by Sunny
By everyone’s shocked expression, I could tell they thought I was in the middle of a breakdown. It made me laugh, because if I hadn’t been in the midst of one, I sure was having one now.
“It’s real,” Dante said into the fraught silence. “You’re not dreaming, not making all this up in your mind.”
The hand he laid on my shoulder certainly felt real.
“This is all just too much,” I whispered, flinging out my hand to wordlessly encompass everything, including the two spectacular men who were supposed to be my lovers, the Demon Prince who claimed to be my mate, even Dante himself . . .
“Too much . . . too good to be true,” I muttered as tears welled up and start to overflow their fragile tension. “It can’t be real.”
“Hush,” Dante soothed. His eyes captured mine, and I watched with dazed bewilderment as those pale blue eyes turned a mesmerizing silver and started to glow.
“Can’t be real,” I said, shaking my head.
“Close your eyes, my love,” he murmured, “and sleep.”
And all my panic, doubt, and sadness drifted away as I succumbed to another’s greater will.
NINETEEN
I WOKE ALONE in bed. At first I thought I was back home in my Manhattan apartment and that everything had been a bizarre dream.
It was the smell, the different scents that flashed my eyes open. That’s right, scents as in plural, not singular. My own scent was strongest, mixed with the fainter smell of—what were their names? I thought for a moment and recalled them: Dontaine and Amber. The smell of them both, here on the bed, on the red silk sheets. In one of the largest bedrooms I’d ever seen.
Oh . . . shit.
I looked around. Everything strange. The only thing familiar being that everything was not familiar. I pinched myself on the arm and felt a painful sting, but no altering of reality.
Sitting up, I noted that I was still fully dressed. How long had I slept or, more accurately, been knocked out? I rubbed my eyes and blinked. Had Dante’s eyes really turned silver and started glowing?
I got up and wandered around, inspecting the room. The hairbrush on the dresser had strands of hair that matched my own new color. Old, familiar T-shirts were mixed in with newer ones I’d never seen before, likewise with my pants, underwear, and socks; unsettling, the mingling of the comfortable old with the new and unremembered. The walk-in closet was the same, containing an array of my old stuff mixed with expensively styled new clothing and shoes.
I walked through an open archway into the large connected bathroom and gazed at my reflected image in the long stretch of paneled mirrors ribboning one entire wall.
Who had I become? Had I lost the new me with this large gap in my memory?
It was probably what everyone else was wondering.
I took a shower and felt much better afterward dressing in my old, comfortable clothing—T-shirt and jeans, a battered pair of sneakers, with my hair up in a ponytail.
Self-armored, I left the room and came to a door halfway down the corridor—two doors, actually, directly across from each other. Both rooms were empty, no heartbeat. I turned the brass-handle doorknob and found myself looking into a bedroom: Amber’s room by the scent, large and roomy and tall-ceilinged like the rest of the house. My perusal paused a moment on a standing mirror, a tingle traveling down my back as the sight of it touched a strand of a memory that seemed almost tangible but wasn’t quite—something to do with that mirror. I waited but nothing more came.
His closet was mostly empty with only a few articles of clothing hung within. The dresser drawers were likewise scantily filled. I retreated back into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind me, apologizing silently to the big man for intruding on his privacy but needing to know something more of this house and its occupants—who these people were and who I was to them.
The other bedroom was imbued with Dontaine’s scent. His drawers were all full: socks, T-shirts, underwear—silk boxers. The latter made me hastily close the drawer. His closet was packed full of clothing as well, all carrying his scent. It was looking at those articles of clothing that caused a vision to come upon me.
I stood in the same closest but was looking at a different set of clothes, much fewer, filling only a small portion, and the scent was different, belonging to someone else . . . I was sad . . . so sad.
The memory of that time came to me with a clarity that was sharp and stunning, and my hand spread across my stomach, now as it had then. My empty womb, I remembered thinking and feeling. I had just finished my monthly flow, my red blood spilling down the toilet along with my hopes and dreams of a child from this man whom I was . . . what? . . . Desperately, I grasped onto that last thread. Those feelings . . . that scent . . .
Who was this man to me? Someone important . . .
At that question, that certainty, a face came to me, swirling me back to yet another time . . .
A face like a fallen angel, heartbreakingly beautiful. Skin luminous white and hair as dark as sin. Lips red and full, pulled tight with pain.
He was injured, lying on a stretcher in the emergency room.
And with that image, that remembrance, everything inside me unlocked, and all the memories came flooding back in a gushing cascade.
Gryphon—my first love, my first lover. My first rending loss . . .
I found myself on the floor, curled up in a ball, not daring to move or make a sound lest it stop. But it didn’t. It kept coming and coming in an overwhelming outpour, the floodgates too open now to stop.
Tears poured down my face, and my heart ached in silent, joyful memory. I remembered everything . . . including the baby I had lost—Dante’s and mine.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that, huddled on the floor, my hands clamped over my mouth to keep the screams locked within me. Minutes might have passed, hours. It felt like days . . . like an eternity.
