With my personal life.
And then I wonder, is this his way of telling me he heard me and my brother talking? Should I ask? Ignore it? I'm not good at this subterfuge shit.
"I am not my brothers," he says. "Yes, I heard you and your brother talking. I heard what he did. And I do not judge. I believe we have to do the wrong things for the right reasons sometimes."
"Like killing an evil priest and his followers?" I ask softly.
He gazes at the fire and nods slowly. "Yes, like that. But that wasn't the first time I killed," he says.<
br />
I wait to see if he wants to share more.
"When I lived in France, my master, he was indeed a great teacher. I learned a lot from him." Cole pauses, and I feel his energy shift. "He was also a rapist. And I was his preferred target."
Oh god. No.
Cole looks at me, his dark eyes so intense. "I killed him with my magic one night when I couldn't take it anymore. That's how I found the darkness. That night."
He pauses, searching my face.
His story tears me apart, and I can only imagine the vast pain he's suffered, first as a child, then as a man when his brothers imprisoned him. What horror he has been dealt. What tragedy.
"I had to go to great lengths to acquire my power," he says, studying me. "But you have only to tap into what is already within you." He leans forward. "I can teach you."
My heart skips a beat and my palms become slick with sweat. I can feel the darkness below the other elements, lurking like a hungry beast waiting for its moment to strike. I pull back, looking away. "I can't. It's too risky."
"You have been so afraid of your darkness that you're stifling your light," Cole says, his dark gaze probing into me until I can't help but look back at him.
I wonder…is this why my brother is so much stronger than me? He's tapping into his darkness in ways I have been unwilling to? But at what cost?
"Isn't it reasonable to be scared of what I'm capable of?" I ask. "To fear hurting others? To be wary of this dark cancer that's in danger of consuming me?"
He brushes a lock of hair off my face, his fingers creating a trail of fire over my skin. "Only if you believe in the lie of duality. In the falsehood of either/or. I don't," he says frankly. "There's a verse in a religious text that says, 'The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.' And that is true. But what they don't say is that the light hasn't overcome the darkness either." He holds up his hand, palm facing me, and takes mine, placing it against his. His skin is warm and reassuring. "We are the light and the darkness. The two seeming dualities that need each other to be in balance. It is light, after all, that creates life's shadows. And it is the embrace of darkness that makes the light shine brightest."
Tears burn my eyes as I look at our hands pressed against each other. I can feel his power pulsing under his skin. I can see it in his black eyes, in the shadows that move within them. It is a dark magic, a magic practiced under the cover of night, but it is not evil. He is not evil. And maybe, neither am I. Despite what I've done, and what I might still do.
"Eve," he says softly. "You are the light to my darkness and I am the darkness to your light. We have pieces of each other within ourselves, and that is what makes us stronger together. If you can surrender to that, there's nothing you can't do."
He twines his fingers through mine and pulls us both to standing position, then bridges the gap between us. He dips his head and leans in, his lips brushing against my ear. "I need you," he says. "More than I've ever needed anything."
"You have me," I say. Because I'm done fighting this. I'm done fighting myself and my own nature. I'm done fighting him.
I am complete with him.
My light and darkness in balance.
No longer at war with each other.
"I'm not like my brothers," he says again, as he pulls his hand out of mine to wrap them around my waist. "I don't crave your blood, but I do crave your soul. You're light." He gently kisses my neck, sending shivers up my spine. "And your darkness. I want it all. I can handle it all."
I suck in my breath as a fire is lit in my belly. Need and desire crash into me, and I am consumed with them. With him.
When his lips make their way to mine, it is with slow deliberation, the passion contained in feather-light kisses that leave me breathless and desperate for more. He drops his hands to my hips and presses himself against me.
An ache grows in me and our kisses deepen.
My nails dig into his back, pressing through his shirt as I cling to him. When he pulls away, I groan, my body missing his.
"Do you trust me?" he asks.
I nod and allow him to lead me to the bed.
He undresses me slowly, meticulously, his dark eyes locked on me, his hands caressing every inch of me with such tenderness and devotion I nearly melt.
I feel no embarrassment as I stand before him naked. "You have too many clothes on," I remind him.
He strips quickly and my breath catches at the beauty of his body, perfect in every way, despite the scars he lives with. Or maybe because of them. After all, it's often our imperfections that give us our real beauty, and he is a beautiful man, with his long fingers, hard lines and sharply defined muscles.
With shocking ease, he lifts me into his arms and lays me on the bed, then produces strips of black silk cloth.
