Then something changed—Xan turned away and something flashed across Syn’s face—heartbreak. She blanked her expression quickly, then called out to the gatekeeper. Elina just barely made out the words. “You open that damn gate, I’ll have your ass.”
“Playing the voyeur, Elina?”
She suppressed a shiver at the sound of Morne’s voice and glanced to see him standing behind her. She hadn’t heard him climb the ladder.
Realizing he’d caught her eavesdropping, she gave him a guilty smile. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she shrugged. “Yeah. I can’t help it. We don’t get much entertainment around here.”
He moved to join her, also peering down at Syn and Xan.
“So what are you doing?” she asked curiously.
“Playing the voyeur,” he murmured, slanting a look at her and giving her a quick smile.
Elina chuckled. “Morne, how . . . unexpectedly common of you.” She looked back at the two below as Xan’s raised voice drifted toward them.
“If I say it, I mean it,” the dark-haired man bellowed.
Elina’s brows arched. “What in the world is up between them?”
She didn’t expect an answer, nor did Morne offer one.
Her breath caught in her throat as Syn approached Xan, rising up on her toes to cup his face between her hands.
“Oh.” Elina’s heart melted. Misty-eyed, she whispered, “Isn’t that beautiful?”
“You’ve got a bit of a romantic inside you, don’t you?”
Forcing herself to look away from Syn and Xan, she met Morne’s eyes and smiled. “Yeah, more than a bit, I guess. Not something we get to indulge in very often, though.” She sighed and shoved away from the railing.
“Give it time.”
They descended the ladder, Elina going first, with Morne following. Her skin buzzed, having him so close. Keeping her voice level took more of an effort than she would have expected. Keeping her emotions under control took even more effort, but it was a must—she knew too much about Morne’s gift and there was no way she wanted him picking up anything from her.
“It would seem the three of you have found a way to work with the energy again,” Morne said, out of the blue.
She glanced at him. “Yes.” She flushed as she remembered the dream. Doggedly, she forced her thoughts away from that. A dream. Just a dream, remember? “We were going about it the wrong way—trying to use the energy the same way we’ve always done it. We had to adjust . . .”
“You needed to adjust.”
They spoke at the same time. Self-consciously, she laughed as the dream edged in on her thoughts again.
But she made the bad mistake of looking at him and realizing he was watching her with a weird look in his eyes.
On any other man, she would have called the expression stunned.
“Ahhh . . .” She backed away. “I need to catch up with Lee. There are some things, something, yeah, something—”
He caught her arm.
Under that hard, calloused touch, she froze.
Because she knew exactly how it would feel to have him touching her—exactly. Even though he’d never done it before. Not once, in all the years she’d known him.
“The dreams—you had them, too.”
Elina jerked against his hold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, her voice shaking.
“Liar.”
He reached up, laid his hand against her neck. His dark blue eyes began to glow. Through her shields, she felt him—felt way too much, felt more than she could possibly handle. “Elina.”
Her name was a rough murmur on his lips, and just the sound of it made her tremble. He slid a hand into her hair, tangling it. His face came closer and for one heart-stopping, breath-stealing moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. He was close, so close, she could feel his breath on her lips, feel his warmth.
But then she was cold.
And he was gone, striding away from her, as though he couldn’t get away quick enough.
Confused, she stared at his back.
Elina didn’t know whether she wanted to die of embarrassment or chase him down so she could grab him. She’d been dreaming about him for years, and now she’d finally almost had a chance to kiss him, and then it was jerked away.
She didn’t know whether to be glad or furious.
They’d been sharing dreams. She’d heard of such before, although not often, and she’d never thought she might be sharing her dreams with him.
Blowing out an unsteady breath, she muttered, “Well, hell.”
“You just said ‘twins.’ ” Lee looked from Kalen’s face to Laithe, dazed.
Okay, she was still adjusting to the idea of Laithe being around.
Adjusting to two brothers, though, she didn’t know if she could handle it.
Adjusting to two brothers from Anqar.
“And Xan, his name is really Xanthe. And he’s some kind of fucking mercenary. Exactly what does that mean anyway?” she asked, shoving her hands into her pockets to keep from nibbling on a fingernail.
“It means he sells his sword.” Kalen leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, his finger drumming out a rhythm against one biceps.
She knew him well enough to recognize the sign of restlessness. It was the only sign that he was as surprised by this twist as she was. Hopefully, it meant he was just as confused.
Laithe looked like he might as well be lounging by a pool with a nice, tall glass of beer. No. Wine. He’d be a wine drinker. He looked unconcerned, unperturbed. Disgruntled, Lee wondered if that was a Warlord thing or if she could maybe figure out how to look that unaffected. Morne was like that, too. So was Xan . . . or Xanthe.
Scowling, she kicked at the floor and muttered, “Should have figured out there was something weird with him before now. Nobody can act that . . . stoic all the time. Nobody from this world, at least.”
Sighing, she moved to the window, staring outside. “So where is he, anyway? Shouldn’t we be having some happy family reunion or something?” she asked.
“I get the feeling he doesn’t plan on hanging around,” Kalen said quietly.