My head ached. So did my heart. And my skin felt painfully raw and tight, newly formed, as if it had been physically stretched to contain the new expansion of myself.
How sweet and sad, wonderful and awful, to remember.
I staggered back to my room to splash water on my face and change out of my sweat-dampened clothes, grabbing the first thing that came to hand—old or new, they all were familiar to me now.
My hands were trembling, I noted vaguely as I sat in front of the mirrored dresser, gazing at my reflection. I looked the same, but the woman staring back at me was different from the woman who had sat there just a short while ago.
I was complete now.
Downstairs was silent but for some bustling in the back kitchen area. Empty, I thought at first, until I heard a page rustle in the front parlor. Following the sound, I came upon Halcyon seated gracefully in a wing chair, a book on his lap. He had to have known I was there—my beating heart announced my presence to him as loudly as a knock—but his gaze remained down, giving me the chance of polite escape.
My Demon Prince. Whom I had not recognized. Who I had thought human at first. Who I had been so carefully avoiding with nervous dread since the words demon and Hell and chosen mate had been uttered. Who sat there as solitary and alone as when I first saw him in a sun-dappled meadow.
“Halcyon,” I said, speaking his name softly, emotions welling within me like a soft, rising tide as I went to him.
He stood with polite, guarded containment. It changed to clear surprise when I didn’t stop a careful distance away but kept going until I was flush against that slender, hard body, embracing him. “Oh, Halcyon.”
“Mona Lisa?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said against his chest.
A moment of stunned silence, and then his own arms coming up to hold me in a suddenly tight grip. “You remember?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Everything. I remember everything, Halcyon.”
He eased me back gently so he could see my face. “Do you remember how we last parted?”
“What? Me acting like a skittish idiot after you saved me and brought me out of NetherHell?”
“After I hurt you,” he amended.
“In order to get me out of that awful place.”
“If you remember, why are you so glad to see me now?”
“Because I almost lost you. Because I did lose you for a little while. I’m so sorry—it must have hurt when I didn’t know you.”
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “It was like a samurai sword being thrust right through me. And then, like a fool, I felt glad . . . happy that you’d forgotten your fear of me. Only it wasn’t any better. You were still skittish, still afraid of me. Why?”
“Because your name belonged to this demon who supposedly ruled Hell and had some sort of claim over me. Of course I was afraid of you after hearing that; human perceptions of demons are quite different, you know. Dante said that you’d given me the necklace I was wearing around my neck, and it had freaky properties like allowing you to know when someone who intends me ill touches it. It burned the fingers of Mona Sierra, by the way, a Queen who has this, like, long family grudge against Dante. Was it true?”
“Which part?”
“That the necklace gave you some sort of vibe when it burned her fingers?”
“Yes, it told me you were in danger. It’s why I’m here now. How do you feel?”
“Fine—better than fine. I feel normal.”
“No agitation or reaction to my demon presence?”
“Oh, that.” Before, in the past, I had been quite stirred up by close contact with Halcyon.
I had been in the process of becoming Damanôen, demon living. Now, though, there was nothing. No rising bloodlust or red eyes or demon claws.
The relief of that nonreaction was almost as jarring as getting my memory back. Halcyon’s arms came around my waist as I sagged against him. And even with physical contact, there was still nothing.
“Oh my God, Halcyon, I’m totally fine. Even when you touch me.” I laughed, happy, exuberant. “It must be what you did to me to get me out of NetherHell, tearing Mona Louisa out of me, separating us.”
In the damned realm of the cursed dead, Mona Louisa had grown as strong as my own self, our shared body taking on the physical shape and facial features of whoever was dominant at the moment—talk about weird. It had taken multiple personality disorder to a whole different level.
She might have even permanently overpowered my own personality had we stayed longer in that realm. But we hadn’t. Our integrating souls had been physically separated, leaving a gaping wound that had been slowly killing us both. She had almost faded completely from existence when I had absorbed her back into me.
“She was greatly weakened when we merged back together again,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud. “Maybe that’s why I’m so calm and nonreactive to your presence now. The question is whether this calmness will last or whether she’ll grow strong again.” And turn me back into a living demon schizoid, who might attack anyone close to me.
“You seem to be fully integrated now,” Halcyon observed. “You said you were able to shift into her vulture form.”
“That’s right, I did.” A bright, optimistic thought—especially what it implied. That I might be stable, at status quo now, and wouldn’t start changing and evolving back again into that frightening living demon thing I had been becoming before.
The sound of people, the feel of them, told us that we were no longer alone. Turning, I saw a crowd of faces gathered at the doorway.
“You remember us now, milady?” Rosemary asked.
“Oh,” I gasped as I not just saw them but recognized them. Knew them. “I can’t believe I forgot you guys.”
It was Happy Reunion, Take 2. This time without any awkwardness or freaky meltdown to spoil things. I hugged Tersa, rumpled Jamie’s carrottop head, squeezed Rosemary’s ample waist, and exclaimed to a grinning Thaddeus, “My God, you’re as tall as I am now. When did you suddenly shoot up?”
