“There is no concern about running out of time. Ever. All things get done, eventually. Sooner or later, they will catch me again, but it may not even happen in this decade. Meanwhile we’ll have lots of time to figure everything out for you.”
“Okay. Good to know.” I relaxed a little. ‘Next decade’ sounded comforting.
“WE’LL STOP HERE.” IVARR pulled into the underground parking lot of a hotel in Calgary a few hours later. “You’ll have a decent rest and some food. We can leave sometime after midnight to reach the border before the morning. I’ll have to make the decision of whom at the Eastern Council to call by then.”
“I don’t have an ID to cross the border,” I reminded. For all I knew, my passport could be still in the desk in my apartment where I left it last.
“That is not a problem. I’ll take you through a passage in the mountains I use when I don’t want to bring anyone’s attention to me. Unless things have changed drastically between Canada and The United States in the past couple of years, I’m fairly certain we’ll cross without trouble.”
It sounded so easy coming from him, but then again, Ivarr had been traveling the world for centuries, crossing borders, oceans, and continents many times.
“I’ll get you a room and bring you dinner.” He parked the truck, walked around the front, and opened the door for me. “Then I’ll have to feed, too.”
Feed?
My stomach flipped at hearing this word.
He must have noticed my reaction—his voice softened.
“I have to clear the fog in my head, Katherine. It’s too easy for me to make mistakes in my current state. This . . .” He tipped his chin at my bandaged arm. “Cannot happen again. It was my responsibility to keep you safe, and I failed.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I argued, my voice small. “I shouldn’t have . . .”
Shouldn’t have done what? Run to him? Stopped him from taking Jessa to his room by offering myself in her place?
He said nothing more, but I sensed the unspoken question in his silence. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I literally propositioned him. Now, he was giving me the chance to confirm the offer, giving me a choice once again.
Everything felt different, however. Within the past hours, Ivarr had become much more to me than simply an impossibly attractive demon. He could no longer be just a hot man for one night, someone I could easily forget afterwards.
The night spent with him was sure to leave memories and regrets. And now I knew, the regrets would be not of what I’d have with him, but of what I’d lose once he inevitably left me.
Everything inside me already felt hollow at the thought of having to part with him, possibly within days. Any kind of intimacy added between us, I sensed, would only make the loss greater.
“Come, Queen Katherine.” Ivarr finally broke the silence, taking my hand in his and heading to the exit.
He didn’t need to voice it. I understood from his tone that he was not going to hold me to my impulsive promise.
A heavy weight settled over my chest nevertheless.
IVARR SENT ME TO THE hotel store to buy some painkillers for my arm, while he checked into a room. Then he snuck me upstairs.
“Would you like to have a nap now? There is still time before dinner. Or are you hungry already?”
Hungry.
Even the word itself sounded wrong to my ear somehow.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll just have a quick shower and go to bed if you don’t mind. Feel free to lock the door when you leave.” I gestured at the heart pendant around my neck. “Either way, I’ll be fine.”
The only sleep I managed to get last night were the few hours in the truck. This would be the first time I’d get to sleep in a proper bed for over a month.
Feeling truly exhausted, I desperately hoped to pass out the minute he left the room. Then when I woke up, his feeding would be over, and I could try to ignore the fact it had ever happened.
IT WASN'T THE BEST sleep I ever had, but it turned out to be revitalizing. I woke up, feeling physically completely myself. The fog in my head had fully cleared. My energy returned. And the pain in my arm had numbed, possibly mostly due to the painkillers, still it was a relief.
“Good evening, Sleeping Beauty.” Ivarr sat in the armchair by the window, facing me.
“Have you been here all this time?” I sat up in bed, with a thud of selfish hope in my chest.
“No, I went out for a little while.”
“Feeding?” I blurted out before I could stop myself as my heart skipped with a jolt.
“No.” He got up and grabbed a white box from the nightstand. “Not feeding. Shopping.”
I slowly released a breath, reminding myself that any relief his words brought to me was only temporary. If he hadn’t fed yet, he’d have to go soon.
He’d changed while I slept. A pair of charcoal pants and a black button-down shirt replaced his jeans and ripped t-shirt. His thick, golden hair had been tamed and tied back.
He sat down on the bed next to me. A whiff of expensive cologne mixed with the warmth of his scent reached my nostrils.
I held my breath, willing to stop my pulse from racing.
“Let me see your arm.” He opened the box filled with medical supplies and reached for me, his long fingers almost touched, circling my puny bicep.
Carefully, he removed the bandage covering my injury and inspected the stitches.
“Looks good.”
I thought about the long centuries of his life.
“You must have seen a lot of wounds,” I said, partially to distract myself from the overwhelming mix of feelings brought on by his proximity.
“Cut, stab, burn.” He nodded, cleaning the skin around the stitches before applying some gel and a fresh bandage. “All kinds of them. My own wounds heal, regardless whether I treat them or not. The ones on humans have always been much more difficult to deal with. Especially, before antibiotics were invented.”
