Love Beyond Lies

by Rebecca Royce

  Colin felt the cold overtake him. It wasn’t a new feeling. It was one thing for Colin to wonder about his relationship with Gia and another for the demon to say anything. He swung forward and much to his shock made contact with Sebastian, sending him flying backward. Colin sucked in his breath while Sebastian groaned. That shouldn’t happen, the demon didn’t have real corporeal mass anymore.

  No one could actually hit him.

  Sebastian darted to his feet. “How did you do that?”

  “I have my secrets.” Colin had no fucking idea.

  “Do that again and I won’t help you.” Sebastian cracked his neck.

  Well now, this was interesting. Colin wasn’t sure he could replicate the experience again if he wanted to, since he wasn’t at all certain how he’d done it in the first place. He made eye contact with Gia. She hadn’t moved from where she’d been when they’d kissed. His love gave him the slightest shake of her head. She didn’t get it either.

  Some of the other Outsiders had the ability to speak telepathically to each other. He could have really used the telepathy earlier when she asked him for it, but even more now so he could ask her what the actual fuck had just happened.

  Sebastian rose, and then crossed to them. “It’s this place. It must be. Some old Outsider magic. Or some game Leonardo is playing. Your leader has a sick sense of humor. That doesn’t matter. We have work to do. You have a shadow on you, Gia. And even if you can’t see it, hear it, smell, or taste it, the shadow is always with you. Every second of every day. How and when it shows itself to you is up to it, but the parasite is never really gone.”

  Gia cleared her throat. “Why would you help us?”

  The demon grew in size, stripping itself of the shape of Sebastian and instead showing himself as he was—red, horned, and tailed. He was the stuff of legends. Humans would be shaking in their shoes, but fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—he and Gia had seen this display before. His love rolled her eyes.

  “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  Colin walked over to her. “I don’t really get it either.”

  “This is what I look like. It’s what my father looks like. It is, when it comes down to it, what my family looks like when we are not playing with all of you. And you have to beat him. Because this world is mine. You can’t do that, you have no semblance of a chance, if you have that thing on you.”

  Gia put her hands on her hips. “Do you ever get sick of it? All of these years, all of us caught up in a game that your father started for us… do you ever become so tired of all of this that you just wish that you never, ever started it at all?”

  The demon bent over and when he would have gotten too close to Gia, Colin put himself between them. Whatever Sebastian was playing at, Colin wasn’t going to mess around. The demon was still dangerous and it wasn’t getting anywhere near Gia.

  “I am so sick to death of all of it. I want this planet. It’s mine and I mean to stay here, rule it, and never have to move on with any of you again. My father will not be taking this place from me. Since only you things can beat him, I have to get rid of whatever will stop that from happening. And in this case that’s the shadow.” Sebastian returned to his false human form. “Where did you pick this thing up?”

  Gia sighed. “Our last battle. We were looking for you. At a dance club.”

  They were looking for him? Colin thought they’d been out there to have fun. Very little was making sense. They needed to talk and not around Sebastian.

  But for now, he had to focus. “What can you do to get it off her?”

  “It’s a parasite. What do you do when you pick up a parasite?” He shook his head. “You were looking for me? I didn’t make it particularly hard. As I recall, we all battled pretty frequently and the win was claimed for you.”

  Colin pretended like he had a clue about what was going on. “I don’t know. I imagine you do different things for different types of parasites? Maybe we need Jason.”

  “You make the parasite uncomfortable in its host environment and eventually you kill it.”

  Colin had never been so happy to be where he was before. Whatever Sebastian wanted to do with Gia he wasn’t touching her. Not going to happen.

  “What do you need to do?” Gia spoke from behind Colin, moving slightly to the left so she could see the demon. Colin wasn’t even sorry that he wished she would stay where she’d been. If that made him a caveman, then so be it.

  “I need to get in your head. I need to make it toxic to the shadow and get it out of there.”

  Colin could have laughed, but it wasn’t at all funny. “You aren’t getting anywhere near her head. Come up with a plan B.”

  “Colin.” Gia actually huffed. “Get out of my way so I can speak to him.”

  She shoved at his back. If he wanted to, he could have chosen not to move. There was no way Gia was ever going to be strong enough to actually budge him. Still, he stepped aside slightly because he didn’t want her to feel like she was speaking through a brick wall. He could still get in Sebastian’s way if he needed to very fast.

  “Get in my head—what does that mean?”

  “It means I get to swim around in your mind until I draw the attention of the parasite, and then I kill it.”

  “No.” Colin was just not going to let that happen, period.

  Gia shook her head. “I am perfectly capable of making this decision without you speaking for me, Colin. My lips, my tongue, they all work. Let me speak for myself.”

  Great. Then she could tell the demon no. That would work fine.

  “How long would you need to be in there?”

  Colin threw his hands in the air. “What is the matter with you? This is the bad guy. We don’t let him into our heads. You haven’t been around, I get that, so let me tell you what our fellow Outsiders who have dealt with him have endured. Drew will always have the stink of evil in his mind. Alexa is covered in it. And Samuel was nearly burned to death. He all but lost his face.”

