Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(44)

In her dream of that first, strange life she had been a fine healer, a really good one. She didn’t remember much, but she remembered that.

Had she always been a healer? It seemed like such an essential part of her. Her mate in the dream had been very much a warrior, just as he was now. How much had they changed? How much had they remained true to their core identities?

“I need to think,” she muttered again. They fell silent.

She rebelled at the thought of going to someone else for healing. She frowned, aware that the feeling was not quite sensible. After all, if she needed an appendectomy she would go to another doctor.

This shouldn’t be any different, but it was. This was, as Michael said, a spiritual wound not a physical one. When she met Astra, she might feel welcome and safe, like she was reuniting with a lost long friend or a mother, but that hadn’t yet happened.

She didn’t know the other woman. All she had were too-brief dream images of Astra, or what had once been Astra, and Mary was tired of being vulnerable. She was tired of feeling broken.

She would much rather heal herself, if she could. Michael was an overwhelming presence all on his own, and her reaction to him was complex and bewildering. Astra must be just as overwhelming in her own way, if not more. When Michael and Astra were together, the effect would be multiplied. They had worked together as a team for a long time, long enough that they would know each other well.

Mary would rather be whole and independent when she dealt with them together. And what if she and Michael ran into more trouble before they reached Astra? She would like to be more useful than she had been when she was last attacked.

Huh, listen to her. When she was last attacked. She shivered as she realized that she had accepted just how much danger they were in.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Just south of Grand Rapids,” he replied.

He was back to being Mister Enigmatic again. She tried to search his expression in the dashboard’s dim light. His eyes were shadowed, and lines bracketed his mouth. “Are you all right?” she asked. She added quickly, “I mean you said you were tired. You’re not too tired to drive?”

“I’m fine,” he said, his tone terse. “I just need food and coffee. We’ll go through a drive-thru when we hit the city.”

“Stopping for a real meal would be nice.” She bit her lip when he looked at her. She sounded like a wife on some kind of crazy-bad vacation. She muttered, “I suppose that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

His voice remained level. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Makes sense,” she said without enthusiasm. “I guess.”

“Things don’t feel very friendly in the psychic realm,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the Deceiver knows somehow that you and I have connected. It feels like he’s picked up the pace of his hunt.”

“About that,” she said. “Why is he called the Deceiver? That’s not just your nickname for him. We called him that in my dreams too.”

“For one thing, we shouldn’t call him by his old name. When we talk and think of him, we open conduits in the psychic realm where all things are connected. We don’t really know for sure what he can sense, and we don’t want to draw his attention to us.”

Shards of ice moved in her veins. She looked around at the already familiar interior of the car, not feeling nearly as secure as she had just a moment ago. “All right, that’s creepy.”

“For another thing, we call him that because that’s what he is. He lived under a cloak of deception for years as he betrayed our laws and our people. He did something unheard of and turned his back on his mate. He was a moral and spiritual deformity, a sociopath in a race that had no concept of what that meant, or a word in our language with which to define him.”

She swallowed hard. “I see.”

He told her, “You should rest while you can. We don’t know what’s ahead of us, but I would bet my shirt that the rest of the trip to Astra’s isn’t going to be easy. We may be caught in a situation where I can’t take time to lend you strength.”

“Understood,” she said.

Actually, that was another good reason to see what she could do to heal herself. She couldn’t rely on Michael being available to keep her stabilized.

She folded his jacket into a pillow and made herself as comfortable as possible. She closed her eyes.

She thought about the wounded woman in her dream. Maybe she could make herself go back in a dream to that life before she was injured. Maybe she could remember what it was like to be whole.

She wasn’t sure she would be able to, but she was tired enough that she fell asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

* * *

HER FATHER WAS an accomplished politician and merchant, a powerful diplomat and a kind man. Her mother was clever, well-educated, happy and lovely. It was not hard to be a dutiful daughter under their doting parentage. Surely their family was the most blessed of all the Faithful in a city fabled for its wealth and beauty, where people came as supplicants from all over the world.

She had been educated as well as any man, and better than most. When she became troubled by mystical dreams and visions, her father searched for sorcerers, soothsayers and magicians of all nationalities to help decipher their meaning.

Many were charlatans. A few were true adepts, and she learned from each one. She became skilled in a variety of disciplines, although each teacher puzzled greatly over the mysteries that she presented to them.