“He’s been growing like a weed the last several months,” Chami said, grinning. “You just didn’t notice, seeing him every day.”
“Where’s Tomas?” I asked, naming one of my other guards.
“He’s over in Amber’s territory, helping run things while Amber was here,” Aquila informed me.
“Amber didn’t leave . . . he didn’t go back yet, did he?”
“No, I am still here,” Amber said, his voice coming from behind the others. Dontaine was beside him, I saw as the rest of them made room, allowing them to come to me.
They were still both striking men but no longer intimidating, no longer overwhelming. I saw them now through eyes filtered by love and shared experience. Amber, rugged giant that he was—indeed, one of the most physically imposing men I’d ever come upon—had been frighteningly vulnerable when I first met him, literally crawling in the dirt before his former Queen, begging for mercy she had not shown him. And Dontaine—beautiful, stunning Dontaine. I still remembered him with his throat torn, bloody and helpless while I washed the gore from his body and cared for him. They had earned my love, and even more important, I had earned theirs.
“Oh, Amber.” I flew into his big arms and careful embrace.
“How did you remember? When?” Amber asked in a deep rumble.
“After I woke up. I wandered into your room and Dontaine’s upstairs and had one of those flashbacks. I remembered Gryphon—he was the key. Everything came flooding back once I remembered Gryphon and how it all started.”
The loss of my first love was a gentle sorrow I shared in my glance with Amber, who had known him best of all those here. But it was a gentle loss because Gryphon was not truly gone, just existing in a different realm now as demon dead.
I released my big giant and turned to my other lover. “Dontaine.” I didn’t make him come to me as I had done so often in the past. I walked to him, to where he stood in cautious wait.
I went to him, held him, exhaling softly against his chest. “Oh, Dontaine, I’m so sorry . . . so sorry I forgot you. You pack one heck of a second first impression.”
The stiff wariness I had taught him melted away and his arms came around to embrace me also. “As long as you’re not rejecting me,” Dontaine said against the top of my head.
“No,” I murmured.
He pressed a kiss to my crown and I pulled back to smile up at him, but I wasn’t done yet. There was one last important man in my life. One last lover I had yet to look upon with eyes filled with memories, to ask questions of.
I ended up driving. Such a simple, normal thing to do—drive a car. And for only a short distance. The Morells lived in a small house just down the road, within the vast property of the estate. Close enough, and more important, safe enough for the others to let me travel to by myself. After this latest scare, I had a feeling they were going to keep a really close eye on me, and I was going to happily let them. I had almost lost everything, not through another’s fault or treachery, but through betrayal of my own mind.
Dante came out of the house as I pulled into the driveway. The rest of the family was still inside, giving us token privacy. He had that grim look on his face once again. “I apologize for using compulsion on you—” he began.
“I remember,” I said, cutting across his words.
His body didn’t stiffen, but his focus sharpened on me, stiletto sharp. Then he blew out a breath, releasing the tension, his eyes growing unreadable. “Come walk with me,” he suggested quietly. He didn’t hold out his hand, nor did I take his. We walked, as he had requested.
Soft moonlight trickled down through the trees as we went deeper into the forest until we came to a wide clearing. Here was where we gathered every month, each full moon, to Bask. Here, also, was where my men came to train and practice each evening, just before dawn—the place where Dante had first revealed the twisted past between him and me, our cursed enmity, and stood there waiting to be killed.
“What do you remember?” Dante asked, as we
stood with the thrum of old power faint and soft in the soil beneath our feet.
“Everything.” Every last wretched, painful thing. “Oh, Dante . . . our child. I lost our baby.”
Tears—both his and mine—bridged the distance as no words could have, and I found myself suddenly held by Dante, sobbing softly into his neck, feeling his shared grief in the wet drops that moistened my temple.
The loss was mingled with remembered guilt, and the double loss of Dante immediately after like a one-two blow. But it was old grief that twinged anew, not fresh grief. Eventually my tears lessened, subsiding into an occasional hiccup, the quick ebbing of it hastened by the man who held and comforted me now.
One loss irrevocable, the other not so. Or so I hoped.
I said now what I had wanted but had not the chance to say before. “I’m sorry, Dante.” And the added plea. “Don’t leave me again. Stay, please stay.”
He smoothed back my hair, searching my face. “Do you remember that time before, when I took your life and you cursed me?”
I took a deep, ragged breath. “Yes.”
“Then how can you want me to stay?”
“Our present life eclipses our past,” I said, gripping his arms. “We’re in the middle of our second chance, and second chances are rare and precious. I happen to be freshly reminded of that.” More gently, “Say you’ll stay.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them. “Yes,” he said simply.
My heart leaped in joy. “Mona Sierra,” I said, pressing while I yet had the advantage, “you won’t go back to South America to punish her?”
Diamond blue eyes darkened. “I promised her my vengeance—”
“Which you will have,” I hastened to point out. “She’ll be fearful and uneasy for the rest of her life, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for you to strike.” Waiting for you to slaughter her and all her people—which I didn’t say out loud. “That waiting, always being on edge . . . let that be vengeance enough,” I begged. “Please.”