He nimbly bandaged my arm while he spoke, his head leaning over just an inch or two away from my face. I braced myself against the inexplicable urge to bury my nose in his hair.
“Why didn’t you feed?” My voice came out soft, barely more than a whisper.
Would it be better if he had fed already and it was all over by now?
“I got distracted.”
His hand slipped into mine.
“By what?”
“This.” With a gentle squeeze, he let go off my hand and rose to his feet to place an elegant paper bag from the table by the window into my lap. “I saw this and wanted to see it on you.”
I peeked under the gold and silver striped tissue paper inside the bag.
“Red?” I gasped at the glimpse of crimson silk.
“Your colour.” He nodded, watching me pull the dress out.
I got off the bed, holding the ankle-length gown up. “This is gorgeous, Ivarr. So beautiful.” I pressed it to my chest and kicked my foot out, sending the flared skirt to flutter around my legs in scarlet waves of shimmering silk.
“The exact colour of my favourite emotion in you.”
I glanced up to catch him staring at me.
“It’s too much.”
“It’s a gift,” he dismissed.
“Another gift? It’s too much, Ivarr,” I insisted. The dress was impeccably tailored and must have been expensive. The fabric felt rich and luxurious in my arms. “It’s unnecessary.”
He came closer, his chest brushed against my forearms clutching the dress in front of me.
“You like it,” he stated confidently.
“Oh, I do,” I exhaled. “I love it—”
“Then wear it. I want to take you to the restaurant downstairs for dinner.”
“But . . .”
Surely, I could wear the clothes I already had. They were dressy enough for any restaurant.
“You’ll enjoy wearing it, Katherine. And it would please me to see you in it. Who else do you have to worry about?”
Who else?
“Just you and me?” I craned my neck to see his face high above me, calming warmth melting in the vivid blue of his eyes.
“No one else matters tonight,” he replied, his lips curving into the wide smile I liked so much already.
Any resistance had evaporated in me under the effects of his grin combined with the growing desire to wear the spectacular creation I clutched to my chest.
“No one else,” I whispered, smiling back at him, then dashed to the bathroom to get ready.
Chapter 18
I WAS ON MY SECOND flute of champagne. The effervescence bubbled inside me, heating my cheeks. However, I had a strong feeling that the warm pleasure spreading through me had as much to do with my surroundings as it did with the wine.
The soft music, muted voices, and the glow of the subdued lighting in the restaurant created the atmosphere of intimate comfort. The sight of Ivarr’s smiling face across the table completed the picture, filling me with excitement head to toe.
“Tell me what you see,” I asked for the third time since we got here.
He tilted his head, squinting.
“Right now, you are a kaleidoscope of happy colours, Katherine. A sunny yellow, warm caramel, and bright orange. All swirl with bursts of every tint of pink from magenta to blush.”
“It sounds so beautiful.” I sighed. “The way you describe it.”
“It’s gorgeous,” he agreed, his eyes flashing bright blue below his hooded eyelids. Since he sat with his back to the rest of the room, this was my own private lightshow.
“I wish I could see what you see.”
“You feel it. That’s what matters.”
He lifted a glass with whiskey on the rocks, and I watched his lips touch the glass when he took a drink from it. Ivarr had explained that demons couldn’t get drunk from alcohol, but he enjoyed the scorching sensation of a good whiskey in his mouth. The burn made him feel alive, he claimed.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “Thank you for everything, Ivarr. For this evening. This dress. For taking care of me all this time. Without you, being on the run would’ve been so much more dangerous and definitely much less, um, enjoyable.” I smiled, taking another sip of my champagne. “I really don’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself this much.”
Derek and I used to go out regularly. Most of our dates involved some important political or social functions. But even when we were alone, I always had the persistent feeling of being watched and judged.
It occurred to me now that it wasn’t other people who made me feel that way, but Derek himself, with his constant obsession about how he was perceived by everyone around him.
I blinked, chasing the memories of my ex away, refusing to let anything mar this moment, but it seemed Ivarr had picked up on the dip in my mood already.
“Who is waiting for you at home, Katherine?”
Slowly, I put my glass flute back on the table, stalling my answer.
“No one.”
“Where are your family?” He took another drink of whiskey. A plate with a steak dinner sat in front of him, too. He’d picked at it a little to keep me company, but hardly ate much. Almost all of the food was still there.
“I don’t have a family. My parents passed away a while back.”
“When?”
I glanced up at him, unused to those types of questions. Normally, people avoided going into the details, choosing the tried and true ‘sorry for your loss’ at this point.
“A long time ago. I was seven.” I swallowed, reaching for the glass of water at my side and bypassing the champagne for now. “A car accident.”
That was all anyone needed to know.
Only a few people knew that I was there with them, the day when the load of steel rods slid from the flatbed of the truck in front of our family car and hurtled through the windshield.
The rods speared my parents in the front. One went through my father and through the driver’s seat, piercing my stomach, as I sat in the back seat right behind him.
