“C-can I h-help you?” The youth behind the counter forced himself to meet Kaderil’s ferocious gaze, earning a small measure of his respect.
“Fix me four sandwiches.”
“Wh-what kind, sir?”
“I don’t care!”
The kid grabbed two small loaves of bread, cut each in half, and began slapping various kinds of meat on the four rolls with surprising dexterity. As Kaderil watched, an odd buzz began to tingle along his skin. So faint, at first, that he thought it just a memory of the power he’d raised with Autumn last night, the first time by accident when he’d inadvertently taken her virginity, the second time when he’d cruelly forced her to raise the power with him, then realized her mortal body wasn’t built to withstand such force.
As he stood there, watching the kid toss cheese on the meat, the buzz grew steadily more insistent until he was certain he was feeling true power. Power he and Autumn alone could raise. He turned, searching the now-empty deli for sign of her even as he knew she was locked in the apartment four stories above, where he’d left her.
The buzz grew worse. The power was rising.
Kaderil’s pulse tripped. He’d felt the power buzz over him like this in the houseboat as Jack had arrived. He’d suspected Autumn was fighting her prison, but the power had only lasted a few seconds before dying. Was she once more fighting to escape the control he’d placed over her? And what if she succeeded? He wasn’t sure how long his control over her would last when he wasn’t close by.
“Hurry,” he growled at the youth.
The buzzing continued and he started to sweat. What was she doing? If she didn’t stop soon, she was going to injure herself. Her mortal body was too fragile.
He felt the tingling on his skin slowly ebb and he expelled the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She’d given up at last. But no sooner was the thought in his head, than the buzzing returned, but not as strong as before. Wavering, as if the one raising the power were growing weak.
She was going to injure herself!
He turned and fled the deli, knocking aside a young couple trying to enter as he pushed through the door. He ignored the elevator and ran for the stairwell, taking the stairs five at a time. That wavering buzz continued, his pulse jumping another notch with every passing second. Had she somehow become trapped in the power?
He burst through the door into the empty living room and ran to the bedroom. His heart lodged in his throat at the sight of her on the floor, her arms and legs flung wide from a back arched in agony. Tears ran from her eyes into the hair tumbling around her face.
Her head swivelled toward him with painful difficulty, her eyes filling with a frantic desperation as she pressed her palms to the floor and once more engaged the energy. Her face contorted as a torturous moan escaped her throat.
She’d done this to herself.
“Autumn, no!” He fell at her side and pulled her hands from the floor. “What are you doing? You’re going to kill yourself.”
But her eyes rolled back, her expression one of utter defeat. “I’m…trying. Dear God, I’m trying, but…I can’t. I don’t have the courage.”
Understanding hit him like a fist to the gut. She was trying to kill herself. Because of him. Because of Jack. What had he done?
“It wasn’t your fault.” He shook her hands lightly, not wanting to cause her more pain even as he struggled with his own desperate anger that she’d nearly ended her own all-too-short life. “You couldn’t have stopped me.”
“I meant to stop you…from killing the others. Larsen. Charlie.” Her silent tears turned to choking sobs. “But I can’t…keep it up. I can’t…make myself.”
Sudden understanding crashed into him, nearly driving him to his knees. She wasn’t punishing herself. She was trying to kill herself. In drawing the power when she knew it would harm her, she had been attempting to sacrifice herself so that he couldn’t use her to trap the others.
Just when he thought he was beginning to understand these humans, they astounded him anew.
Yet her sacrifice was for nothing.
He held her hands lightly as he stared down into that pale, bejeweled face that was becoming far too precious to him. “You will not try to kill yourself again.” He released one of her hands and laid it gently at her side while he rubbed the back of her other hand with his thumb. “Feel no pain.”
Her expression eased, but not enough. Her back remained arched and rigid, filling him with a remorse as deep and bitter as the Forest of Nightmares. With his finger, he brushed a loose tendril of hair from her damp cheek.
“Is it any better?”
“I’m so hot. As if I’m burning from the inside out.”
Real fear raked claws down his heart. What damage had she done to herself in her wayward attempt to end her life? Her mortal’s body was too weak.
He squeezed her hand. “Be cool, Autumn. Cool the fire inside you.” If this didn’t work, he was going to have to get help, though he doubted human doctors would know how to save her.
His anxious gaze roamed her face, watching for sign that his commands were helping. Slowly, he felt the heat and tension recede from her hands and body. Her back relaxed and she sank to the floor.
“Better?”
“Yes. N-no.” With a violent shudder, she turned onto her side and curled into a shivering ball, taking his hand with her. “So c-cold.”
His command to be cool was taking her too far. “I release you from my commands, Autumn. All of them.” With his free hand, he brushed the hair back from her face. He’d vowed to leave her unharmed, yet from the moment they’d become one, he had done little but hurt her.
Despite his freeing of her body, she continued to shake. He had to find a way to help her.
“I’m going to lift you, Autumn. Tell me if I hurt you.”
Her head nodded jerkily.