  Sebastian rolled his eyes. “And I tortured you. Let’s not forget that.”

  Colin would never forget it. The pain had been tremendous. He’d had the sense that he would be alone forever and not find what was his because he was dying too early. He clenched his teeth. He still heard voices. In fact, he’d been under Sebastian’s loving care twice in his lifetime. “That is neither here nor there. I’m not here to talk about me.”

  “Get out.” Gia pointed at the exit. At first Colin thought she meant him, but it was the demon she addressed. “You tortured him? Get out. We’ll find another way.”

  Sebastian groaned. “You’ll come to your senses. I just hope you’re not all dead by then. Maybe only some of you will die. It would be fun to do that, to kill some of you so the ones left could know what what emptiness truly is.”

  Sebastian blinked away and Gia put her hands on her hips. “When were you going to tell me that he’d tortured you?”

  He shrugged. “We’ve hardly had enough conversations since I found you to warrant that kind of hostility. Should I have led with it?”

  She shook her head, some of her red hair falling into her eyes. Even when he wanted to throttle her, he never could get over how beautiful she was.

  “He. Tortured. You.”

  Colin sighed. “Thank you for caring. It wasn’t pleasant to say the least. Not the first or second time.”

  “To say the least.” She rolled her eyes. “He hurt the man I loved and yet you—that man—were going to stand here and work with him? Tell Leonardo we have to find another way.”

  Why didn’t she understand? “I’d do anything for you.”

  And that was the problem. He’d always felt that way. He was certain it was his absolute belief in his love for Gia—and that there was no one else for him—that had screwed this up to begin with. Because as much as she was his soul mate and would always be—Gia might not actually have been his. He might not have been who she was supposed to be with. He might have screwed this soul ma
te thing up for her.

  A Long Time Ago

  She was so beautiful. The girl he couldn’t stop staring at was by far the loveliest soul he’d ever seen. They weren’t corporeal, not in this place, not in this time, and yet somehow they could see each other. Touching each other brought about the change to solid.

  And that couldn’t happen soon enough.

  People were connecting, pair by pair, as though it was supposed to be that way. Outsiders always had someone who was their other half. He hadn’t found his yet and despite his preoccupation with that beautiful woman, she’d shown no interest in him.

  There was someone for her and it broke his heart that it wouldn’t be him who got to escort her through the ages. When he’d been right next to her, she hadn’t reacted at all. He knew he shouldn’t be feeling this way, that he shouldn’t be worrying about who his soul mate was yet. Maybe the soul hadn’t yet been formed, or was somewhere else on their way to him. People weren’t disappointed with their other halves. That wasn’t how this worked.

  But he wanted her.

  Colin felt the gust of evil move through the crowd. That wasn’t okay. This was a sacred place where the Outsider souls grew and changed until they found their other half. After that, they could join the ranks of the rest of the Outsiders to keep balance in the universe. There shouldn’t be anything here to harm the other souls. In fact, Colin should be gone by now if only he could find his other half.

  His brother had moved on. They’d been one soul split into two. Unusual, but it did happen. In any case, when Christophe had been here, they’d been a real unit. He’d have done what he was about to do without hesitation and he wasn’t going to be any less brave simply because he was alone.

  Colin charged forward yelling. Why didn’t the others feel it?

  Everyone turned around to stare at him and he didn’t care if they thought he was crazy. They had to get away before whatever was about to happen, happened. “Run.”

  Some of them did and yet others seemed frozen where they were, not moving. The evil pushed forward. A mass of black smoke made the world around them grayer, and seemed to encompass everything. He blinked trying to clear his head as it moved toward that woman. It wanted her.

  Colin charged, pushing her down on the ground, blocking her with his body. The evil assaulted him, banging onto his suddenly solidified person. He winced but didn’t let go. It wouldn’t get to her today.

  As quickly as it got there, the evil went away. The elders shouted things, using their magic to send the thing on.

  He pulled back. The girl beneath him gasped and he realized what he’d done. They weren’t supposed to touch. If they were physical at all, it could bring about their corporeal forms too soon. They weren’t even allowed anything physical—not even the slightest taps with the opposite sex—until they found their soul mates. It was one of their most sacred rules. To break that law was to be destroyed. They were going to send them both back to be remade, as though they’d never existed.

  No. He jumped up. They couldn’t take her. None of this had been her fault. He’d pushed her and then jumped on top of her. She hadn’t asked for any of it.

  “What is the meaning of this?” The elder who hollered at them was a strong, powerful soul. As Colin started to answer, the elder whirled around. “When I want your opinion, Leonardo and Kal, I will ask you for it. You’re not important, not yet.” He turned back to Colin. “You touched this woman.”

  Colin stood up straight. “This is entirely on me. I thought only to save her. Not of what would happen when I touched her.” Before they were joined, they could be tainted. Becoming solid could mess up the soul-forming process. “She has done nothing wrong.”

  “Now don’t be silly, darling.” The woman rose, grabbing onto his arm. The part of her soul that wasn’t quite corporeal drifted into his. He wanted to sigh. She was so… lovely. “We’re soul mates. We were just about to tell you all about it. He can touch me. In fact, he was made to.”

