Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(53)

This was a place past guards and barriers, cynicism and shortcomings, a place of pure spirit. It was purely private, purely Mary. She would have to be quite broken before she would fail to recognize her own heart. And she was no longer broken.

He jerked away and strode to the opposite side of the chapel, pacing like a caged animal. Unlike a caged beast, he was free to leave whenever he wanted. She was relieved that he did not, at least not yet.

“I don’t understand,” he said in a clipped voice.

He kept pacing, back and forth, and the force of emotion that emanated from him was blistering.

“What don’t you understand?” she asked. She still spoke as gently as she could, for she realized that they had reached this point in other lives. Sometimes they had failed to resolve the fundamental differences in their natures. Those lives had been filled with great hurt.

“You looked at me with such horror this morning,” he said between his teeth. His pain was palpable, and it echoed back through time. Back and back, to their beginning.

“You misunderstood me earlier. I didn’t look at you in horror,” Mary told him. “I think you’re beautiful.”

Michael stopped pacing but he still stood poised for action. The doubt in his expression said more than any words could.

She kept a stern grip on her own emotions and reached for patience. “This morning I had a flashback. I looked down the guns of those two men who shot me, and then I shot at two people. I could have killed two men who were innocent of the Deceiver’s crimes. They might have had families and friends, and they thought they were only doing their job—”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “You’re torturing yourself over them?”

Her back stiffened. “I’m disturbed by what happened, yes.”

The first sharp edge of his pain had eased, but he still felt volatile, unpredictable. “Let me put your mind forever to rest,” he told her. “You didn’t shoot those men. You might have managed to hit the boats once or twice, but that’s about all. I shot those men while I was running to get to you.”

She paused. “That’s not the point.”

He tilted his head and prowled close. “You just said it was.”

“No.” She put up both hands. “Please listen to me. The actual fact that I did not shoot those men is not the point. What I experienced—what I believed—is that I shot those men. That’s the point. I picked up a gun, something that I said I would never do, and I pointed it at two human beings. I pulled the trigger, and not once. I didn’t stop shooting until the gun was empty.”

He spun away. “Now we’re back to where we started.”

She slid off the altar and walked over to him. “You know as well as I do how much has happened over the last few days. The dragon healed me, but I have still sometimes felt like I’ve lost my center. This experience was one of those times, and it was wrapped up in the memory of the bullets hitting my body. I was so scared, and I was so sure that I was going to die.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, and the lines of his face had tightened again.

She put a hand on his back. “This morning had nothing to do with you. It had everything to do with me. Then Astra gave me this dream, and I went on a journey. I reached my center again, and I know who I am. I’m not talking about discovering new memories.” She gestured at the scene around them. “I’m talking about this. That’s what this place is all about, and that’s what I wanted to show you.”

He turned to face her, and he took her hands. Somehow, even though it was the first time he had reached out to her since they had parted early that morning, he felt more distant than he had before.

“That’s where I think you’re wrong,” he said. The gentleness in his voice was even worse than his touch. “Everything that you described—taking the gun, emptying the clip at two other people. That’s what I do. That’s who I am, and I don’t have a problem with that. You have a fundamental problem with it. That means you have a fundamental problem with me.”

This conversation had slipped out of her control. She tightened her fingers on his. “No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. You’re twisting things around.”

“Healer and warrior,” he said. He touched her face lightly with the tips of his fingers. “We may need each other, but we do not always see eye to eye. We do not always come together.”

“What are you trying to say?” She tried to smile but it came out all twisted. “You sound like you’re trying to break up with me.”

“I could never do that,” he said, very low. “After all, we’re bound together, aren’t we?”

She sucked in a breath. The cadence of his words was both tender and bitter at once, and after everything that they had been through in the last few days, that was what hurt the most. “Maybe this was a mistake,” she managed to say. “I was trying to show you that I was doing better and that I got my balance back.”

“I’m glad you told me,” he said. All his emotion retreated until it was locked behind a fortress again, and Mr. Enigmatic looked down at her.

She shook her head. Suddenly she was furious with him. She didn’t think. She just flung words at him.

“How convenient for you that you figured me out so completely, despite everything that I’m trying to say to the contrary. It makes it so much easier for you to erect your walls and live behind them, just like you always have.”