I don't resist as he ties one cloth around my eyes, rendering me blind, and then gently ties each of my wrists to the bedposts.
"Surrender to the darkness," he whispers against my flesh, his lips and hands teasing me in all the most sensitive places.
I nod, unable to speak, as I lose myself in the sensations he's coaxing from me.
When he spreads my legs and teases my sex with his tongue I nearly lose myself, but he pulls back, unwilling to let me finish so quickly.
He takes his time with my body, and as I writhe under his merciless teasing, something happens I have never experienced before. The lines between us dissipate. The boundaries of flesh give way to a complete melding of his spirit and mine. I feel him everywhere, on every inch of my body, within me, caressing me and kissing me in ways that can't be possible with just one human body.
When I can no longer hold back, he undoes the ties restraining me and blinding me, and I see a black mist mixed with gold that has become a part of both of us. We are no longer two entities, but one, and when I climax, he is in me, riding the wave with me, our bodies wrapped into each other, the light and the dark becoming one.
The Secret
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. ~Og Mandino
Matilda is sitting in front of her fire knitting when she calls for me to enter and have a seat. There's already a steaming cup of tea waiting for me.
How does she always know?
I curl up in the overstuffed leather chair and sip at my drink as we sit in silence for a few moments.
"I can hear your mind spinning, my dear. What have you come to ask?" She smiles at me kindly, then returns her attention to the sweater she's working on.
"I used to think that right and wrong were very clear cut," I say. "But recently…with my growing powers and other things that have happened, I'm starting to wonder about that."
Matilda pauses, laying her hands on her lap, and looks deeply into the fire. "This is about Cole," she says.
"He's in my bed as we speak," I confess. After we made love, he fell asleep, but my mind was too restless. It was hard to leave his warm body for the chilly hallways of the castle, but I needed to clear my head. To talk to someone who might understand.
She glances at me, a small smile on her lips. "He is not as evil as some of his brothers might like to believe," she says. "I've known those boys their whole lives, and I can tell you that they have all done the wrong thing for right reason, and the right thing for the wrong reason, more times than I can count. In other words, they are all more human than they fancy themselves to be. You cannot live as long as they have and not pick up a few demons along the way. It's what we do about our demons that define us. And that definition isn't static. It changes with each choice we make, with each path we choose. We are, none of us, beyond redemption or beyond change. But the longer we follow the dark path, the harder it becomes to choose the light."
"So, Cole has done evil things?" I ask.
She shrugs. "I suppose it depends on how you define evil. Many religions would argue that disobedience against their god or their god's laws is evil. But then great suffering has
been wrought by those very same religions. One could conceivably argue that they perpetrated more evil than they cured. A more hedonistic view of good and evil equates those states with pleasure and pain. Pleasure is good. Pain is evil. Therefore, one must spend their life in pursuit of what brings pleasure. This, of course, can create problems. If what causes me pleasure by its very nature requires someone else to suffer, am I doing good or evil?"
She pauses, and I shift in my chair, trying to wrap my mind around it all. "Should motives matter?" I ask. "If the motive is pure, does that justify evil deeds? If a few must be sacrificed for many more to live, is that evil or good?"
"I cannot say." Matilda leans forward, stoking the fire. "The balance of our acts and our intentions must be weighed by something far wiser than myself. I just know I have lived a very long life, and it will be longer still, and what I have seen of all creatures, human and otherwise, is that there will never be a consensus on what is truly right or wrong, good or evil. For that would require all species of beings to agree on what the primary objective of life is. Is it to be happy? To live well? To leave the world better than you found it? And what does that look like? Better for whom? Who decides what happiness means? What does 'better' even mean? And so, we must all muddle along, my dear. We must all make the best choices we can with the information we have about ourselves and the world, and self-correct along the way. Perhaps, the whole point of it all isn't to be good or even happy, but to continue learning. Perhaps, we are here to evolve, nothing more or less."
"There is darkness in me," I say. "I can see it now. I can feel it. And it makes me want to do things I used to believe were wrong. It makes me want to punish people who cause others harm. My brain says I should follow the appropriate paths for justice. Work within the system. But I know the system—all systems everywhere—are inherently corrupt. I know true justice—whatever that even is—will never really be accomplished. But if we all start enacting our own brand of justice based on our personal moral compasses, chaos will ensue. However, if we keep working within a corrupt system without challenging it, complacency will ensue and those who are disadvantaged by the system will always be so. I don't know the right answer."
I Am the Storm (The Night Firm Book 2) Page 13
