by Karalynn Lee
“I couldn’t,” he said. “So I waited here instead.”
“For how long?”
He shrugged. He hadn’t counted the days. “I was afraid you were out shepherding another soul.”
“I haven’t been able to take on another guardianship yet.”
“Then what have you been doing?”
“Thinking about how long it takes to fly to Hellsgate,” she said lightly. “Wondering whether I would be trapped in another cage in the market, and how long it would take you to walk by and see me.”
He tried to match her painfully thin banter. “I wouldn’t have been able to buy you this time.”
“Why not?”
“I returned all the souls I had collected.”
Her eyes widened. “You gave them all back?”
“Almost all,” he corrected himself. He brought out his last coin.
She made no move to take it. “You came to return it to me?”
“Yes. You don’t owe me anything.” He knew the words were wrong as soon as he spoke them. He shook his head, impatient with himself. “No. I came to see you.”
“I wanted you to have it to remember me.”
“How could I forget you? And souls are hardly keepsakes. How have you survived without a soul?”
“It’s been miserable. But not because I was missing my soul.”
He felt his heart begin to pound. The allure of an incubus depended on proximity. In Heaven, she couldn’t have been farther away from him, and he had been certain, during some despairing nights, that she would have shaken off any demonic influence and been horrified by it.
“You should still take it,” he said.
“It was a gift.”
He said, “Some gifts are infinite. You can never pay for them. Except in like coin.”
“Kenan…”
“Kenan Ebon Arish.” He took her hands. “My soul is—”
She said wildly, “I’m an angel. We don’t take others’ souls while they still live.”
“No. You guard them.” He drew her toward him. “Will you watch mine?”
She set a hand on his chest, resisting. “I’m an angel. I can’t be with a demon.”
“We’re given a choice about that, you know,” he said.
She went still.
“We can have forever,” he said, “or we can have each other.”
“You want me to go to the mortal plane with you,” she said. “As human.”
He would not have moved had the world shattered at this moment. “Yes.”
Her eyes were liquid. She whispered, “Yes.”
She finally let him draw her toward him. He placed the coin against her lips, and when it slipped into her mouth, kissed her, sharing its taste and then its dissolution. He felt her shiver as it re-integrated, and then she melted against him.
When they parted for the barest fingersbreadth, he said, “I love you.”
She kissed him this time, and her wings came around them, caging them. He could not have minded less.
Then she took his hand and they began to walk out of Heavensgate. A feather fluttered in the breeze, and fell. Then another, and more, until they left behind them a soft white trail that once had been her wings.
He, having a human shape already, did not change much. He might have lost his allure, the sheer magnetism that all incubi had, but if you had asked her, she would have denied it.
About the Author
Karalynn was born in Texas, raised in Korea and now lives in California. Despite majoring in English, she makes her living writing in programming languages instead. She enjoys early mornings, running, barley tea and watching football games in crowded pubs. More of her writing is available from Samhain Publishing, Drollerie Press and at her website, http://karalynnlee.com/.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9068-0
Copyright © 2010 by Karalynn Lee
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