It hurt, Lee realized. She knew the man—barely. But she didn’t know her brother. And he wanted to leave. Slowly, she turned and studied Kalen’s face. “Why? I mean, he’s more than welcome . . . Hell, he had better be welcome.”
“He is, pet.” Kalen straightened in his seat and shot Laithe an unreadable glance. “Both of them are. Morne vouches for them—as do you. And while I can’t say much about this one, I’ve learned enough about Xanthe to know he’s a good man. He’s welcome here, should he decide to stay.”
Lee forced a smile. “You can’t make everyone else feel the same,” she murmured.
“I know my men, Lee. If I tell them he’s welcome, most of them will accept that. Those who don’t . . .” He grimaced and shrugged. “Well, I’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Okay, so if that’s not the problem, then what—”
“It’s his witch,” Laithe said.
Lee looked at him, scowling. “Syn?” She didn’t understand, at first. But the longer she thought about it, the more she understood. After a minute, she slumped against the windowsill and muttered, “Shit.”
Xan—Xanthe—whatever he called himself—had come here with an agenda, and it was one he’d kept hidden. Then he’d gone and gotten involved with Syn. While Lee couldn’t speak for the other woman, she had an idea how she would feel in that situation.
Very much used, and very much the fool.
But she’d seen the way he looked at Syn.
Sighing, she crossed her arms over her chest and muttered once more, “Shit.”
Xanthe reached up and caught her wrists, easing her hands down. “Laisyn, this is hard—please don’t make it harder.” He pressed a kiss to her hands and then let her go.
“Oh, I plan on making this damn hard,” she snapped. She reached up and caught his tunic with one h
and. The other, she twined around his neck. He didn’t lower his head for her, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her, it seemed.
While he stood there, trying to find the strength to walk away, she was pressing a hot little line of kisses all the way up his neck, pausing to nibble at his chin, at his jaw. “Answer me,” she said, her voice challenging. “If you meant it, then why in the hell are you so determined to walk away?”
Then she pulled back and glared up at him, her cat eyes all but spitting fire at him. “And don’t you dare throw my words back at me, Xan. Considering the surprise I had dumped on me, I was entitled to be a little bitchy.”
How did he respond? What did he say? He needed to get her away from him—perhaps if he did, he might be able to make himself think. With that thought in mind, he rested his hands on her narrow waist—his intention was to ease her back. That had been his intention anyway. Yet he found himself pulling her closer, staring down in her upturned face and fighting the urge to kiss her.
“Got an answer?” she whispered, pressing her mouth to his neck, then drawing his face to hers.
Xanthe groaned as she kissed him, nibbling on his lower lip, sliding her tongue into his mouth. Shuddering, he tightened his hands and hauled her completely against him. She hummed against his mouth and brought her legs up, wrapping them around his waist. He raked his teeth down her neck and forcibly reminded himself they were standing out in the open, in full view of the entire camp. Anybody could see them—
He should care about that. Really, he should.
Tearing himself away, he forced a few feet between them and stared at her flushed face.
“What in the hell do you want from me?” he demanded. Need, love and guilt twisted through him, tearing into him, greedy little blades that threatened to shred his heart. “Damn it, what do you want?”
“Right now, just an answer,” she said, shrugging. “You tell me I’m your soul, but then you walk away . . . but if I mean much of anything, how can you walk away so easily?”
“You think this is easy?” he bit off. He felt as though he had ripped his heart out, as though half of it lay at her feet.
“If it’s not, you could have fooled me.”
“I can’t stay here.” He couldn’t. Why couldn’t she see that? He stared at her, his throat tight and his blood roaring in his ears. He couldn’t.
“You can. If you want to.” She licked her lips and uncertainty flickered across her face. “If you want me.”
She shook her head and said, “But I guess I can’t really make you stay. I can’t make you want me. If I’m your soul—whatever you meant by that—then I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to be with me. But since you’re so damned intent on walking, I guess I’m seeing this wrong.”
“If you think I don’t want to be with you, then you are very much mistaken. But can’t you see how impossible this is?”
“No. I see the man I love—I’ve waited my entire life for you,” she whispered, and her voice broke as she spoke. “Whatever you think the problems are, we can work it out. But not unless you want it. I guess maybe you don’t.”
But Xanthe hadn’t heard anything after the words, I see the man I love. Stunned, he closed his eye.
Her words echoed inside his head, danced through his blood.
Had she truly just said that?
Love. It wasn’t an emotion he had much familiarity with. He had loved his mother. He did love his brother. And although he barely knew her, he thought he probably loved his sister. But until Syn, he had never known anything like this—never felt an emotion that destroyed even as it remade, never felt such pain even as he felt such pleasure, never known such hope even as he discovered what it was to feel completely hopeless.
She loved him.
The soft brush of a shoe over the broken road had him opening his eye. She was walking away . . . walking through the secondary gates.
“Syn.”
This time, she was the one to stop and barely glance at him as she said, “What?”
The irony of the moment wasn’t lost on him. He caught her by the arm.