He scooped her up and stood, her quaking body tight in his arms. Then he carried her the few feet to the bed and laid her down as gently as he could. The moment he released her, she tightened once more into a ball. With aching uncertainty, he watched her.
“Are you still in pain?”
“N-no. Just c-cold.”
Cold he could do something about.
Kaderil kicked off his shoes and lay beside her, pulling her against him and wrapping his arm tightly around her. She stiffened at the contact, but didn’t pull away.
A shudder went through him as he held her shivering body against his and buried his nose in the fragrant scent of her hair. Though he hated the weakness, he knew he needed this closeness, this contact, probably more than she did.
As he held her, her shivering slowly ebbed, to be replaced by a shaking of a different kind. A shaking that tore his heart to shreds as he recognized the sounds of her crying.
“Autumn…don’t. I won’t hurt you.”
“I d-didn’t want to die. I tried to be strong, but I d-didn’t have the courage.”
With a sigh so deep it burned his eyes, he said, “I should have told you the truth.”
“What truth?”
He pulled her closer. “You weren’t the coward. I was.”
“B-because you killed Jack?”
Her anguished confusion twisted like a cold ball deep in his gut. “Because I didn’t.”
She stilled in his arms. “I saw him.”
“I knocked him out and took the draggon stone, then I stood over him for more than ten minutes trying to find the strength to do what I was sent here to do. To kill the Sitheen. The enemy.”
“Don’t lie to me about this, Kade. Please.” Her words showed him her vulnerability as much as any he’d ever heard from her.
“I’m not lying.”
A great, hard shudder tore through his body as his mind flayed him with accusations of failure. Not only hadn’t he had the strength to carry out the mission he’d been sent to do, a mission that should have been simple for the Punisher. But once he’d failed, he hadn’t the courage to admit
his failure to Autumn so that she might have been spared her own darkest hour.
What if she’d succeeded? What if he’d been too late to save her? She could have died because of him.
The tension slowly left her body. The quaking ceased and her breathing turned deep and even. Kaderil held her close as she slept, feeling a deep welling of regret for what he’d put her through, even as he drank of this false closeness like a man too long without water.
For a few short days, she’d been his. Warm and loving, touching him freely and gifting him with her trust and her smiles. For a few short days, he’d understood, for the first time in his life, that the root of true happiness was closeness. Trust. Love.
Things he could never have with her now that she knew what he was. Things the Punisher could never have with any woman. But it would be infinitely harder living his solitary life now that he’d seen a glimpse of what he’d been missing.
How had he so lost himself? He was the Punisher. The dark blood. The one feared by all, and had been for centuries. A man without conscience, fulfilling his duties without qualms.
But here, in this place, with this woman, he felt only regret at the things his mission called for him to do. Only relief that he’d failed.
With a fierceness that startled him, he wished the pretense could be the truth. He wished he could be the human, Kade Smith, with Autumn at his side. With Jack and the others, his friends. He’d never had friends before. He’d never realized what pleasure there was in the smiles and simple touches of that kind of acceptance. How hard would it be to go back to fear, now that he knew that warmth?
He was the monster to them now, too. The monster they must try to slay. He never could, nor would, be anything else. Lost in his misery, he clung to Autumn as she slept, storing these moments, these last vestiges of warmth, for the endless loneliness ahead. When she finally stirred, he feared she’d pull away, casting him to the cold. Instead, to his amazed relief, she rolled over and laid her head on his shoulder.
Kaderil lifted a hand to stroke her soft hair that looked like flame, yet felt as cool as water beneath his touch. “You’re awake.”
“Mmm-hmm. Have you enchanted me?” she asked sleepily.
“No more than you’ve enchanted me. Why?”
“Because I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
Her simple words brought a sweet pressure to his chest. “I’ve hurt you so many times, yet never once did I mean to. I would never hurt you intentionally.”
“I know.” Her head tilted until she could see his face. Eyes grave, she asked, “Did you really not kill Jack?”
“No, I didn’t kill him.”
“Did you mean to?” she asked softly.
“Yes.” He tucked her head back against his shoulder, unable to watch her eyes as he explained. “What I told you last night was the truth. I was sent to retrieve the draggon stone and kill the Sitheen who knew of it. When Larsen was shot, I saw the stone hanging around Jack’s neck. Last night, at Myrtle’s, I knew the time was right to attack.”
“You were going to kill him then? When they’d just been reunited?”
He felt a rueful smile tug at his lips. “Would waiting a day or two have been kinder?”
“No.” He could almost hear her thinking. “Why didn’t you do it?”
“Because of you.”
Her arm wrapped around his waist, filling him with such tender affection he feared there would be no room left in his chest for his heart to beat.
“Why?”
He stared at the ceiling, wondering that question himself. “I don’t know. I looked in your eyes and I couldn’t do it.”
“You were struggling with it before you looked at me. That’s why you had that terrifying look on your face.”
He couldn’t deny it. The war inside him had been terrible, his Punisher’s mind railing at him to move, but he’d hesitated, unable to bring himself to kill.
“I’ve never before had difficulty fulfilling my duties.”
“Do you kill people a lot?”
“No. Never.” He blinked at the simple answer.
