Always my Cyrus.
With my back to his chest, our hands raised together. They crossed in front of my chest, and he pulled me in close.
Gently, his lips touched my shoulder. Slowly slid toward my neck. They rose up, until they were just under my ear.
“I have loved you for centuries, Sevan,” Cyrus whispered. “And I swear I will love you for millennia more.”
Another pair of lips plays gently just under my ear, and I startle back to the present with a stiff jerk.
I straighten, taking three steps away from Trevor, into the crowd.
I turn, and see the confused, disoriented expression on his face.
“Thank you for the dance, Trevor,” I say, grateful that my voice is working better than I expected. “I hope you have some fun with your friends.”
He doesn’t say anything as I walk away. Just stares after me, his mouth slightly open.
When I break outside of the hotel onto the quieting sidewalk, the breath rips from my chest with a gasp.
I lean against a stone wall down the walk, my hands clutching my chest.
Alone.
Aching.
Both of us.
Both of you are hurting, Logan argues with Sevan. Damn it. You don’t have to do this. We don’t have to be alone.
And my mind wanders back, to just one week ago. When I found Cyrus standing at his bedroom window. Empty. Broken. Alone. I begged him then to tell me what would make him happy. He asked me to stay, and I slept in his arms that night.
For just a few moments, when I woke up the next morning, I was happy.
Staring into his face. I knew what he was capable of. How dangerous he could be. But I also knew how he would do anything to protect me. Staring into his face, I knew I loved that man.
I love Cyrus.
You don’t have to hurt this way, Logan whispers to Sevan. You’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting him.
Oh, but you don’t remember everything yet, Sevan quietly answers. We’ve been through this before. This pain. This recovery. This blending. Over and over. And it’s his fault.
I rub a hand up my arm as my face crumples with emotion. Tears well in my eyes as I stand straight again. My chest is tight and it’s hard, so hard to breathe.
Logan’s human legs would have shaken on the walk back to the House of Valdez. But Sevan has done this before. Over and over. And she walks back with her chin held high.
Chapter 6
The very, very first hints of light dance on the horizon just as I slip once more through the doors of The MetroCosmo. I recognize a member of the House of Valdez, who stands at the door. The minute I walk past him, he speaks into a device on his wrist, letting someone—everyone—know I have returned to the building.
I head straight to the elevator, place my palm on the glass, and step inside the moment it opens. I rise through the building, and I’m not one bit surprised when the doors open, to see Hector Valdez standing in the main area.
“If you’re here to reprimand me for sneaking out, you can save your breath,” I say as I step out and walk right past him. “I’m a grown ass woman, I can do what I please.”
“Please, my Queen,” he says, scrambling to follow me. “It’s just that if anything were to happen to you, you know what the King would do to us.”
I instantly turn. Grabbing Hector’s tie, I spin, backing him against the wall. His head cracks against it, splintering the mirror.
“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I say, keeping my voice calm and even. “And if you dare breathe a word about any of my comings and goings to Cyrus, you will have more than just him to worry about.”
His eyes slip down, to where I hold a broken piece of mirror at the base of his ribcage.
The terror in his eyes is obvious, and I both relish in it and hate it.
I drop the shard and step away, releasing him.
“You won’t be bothered by me much longer,” I say as I continue walking down the hall to my suite. “I only came here to retrieve Rath. I will be leaving tonight.”
I place my hand on the mirror, and the doors slide open. I step inside.
Rath steps out of the bedroom Cyrus once occupied, and I note that he does, indeed, look better rested.
“You have everyone here at the House of Valdez in quite the state of distress,” he says.
I note: there’s something different about him now, now that I’m Resurrected.
He’s so calm and composed. His speech is more formal. There’s a deeper darkness in his eyes. Everything about him seems…older.
“They don’t need to worry about me,” I say as I cross the space. I head to a desk pushed up against one wall and open a drawer to find a piece of paper. “Though I suppose I can sympathize with the pressure they feel from Cyrus.”
I find a pen and head to a chair, sinking into the comfortable black leather.
“I am surprised,” Rath says, observing me as I begin writing things down. “This…you…everything that has transpired since you Resurrected has not been what I expected.”
“How is that?” I ask without looking up.
“The legend of Cyrus’ love for Sevan is unprecedented in all of history,” he says calmly. “So, the fact that you came here, that Cyrus has returned to Roter Himmel without you, is nothing short of baffling.”
“History only tells Cyrus’ side of our story.” I have to concentrate on not squeezing the pen so hard that it splinters and explodes. “Cyrus does not tell the version where I have to cope with what he did, over and over. It does not tell the story of our fights over right and wrong. He has omitted me begging him to end this, our curse, over and over, through several lifetimes.”
I’ve stopped writing and my eyes stare at nothing, a blank space of floor.
“The story passed down through our descendants captures the beautiful parts of Cyrus and myself. But it is missing all of the darkness.”
My chest feels that darkness.
There’s a deep, pitch-black cavern inside of me, filled with secrets and lies and tear-filled words.
“I understand,” Rath says. “Logan.”
I look up at him then, at that name.
For a few moments there, I lost her. She slipped into the shadows of all the others I have been. For just a moment, I was a simple person who just lived one life.
But they all come crashing back now.
I look back down at the notebook in my lap.
“Jafari,” I say. My voice is quiet. It holds just a little bit of a tremble. “Helda. Shaku. Antoinette. Edith. Itsuko. La’ei.” I close my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. “And Logan. I have been every one of these women. Lived an entire life as them before death. They’re all there, but they feel…just out of reach. Out of focus.”
Rath slowly crosses the room. He looks over my shoulder at the page.
“Tell me something about Antoinette,” he says as he takes a step away and sinks into the chair adjacent to mine.
I look at him, studying his face. The black, curly facial hair that has grown long on his face over the last month. His hair is long, too, far longer than I’ve ever seen it.
But those are the same familiar lips, set in a serious line. Those same eyes that have seen far more than I ever realized.
“Antoinette was born at Court,” I say, and instantly I can see it. The beautiful landscape of Roter Himmel. The hustle of bodies, Royal and human, living side by side. The gowns and the food. The midnight parades through the streets. “Our father, Lord Gadox had only one wife. They’d been lucky, they were able to conceive three children, three years in a row.”
I smile as I recall their faces. “I had one older sister and one younger. And we were a happy family. My parents loved one another. They loved us children. They took us on weekly boat rides on Spiegel Lake. Trips into the mountains. My mother baked the most wonderful bread every morning.”