She whirled around, glaring at him. With a twist of her wrist, she tore away from him, backing away. Her cat eyes gleamed behind a veil of tears. “What, damn it? You can walk now. That’s what you wanted. So walk already.”
“What I want is you,” he rasped. He advanced on her, watching as she backed herself right up against the gate’s wall. Bracing his hands on the rough surface, he caged her in and stared down in her face. “Did you mean it?”
Syn sneered at him. “Mean what?”
Narrowing his eye, he pushed his fingers into her hair, gripping the short, silken strands. “Answer me, Laisyn . . . did you mean it?”
“If I say it, I mean it.” She fired his words back at him and gave him a tight smile. “Not that it matters. You want to walk away—you think this is impossible.”
“What in the hell do I know?” He dipped his head and nipped her lower lip. “Don’t you know? I can very often be an utter fool. You meant it.”
Syn jerked her face away from him. “Oh, yes. I imagine you can be an utter fool.”
But the line of her mouth had softened . . . he thought. He rubbed his cheek against hers, breathing in the scent of her. He wanted to kiss her, needed it. But self-preservation kept him from doing so. If he kissed her now, unless she had the presence of mind to stop him, he just might take her here, and now—right where any damn soul could see.
“You love me,” he said, staring down into her eyes.
Her hands came up, hesitantly cradling his face. “Yes, I love you.” A weak smile curled her lips and she shrugged. “I was actually sort of thinking about telling you soon, but life sort of got in the way.”
“It has a way of doing that.” He pressed his brow to hers. “You love me.”
Syn blushed and rolled her eyes. “Yes.” Her slender arms twined around his neck and he boosted her up, cradling her close. “I think we more or less got that clear.”
“I could still listen to you say it again. Possibly another ten or fifteen times would satisfy me. For now.”
Syn laughed. “You haven’t even told me once . . . but I’m supposed to say it another ten or fifteen times?”
“Haven’t I said it?” He eased her to the ground and reached up, laid a hand over her heart. It raced furiously, pounding against his hand in strong, fast beats. “In your language, love is linked to the heart. In mine, it’s the heart . . . and the soul. Avi means heart, soul. You are my heart, my soul. I announced it in front of men I barely knew.”
Her eyes went soft, a smile curling her lips. “Well, if you could announce it in front of a bunch of men you barely knew, men who really wanted to rip into you, by the way, then maybe you could tell me.”
“Maybe I could.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “My heart. My soul. You’re my everything, Laisyn. I love you.”
“Then why are you walking away?”
Cradling her face in his hands, he murmured, “In this moment, every last soldier here couldn’t drag me away.”
“Good.” She smiled and arched up, pressing her lips to his mouth.
He turned his face aside. “Bleeding sands, not here,” he muttered, glancing all around.
“Not what here?”
He grabbed her hips, held her close and leaned into her. “Touch me, kiss me, it’s entirely likely I’ll forget anything, everything but you. Should we give your men that show?”
“Ummm . . . no. Let’s not.”
It took more than an hour to get to her dormer.
They’d been waylaid—by Elina, who had looked unsettled—weird for her. By Lee, who had stared at Xanthe as though she’d never seen him before. By Kalen, who had glared at Xanthe and walked away with just a shake of his head. Bron, Gunner . . .
By the time they reached her room, she was ready to shriek, and when she closed the door, she sagged against it with a groan. “How can a ten-minute walk take an hour?”
“When you keep getting stopped every ten feet, it isn’t a ten-minute walk.”
“Yeah. Good point.” She shoved away from the door, itching to touch him, but nervous . . . so nervous. “I didn’t see your brother.”
“He’s near. Somewhere.” Xanthe shrugged his shoulders.
“I imagine you two have some catching up to do. I get the feeling you haven’t spoken in a while.” And exactly why am I talking about this now?
“It’s been some years.” Xanthe unsheathed the blade he wore at his back.
The black stone glinted under the light, and she realized he still had that black metal chain wrapped around the blade. No—not just wrapped. It looked as though the chain had been designed to wrap around the blade’s hilt. Slowly, he freed it and then he laid the sheathed blade on her desk.
“What’s the stone for?” she asked, watching as he cupped it in his hand, stared at it.
He jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “In Anqar, it’s a mark of what I am. Here? It’s naught much more than a trinket.” He tossed it onto her desk beside his blade.
“Looks like a fancy trinket.” Then she looked at him. “But I really don’t care too much about trinkets right now.”
“Really?”
Xanthe stood in the middle of her room, staring at her.
Staring . . . but not touching. Nowhere close to touching, and that just wasn’t a good thing, Syn decided. She unfastened her tunic, rolled her shoulders. It fell to the floor with a muffled thud. “Yes, really.” Stroking her tongue along her lower lip, she murmured, “You made love to me when we woke up . . . yesterday. It was only yesterday. But it seems like years.”
“Years.” He crossed to her and pulled her into his arms. The feel of him chased away every last echo of icy cold, and she tipped her head back, smiling at him.
“Too long.” She reached between them and stroked him. “Make love to me.”
Their clothes fell away, littering the floor around them as they made their way to her narrow bed.
Veil of Shadows Page 28
