Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(28)

She told him, “I like to look at the morning sun.”

“Khepri,” he whispered.

Icy shock rippled over her skin as she heard him utter a word that no one had spoken to her in millennia. “What did you just say?”

He walked to the other armchair and leaned his folded arms across its high back as he watched her with unswerving intensity. “The San Francisco Bay was visible earlier,” Rune said. “Now it isn’t. I was outside when it appeared just before sunset, which sounds very close to the time when you might have faded. Is that a coincidence?” He paused to give her a chance to respond. She said nothing. “Not?”

She admitted reluctantly, “Maybe not.”

He straightened and folded his arms across his chest. He did not look pleased. “It appears we have a lot to discuss.”

“We sure as hell do,” said Carling.

SIX

She glared at him. “How did you know to say that . . . word?” She felt so exposed and off balance she could not even admit out loud that Khepri was a name, much less confess that it had been her name, so long ago she had literally been a different creature. She could not imagine how Rune, of all people, would have heard of it.

Rune made an impatient gesture with one hand. “I’ll get to that in a minute. Why didn’t you say anything about a connection between what was happening to you and what was happening to the island?”

“Because I don’t understand why it’s happening,” she snapped. “I’m not even sure there is a connection.”

He snapped back, “Don’t lie to me. I said I would help you, but I cannot do that if you do not come clean about everything you think is happening.”

“I didn’t ask you to stay,” she said, her tone clipped.

His anger detonated. The force of it was like an invisible air bag inflating, pushing her back into her seat. “Do you really want to go there? Because based on what I’ve read so far, you’ve done great working on your own all this time. I’m sure you’re going to turn things around any second now before you f**king die in as soon as a couple of f**king weeks.”

She let her head fall back against the chair. “Fine. There may be a connection. The island started to become visible when I began to have the episodes.” She discovered she was breathing hard and forced herself to stop. She told him, “But I can’t figure out what would link the two things together, so I still don’t understand why it happens.”

“May be a connection. May be a connection?” Bloody hell. A chill rippled down his spine. If Carling’s episodes were so Powerful they affected the land around her, what else might she be affecting? What could her episodes do to the world around her when she wasn’t in an Other land? He ran an impatient, long-fingered hand through his tousled hair. “Did you have any episodes on the trip to Adriyel?”

“A few,” she admitted reluctantly.

His sharp gaze stabbed her. “I don’t remember any anomalies occurring in the landscape, and I sure as hell didn’t . . . well, I didn’t sense anything remotely like what happened here today.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “We can’t even be sure there is a correlation. If there is, Adriyel is still one of the largest Other lands in the Northern Hemisphere, with several crossover passages not only to Earth but also to Other lands. I think it would take something of unimaginable size and scope to affect it. This island is one of the smallest known Other lands with just the one crossover passage. And as far as you’re concerned, you were never around when I went into a fade. I was close to one when Niniane was kidnapped and Tiago injured, but focusing on healing Tiago helped me to stave it off for a time. By the time it hit, I was back in our encampment ‘resting.’ I had another one earlier at the hotel, but I don’t think you had arrived in Chicago yet.”

His jaw tightened. “I’ve got about a hundred pages left to read of your research. Is any of this in your notes?”

Her gaze fell from his. She said, “No.”

After a moment he said between his teeth, “Much as I would like to, we’re not going to waste time on having a conversation about why the hell not.”

She said stiffly, “There was no point in writing it down. It’s neither scientific nor productive to state this thing seems to happen, and at the same time this other, apparently unrelated event also seems to happen, and I don’t understand any of it.”

He looked incredulous. “Out of all of what is going on, being scientific is what matters the most to you?”

Her brief flare of anger faded. She rubbed her face. She said with a sigh, “It matters that I leave behind the best work that I can, so hopefully someone can move forward with the research. Then maybe they can find a cure or some way to halt the progression of the disease in a way that I haven’t been able to. It will not do anybody any good to leave behind fruitless speculation that contains, in the end, more desperation than sense.”

Silence spread through the room. It was filled with such tension, her muscles clenched. Rune pushed off the back of the chair and came around. She watched him warily as he scooped up one of the ottomans, placed it in front of her and sat down on it. Her expression chilled as he reached for her hand, but she allowed it. For the moment.

He looked down at her fingers, and she did too. They appeared so slender and delicate in his much larger, squarepalmed hand. Appearances were deceiving. She had lost count of the number of creatures she had killed with her bare hands.