  And just like that they’d been joined. He hadn’t known what her name would be—it was different in every language though the meaning was the same—until the ceremony.

  Now

  With the memory of that specific time—better never thought about—rolling through him, Colin stuck his hands in his pockets. He’d been thrilled, yet he’d known one thing for sure—something he never vocalized in any life—they weren’t really soul mates. Gia hadn’t wanted to be sent back as though she’d never existed. Somewhere out there was the soul mate who had been denied the right to love her. As for his own, she’d probably been relieved. He did tend to make a mess of things.

  He was sick of the lies. Sick of the unsaid. Sick of the destruction he left in his wake everywhere. “I always mean to do the right thing.”

  She rocked back on her heels. “Of course you do.”

  “And I love you. I’ve always loved you. I know…” He cleared his throat. There was a reason he’d gone millennia without speaking these words. “I know that you don’t love me. I know I started us out by forcing this on us and that we’re both living with the result of that. If we can manage to live through this, you can have a break from me on the other side.”

  She shook her head. “What in the universe are you talking about?”

  “Don’t make me say it again.” It was hard enough the first time.

  “I don’t love you?” She took a step toward him. “Colin, for the sake of all things, what are you talking about?” By the time she got to the end of her sentence, she was shouting again.

  He sighed. “We both know why we were paired as soul mates. It wasn’t because you had some grand feeling about me, or that you suddenly felt as though we were supposed to be together. I shoved you over. And not only that, but I…”

  She blinked. “Are you talking about when you saved me from the evil intrusion in our earliest days as souls? Are you talking about then?”

  He sunk to the ground. Sometimes things were just… hard. “Yep. Then. I can fight anything. I can battle even Sebastian in his non-corporeal form, it would seem. Only I can’t battle the truth. Things don’t go the same with us as everyone else, because we weren’t supposed to be together. Oh, we have some stuff in common for sure. We both wanted to battle evil when we volunteered for this. I’ll always be glad we did this. But let’s face it—”

  Gia slapped him so hard across the cheek he jerked off-balance and landed on the floor, flat on his back. She stood over him and pointed her finger at him a second later. “How dare you? How dare you take everything we’ve been through together—the thousands and thousands and thousands of years together and reduce it to nothing? To a mistake? Are you out of your mind? Of course, you’re my soul mate. Of course you are. You belong to me. We don’t do things the way others do because we’ve always had a little bit of a different path. It is not because I have someone else I’m supposed to be with.”

  She very rarely cried, yet right then big tears streamed down her face in a way he’d never seen before. His cheek stung, but he didn’t care. He’d felt worse. She’d never hit him before either. “Gia—”

  “Colin…” She didn’t let him finish. “Have you been carrying this bullshit around in our relationship this entire time?”

  “I…” He really had no idea what he should say to her in this moment. “Maybe you love me. Maybe you have grown to love me, but not the way that you would if we had been fated for each other. I’m not even sure I should be here. I think something went wrong in the process of making Christophe.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “You are my soul mate, Colin, and I love you so completely that it is like you are stabbing me in the gut right now. All of this time I have tried so hard to figure out why you sometimes look at me the way that you do.”

  He really had no idea what she meant. “What?”

  “Like you’re sad. Like I’m causing you so much pain. I’ve tried to figure out over and over again why you don’t trust me.”

  Now there she
was wrong. “I do trust you.”

  “You don’t because if you did you would know that I mean the things that I say to you. I knew you were my soul mate that day. I’d known it from the second you walked past me. That’s why I was standing there. You hadn’t said a word to me. I didn’t know what was happening. I kept following you around, waiting. I figured you would get around to it whenever you got over the shock of finding me and then there you were—saving my life. Why would I have said you were my soul mate if you weren’t?”

  His heart pounded so hard he could hear it in his ears. “So you wouldn’t be sent away to stop existing?”

  “I’ve got news for you, darling, no one was sending me anywhere. I’d like to see that crotchety old soul try to take on either one of us. And as for that ridiculous statement about Christophe, I don’t even know where to go with that. I love your brother but he is not some better version of you. You’re mine. How dare you not know it after all this time? How many times have we loved each other, died together, held each other through such extraordinary evil that we weren’t sure there would be another day?”

  He swallowed. “Gia, I’ve never felt worthy.”

  “I don’t know what we can do about that just this second Colin, except that you’re going to have to start believing me when I tell you that I love you. I love you so much I’d have spent this whole life alone just to keep that thing stalking me from you.” She reached out and stroked the side of his face. “I’m sorry I hit you.”

  “I’m not.” He was really happy she had.

  Just then, the ground beneath their feet shook. Gia groaned, “We never get a moment, do we?”

  Five

  Gia

  The ground shaking concerned her, but nothing had ever rocked her world as much as what Colin had just spewed. All this time he’d thought they weren’t really fated and he didn’t think himself worthy. The second problem was not her fault. That was a Christophe issue. Colin and Christophe were just two very different people despite some people thinking they looked exactly alike.