Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(65)

He walked toward the oldest sets of armor and let the memories from those lives unfold. The armor was from one of his earliest lifetimes, soon after the group’s arrival on earth. His earliest lives were also his most public. He had only fallen into the habit of stealth much later. This one; yes, he remembered this one well. It had been a time of almost constant war, but then so had most of his lives.

They’d had the Deceiver cornered and had laid siege to the city that sheltered him. The siege had been a long, filthy, brutal business. He remembered the blood and the dust and the sweltering, crowded life of the army.

Gabriel and Raphael had been there. In that lifetime some quirk of destiny had seen them born as identical twins, inseparable as always, vivid and reckless and brilliant as two firebrands. They had loved to switch places and pretend to be each other, but they could never fool anybody from their group. Their birth mother had named them Castor and Pollux.

They had burst into his pavilion late one night, laughing drunkenly over some stupid escapade. Now he couldn’t remember what they had done. He had met the twins just inside the flap, naked, with sword and knife in hand, while Mary had scowled from the pallet of furs where they had slept.

What had been her name? He frowned, unable to grasp it. Members of their group had fast become the stuff of legend, until the stories took on a life of their own. In that culture and time gods and demons mingled freely with kings and ordinary men. The group hadn’t needed to cloak their abilities, which was refreshing in retrospect.

He had fast earned the reputation of being an invincible warrior, gifted by the gods. Whatever her name had been, he smiled to remember Mary’s obstinacy. She had insisted on dogging his heel everywhere he went, no matter how many times he had shouted at her to stay behind in safety. It became well known throughout both armies that she was his only point of vulnerability.

Astra had asked, in equal parts amusement and uncertainty, whether or not he dreamed, and he did. But what he dreamed was none of her business nor was it anyone else’s, except perhaps for one other person. In all four realms, physically, psychically, spiritually and emotionally, he was a fortress. He might be destroyed but he would never be conquered.

Except, perhaps, by or through one other person.

The long-dead people from those days had said that to strike at his heel was to strike him down.

After all this time he supposed that it was still true.

Chapter Twenty-one

HUNGER WOKE MARY, an insistent, healthy ache.

She lay for a while, drifting sleepily through memory while she rested against Michael’s warm, hard body. He was so much bigger than she was. Sprawling together gave her a simple, animal sense of comfort and safety.

Earlier in the bathroom, he had been trapped in the past and going into shock. Then she had done something. Something important. In that moment, without any time to really think anything through, she sank her awareness into his body and poured her energy into him, just as he had done to her when he had found her. She willed his heart to return back to its normal rhythm and opened constricted pathways, and his body had obeyed. Now, as she thought back to what had happened, part of her wanted to shout in astonished triumph.

What she had done felt right and true, and familiar, as if she had done such a thing many times before. The realization opened other possibilities in her mind, along with barely glimpsed images of different healings for other injuries and illnesses.

She felt as though she had discovered a hidden door inside of herself. Opening that door led to a secret, golden chamber filled with such wondrous treasure, she could wander within its halls for years.

All the pieces of her past that she had recovered thus far pointed the way to further discoveries. She had not only been a fine healer in her first life, but she had learned valuable lessons in successive lives too. She needed to work hard to reclaim those lost skills.

At last she went into a full body stretch. Bruises and contusions throbbed, and she bit back a groan. Her body had stiffened while she slept.

When she opened her eyes, she sensed that time had changed.

The fire that had been crackling in the fireplace had died down, and the shadows in the cabin had shifted places. She thought of those shadows moving throughout the days, not quite dancing the same dance every time, infinitesimally shifting their path throughout the seasons, yet still completing a circle.

Michael watched her with a serious, contemplative expression, lying on his side, with his head propped in one hand. His short, dark hair was tousled, and the harsh lines on his face had eased. He looked as though he had been awake for some time.

She had the impulse to smile or say something, and then her gaze connected with his.

The cabin disappeared.

Everything disappeared as she looked at her mate.

The stern, inhuman lines of his strong face, the piercing light in his fierce eyes—every detail was as familiar and as necessary to her as her own hands. His energy mantled his masculine form like a midnight blue cloak and followed the lines of his high cheekbones and lean jaw like a royal collar. He was one of the most graceful of their people, and also one of the strongest and most deadly, and he was utterly devoted to her.

As she was to him.

And when he touched her, with his hands and his body, and all the passionate colors of his emotions, everything inside of her sang.

Then the cabin snapped back into place around her, and she stared at Michael in his human form. A few tiny flecks of white had begun to sprinkle the black hair at his temples, and crow’s-feet etched the weathered skin at the corners of his eyes. Lines bracketed his mouth. If he wasn’t forty, he was only a few years shy of it, and while physically he might appear to look like an ordinary man, for the first time, she truly saw the power sheathed inside his body.