They said I got lucky. The blow to my middle made me fold in two. Otherwise, my head and chest would have been stabbed by more rods that pierced our vehicle like a pincushion.
Most of this I learned from others when I got older, because I didn’t remember much myself. Whenever I thought back to that day, I could only recall a complete vacuum of horror—void of colour or sound—hollowed in time and space, and the feeling of terror that still came back in nightmares sometimes.
My stare glued to the plate in front of me, I felt Ivarr’s hand covering mine and squeezed his fingers in return before continuing, “I was raised by my aunt, my mother’s older sister. She passed away four years ago. Auntie Sue.”
She was the one who stayed in the hospital with me, day and night, while they were stitching my internal organs back together. Years later, she was also the one who told me the devastating news that I would never be a mother—the rod went through my uterus, and it had to be removed.
Derek never wanted children. He actually seemed to be glad when I told him I couldn’t have any. Something that I had considered a horrible defect about myself for years, he treated as an advantage. His acceptance was probably one of the main reasons I fell in love with him then.
“What happened to your man?” Ivarr asked unexpectedly.
I stared at him in surprise.
“Why do you think there was a man?”
“Wasn’t there?”
Awkwardly, I tugged at my hand in his, but he just shifted closer, not letting me break the hold.
“I—I had a boyfriend, but we broke up a couple of months ago.” This was the first time I spoke about Derek with someone who didn't know him personally. Except for giving short answers to the questions of my friends, I didn’t discuss our breakup with anyone.
“Why?”
Nosy demon.
“Does it matter why?” I replied, marveling at his insistence, which bordered on being intrusive.
“I want to know. What didn’t work for you?”
“For me? Actually, I thought everything was perfect. We were together for over two years and talked about getting married. At only thirty-two, Derek has done very well for himself as a motivational speaker. He is the author of several bestselling self-help books and has very good prospects in politics.” I recited all the facts that used to fill me with pride every time I talked about Derek. Now, all I felt was sadness.
“What happened then?”
“Nothing.”
That was the part that hurt the most. Nothing happened. There was no fight, no disagreement between us. At the time when Derek told me he didn’t think that things would work out between us, I still honestly believed they had already worked out very well.
I’d tried hard to be everything I thought he needed in the woman at his side, content to live in the shadow of his greatness. It thrilled me to be the woman behind the successful man, his support in public, the source of his strength behind the scenes.
“One day he came over and said we needed to talk.” I crumpled the white napkin in my free hand. “Always scrupulously correct in everything he did, Derek broke up with me in a very proper manner, too. At my apartment, not at a restaurant or some other public place. In person, not over the phone or anything. He said he needed to focus on his future and could no longer give me the attention I deserved. Honestly, I’m not sure what he meant.” The old hurt made me frown. “We used to go out once or twice a week, mostly to events which would benefit his career—fundraisers, public rallies, galas . . .”
I trailed off, still confused about his reasons. After Derek left, I spent weeks wondering what I had done wrong for him to end it. Had I asked for too much extra attention? Had I called him or texted him too often? He hadn’t complained about anything before.
Everything seemed to be fine, until the day he left me alone in my apartment. I held it in as long as I could, waiting until the door closed behind him and the elevator dinged in the hallway. Only then I
slid to the floor in a crying heap—the man I’d thought I’d grow old with gone, leaving me with nothing but a void in place of our carefully constructed future.
Ivarr squeezed my hand gently, bringing me back to the moment. I’d tried so hard not to spoil this evening. Though, even with my bubbly mood subdued, I didn’t regret his asking. It felt liberating, in a way, to be able to talk about everything freely.
“Why do you blame yourself for this?”
“I do?”
He nodded firmly.
“No. It’s not that,” I protested. “It’s not about a blame, really. It’s just . . . It’s a two-way street, right? Any relationship requires effort from both partners. So if it falls apart, it’s a failure of both people. I’ve just been trying to find my part in it, to see what I did wrong.”
“Why? To what purpose?”
I shook my head, letting my shoulders drop.
“I don’t know. To avoid making the same mistake in the future?”
“Are you planning to get back together with Derek? In the future?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, unless you’re trying to figure out your mistakes—and by your, I mean both of your mistakes, his and yours—to make sure you’ll avoid them in a future relationship between the two of you, it makes very little sense to dig through the past. With another person, there will be other mistakes, right? And just because it didn’t work out with this man, doesn't mean it won’t work with the next.”
Staring at him, I considered his words for a moment. What he was saying was simple but made a lot of sense. Obsessing about what it was that I did wrong in this relationship wouldn’t help to put the breakup behind me and move on. Neither, learning what the mistake was would ensure a happy relationship with someone else.
“It is rather sad, though, if you really think about it, because it means that there is no way to prevent what happened. No matter how hard I’d work on it next time—”
“Does it have to be a hard work to be with someone?”
“Well, doesn’t it?” For me it was. Back then, I even prided myself on how much effort I’d put into being with Derek, giving it my all to be the perfect girlfriend I thought he needed.
The Forgotten (Demons Book 2) Page 10
