Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(70)

She shook her head. “I’m being too imaginative.”

“Okay. What’s wrong?”

She discovered another new experience, an impulse to smack him, and strangled it. Instead she confessed in a bare thread of sound, “Astra scares me sometimes. I don’t know why. Like I said, I’m being too imaginative.”

“No you’re not.” He rolled away from her, perched on the edge of the bed, reached for his shirt and dragged it over his head. “You should be scared of her.”

“Why?” She levered up to sit beside him.

He reached for his wristwatch and strapped it on. “She cares for us, enjoys our companionship and misses us when we’re gone. I don’t doubt any of that. But she is not our ally. Not in the final reckoning of things. If she suspects that we might get in her way, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill or destroy us.” He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “But I like to think she would be sad about it.”

Disappointment shadowed the peace she had felt when she had awakened. “We’re all she has left here of her people. We’re her family. We came here to help her.”

“We did,” he agreed. He braced a hand on the mattress behind her spine, half-twisted to face her. “But the fight has gone on for too long. We’ve gotten heartsick and soul-scarred and out of patience. She has watched the Deceiver destroy most of us, and there will be no reinforcements from home. Nobody else is coming. That was decided before the group left.”

She looked up into his shadowed face and blew out a breath. “I don’t want to die. We just found each other. We’ve just gotten good again.”

He kissed her forehead. “I don’t either. Yet our purpose is not to fight for survival. We’re here to destroy the Deceiver, and we promised to do whatever it takes. One of Astra’s tasks is to make sure we remember that. If she can’t hold us to that purpose she’s got to clear us out of the road.”

She gritted her teeth against a surge of rebellion. Why would Astra have to clear them out of the road? Why couldn’t she just leave them in peace?

Then she thought of the life she had lived nine hundred years ago, and how the Deceiver had preyed upon her and her human family. Astra couldn’t leave them in peace because as long as the Deceiver existed, there was no peace to be found for them anywhere on Earth. She rubbed her eyes.

“I don’t know how can she live that way.”

“She’s been under an intolerable pressure for a long time. The thing is, I’m not sure what it has done to her sanity.” He frowned, put an arm around her and pulled her against his side. “I don’t remember enough about our original life, but she seems changed somehow from who she originally had been. She’s different in a way that I haven’t been able to pinpoint.”

She searched his face. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want you to trust her blindly because of who she once was to us. We’ve all changed in ways I don’t think any of us understand, but you and I have become the most human.” He paused. “We should get dressed. We all have to talk.”

She nodded. “I know.”

He shifted to face her and sank his hands into her hair. She held still as he rubbed his face in the thick, curling mass. Then he lifted his head to smile at her. He whispered, “I love your hair.”

She leaned against him, feeling warm all over. He was such a settled, mature man. In many ways, he was more worldly and informed than she was. The wonder that filled his expression in that moment made tears well in her eyes.

“It’s a pain in the neck at the best of times,” she said softly. “I keep it long enough so that I can pull it out of the way, but after everything that’s happened this last week, I think it might be better if I just cut it short.”

“Please don’t. It’s gorgeous.”

“All right.”

“Thank you.” He smiled, cupped her face and kissed her, his lips lingering over the shape of hers. She stroked his cheek, kissing him back. He pulled away and gave her a grave look. “Now we talk.”

She grimaced. “I hope we at least get a cup of coffee first.”

Michael pulled on his jeans and boots. “Wait here. I’ll scrounge up something for you to wear.”

“Thanks.”

While he was gone, she searched for something she could use to tie back her hair. He didn’t seem to have any simple rubber bands anywhere in the room. Finally she stole a shoelace from a pair of shoes. She finger-combed her hair, braided it with practiced fingers and tied the ends as tightly as she could.

After a few minutes, Michael returned with the pair of jeans she had worn yesterday. Astra had washed them. He had also gone down to the boat to retrieve her shoes and the long-sleeved thermal shirt she had borrowed. The ends of the shirt came down to her thighs, but the clothes were comfortable and that was all that mattered to her. She rolled the sleeves up until they hung at her forearms.

They left the bedroom to find Astra sitting at the dining table, eating a bowl of leftover chicken and dumplings. Mary was very aware of Astra’s cool, blackbird eyes watching them move around the kitchen.

A white-speckled blue pot on the stove held more chicken and dumplings, and the coffeemaker at the counter held a full pot of coffee. Two empty mugs sat on the counter. Mary poured coffee while Michael ladled chicken and dumplings into two bowls. Then they joined Astra at the dining table.