“But they sent you here to do that, anyway. To kill the Sitheen.”
“Yes. In Esria, they call me the Punisher. When one of the king’s subjects fails him in any way, King Rith sends me to mete out the punishment. I break bones—arms, backs, necks—causing as much pain as I can.”
“They heal quickly, though, don’t they?”
“Within seconds.”
“Still, that must be awful for you.”
Kaderil grunted. “It’s worse for my victims.” But her softly spoken words burrowed deep beneath his shields, deep beneath the armor he hadn’t even realized he wore. Because it had been awful for him. He’d hated the terrified eyes, the screams of fear as he’d grabbed his victims, the feel of bones snapping beneath his hands. Hated the terror his arrival sparked at any gathering.
He hated being the Punisher.
But, as he stared at the bleak expanse of white ceiling above his head, he knew it didn’t matter. There was nothing else for him in his world and no place for him in this one.
Autumn’s hand slid over his chest and back again in a move that both comforted and aroused. “What’s going to happen if you don’t kill the Sitheen as you’re supposed to? Will you be the one punished?”
“Yes.” He lifted her hand and raised the soft underside of her wrist to his lips. The future held no interest for him. Punishment, banishment, remaining the Punisher. They all suddenly felt the same—the same wide expanse of nothing that he’d lived with for fifteen hundred years. Only with Autumn had he ever felt alive.
The difference was, before he met her, he hadn’t realized how barren his life had been. He’d been content. But no longer. When he returned without her, he would miss her warmth and her sweetness every day of his excruciatingly long existence.
As his lips moved over her wrist, he felt her shiver.
“Are you cold again?” he asked sharply.
“No.” The word held a hint of laughter.
He unbuttoned the cuff of her flannel shirt, pushed it out of his way, and moved his mouth slowly up her inner arm, one lingering kiss at a time, drawing delightful shivers from her with each and every one. When he reached the tender underside of her elbow, he traced its line with his tongue.
“Kade…” She said his name with half a laugh, half a groan, filling him with joy.
He rolled toward her until he hovered over her, searching her gaze for a sign of welcome. The quick dart of her tongue on her lips told him all he needed to know. As his mouth covered hers, that tongue traced his lips and his heart swelled until he thought it was going to explode. The emotion struggling to get out went beyond joy, beyond caring, far beyond anything he’d ever known or ever imagined. It filled all the hollows, drove out the dark, sang in places that had only ever known silence.
Was this what the humans called love? Was this the reason some few Esri were willing to forsake all others for an eternity? He hadn’t believed anyone could feel such depth of emotion for another. He hadn’t believed such feeling existed. Yet it surged through his blood, transforming him.
Love. After fifteen hundred years, he’d fallen in love. With a human, Autumn McGinn. A woman who could never be his.
The bittersweetness of the moment filled him with such desolate longing that his eyes turned hot. The ache in his heart went almost beyond bearing. With everything he was, everything he would ever be, he wanted her.
Autumn pulled back, turning her face from his kiss. “Kade. I can’t. I’m sorry. I just…can’t.”
She didn’t have to explain. He understood all too well.
He rolled away from her, covering his eyes with his arm.
She couldn’t forget what he was. Esri. A monster.
He had to let her go. As soon as the last of the power stones arrived in her mail, he would release her into Jack’s protection. But not before. If he let her go now, he’d never get that last stone. An
d he had to have it. That much he could do for his king and his world. That much he must do. Or he would truly have no place at all.
The ring of the doorbell made him stiffen, then bolt upright.
Autumn rose more slowly. “Who do you think it is?” Their gazes met, eyes wide.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.” He looked into the face that would haunt his dreams for thousands of years and felt his heart clutch with fear. He grabbed her chin and kissed her hard, then released her. “Hide, Autumn. Don’t come out, no matter what.”
She grabbed his arm as he pulled away. “Be careful.”
Her tender concern sang through his veins. “Hide.”
Kaderil strode through the living room, his pulse hammering in his chest. Either the Sitheen had found him or Zander had decided to check up on him. Zander worried him more. His hatred of the humans was spinning out of control. If he found Autumn…
Kaderil took a deep breath and wrenched open the door.
Zander stood in the doorway, his white hair brushing the top of his silver tunic, his face hard. He pushed past Kaderil and strode into the apartment.
“Ustanis says you have the draggon stone. He felt the transfer of possession. He also traced three of the lesser stones to you.”
Zander’s nose lifted, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “I smell power. Other than yours. An oddly weak power, yet something.”
Kaderil’s pulse leaped. Clearly Autumn had acquired enough power during their lovemaking for Zander to sense. She was in grave danger.
As Zander started toward the bedroom, Kaderil stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Leave her alone.”
Zander cocked his head, his eyes widening. He started to laugh. “You dipped a virgin well with your heart open and leaked power to her, didn’t you?” His eyes glittered with a triumph Kaderil didn’t understand. “The dark blood has fallen at last.”
Zander thrust out a hand as he moved to step around him. Kaderil grabbed his wrist, keeping that deadly palm away from him and immobilized.
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