raises one eyebrow, the expression somehow sultry in the dim light. “Of course I did,” he says, pressing a kiss against my brow. “I still want to look at you,” he says, a hint of a growl in his throat. “And kiss you, and touch you, and hold you.” I pull his face back down to mine, and it’s like the weird power outage never happened.
It’s only hours later, when exhaustion overtakes us both, that we slow down. Logan helps me into his discarded T-shirt and kisses my forehead one more time before blowing out the candle. Then he pulls me against him and breathes a long sigh, the kind that sounds like it’s been waiting two centuries to be released.
“We found each other,” I marvel, and even now I hardly believe it.
“You found me,” Logan whispers, kissing my forehead. “Fate needed a little help.”
It’s mere seconds before I hear Logan’s breathing slow, and he falls asleep, his arm draped over me. I’m near sleep myself, but I take a moment to revel in the last few hours in this silent, dark room. Every part of my body feels tender and new, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis for the first time. New, and perfect.
As perfect as I will ever be.
He’s looking at me when I wake up, and for half a second I wonder why his eyes aren’t blue.
Guilt stabs my chest as the memory of last night comes flooding back. I push visions of sky-blue eyes aside and smile at Logan.
My lover. My diligo.
“Good morning, I think. Lights finally came back on,” he whispers in his rough morning voice.
A voice I last heard over two hundred years ago. My mouth curls up at the thought.
“What?” he asks, running the tip of his nose up my cheek and making me feel very awake indeed.
“I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
He tosses his head back and laughs, and I realize I miss his long hair. It’s not a big deal. Hair grows. I, of all people, know that. He kisses me soundly and then leans on one elbow and looks down at me, my head still buried in the pillows. “So, Tavia? That’s a funny name.”
A giggle busts out in more of a snort. “My mom came up with it,” I say, a tiny pang making its way into my heart. “No one ever says it right.”
His eyes soften and he kisses me again, and we waste another half hour or so kissing and rolling about on the bed before Logan’s eyes grow serious. “We should probably talk,” he says.
I nod and sober up. I guess the honeymoon is over.
For a little while anyway.
Logan pulls the sheet off me, and I fight the urge to grab it back. Or at least cover the fact that all I’m wearing is underwear and his shirt. But he’s not looking at me that way. His eyes are serious—maybe even sad—as he pushes his T-shirt up around my ribs and looks at the scars from my surgeries. The huge staple-marked scar on my thigh is gone—compliments of the Curatoria med team—but there are plenty others to see. My trach scar, several small marks where ribs broke the skin, the remains of a lesion across my hips from the seat belt on the plane, that sort of thing. Enough that even in the darkness last night, he would have felt them.
“What happened to you?” he whispers, his voice so full of sympathy and anguish it makes tears of joy come to my eyes.
Joy that I found the person who feels this way about me. That we’re together now and can be forever.
Literally, forever.
I swallow hard and then take his hand and move it to my head. I angle my neck and sweep my hair away and let him see that scar too. Feel it. Other than doctors, nurses, people I had to let feel it, no one else has ever touched my scar.
Except Benson.
He doesn’t count anymore.
“Tavia,” he says, touching the scar very softly. He doesn’t say anything else, but after a few seconds he drops his hand and looks at me. Waiting.
It takes a long time, but I tell him everything that has happened in the last eight months: the plane wreck, the slow manifestation of my powers, Sammi and Mark, the Reduciates, Marie, the virus. Especially the virus since we couldn’t really talk about it in the prison.
I don’t mention Benson.
I should. But I can’t. He’s too raw a wound, and I don’t want Logan to know about him at all.
Maybe someday.
I get to the part of my story where I arrive in Phoenix, and we both laugh at how stupid we were.
“Mostly how stupid you were,” I say in mock defense.
“So stupid,” Logan agrees. “I could have been doing this days ago.”
I sober. “Maybe if I’d found a way your family wouldn’t have died,” I whisper, needing to get that out. To let him know he can talk about it with me. That, having lost my own parents, I’m especially suited to understand.
But he only shrugs. “Maybe. But that doesn’t matter anymore. You’re my family now.”
My eyebrows scrunch together as I stare at him and try to keep the horror out of my eyes as he—likely unknowingly—repeats the phrase the Reduciate woman used. His little siblings, his mother, his father; they just don’t matter anymore? I remember very distinctly the months of feeling as though part of my physical body had been cut away when my parents died. How can he act like I could replace his family?
Maybe he’s in denial. I can be patient. Especially with so much going on with us. Later. It takes time—I know that.
He stares off into space, and I take a moment to love the sight of him, the overhead lights reflecting off his tousled golden hair. Between it and his tan skin he looks just like a god should.
“We have to go soon, don’t we?” His voice is full of mourning.
“Yeah.” I choke out that tiny word.
“Meet Daniel. Find out what he wants with us.”
“From us.”
“No one ever lets us just be happy,” he says, turning to look at me again with those eyes that paralyze me with wanting. “At least we’ll get to see each other afterward.” He casts his eyes downward, and I understand what he’s not saying—that this time, it won’t be like the night the hooded horsemen came for us two hundred years ago. I nod and he rolls over onto his stomach. “Hungry?”
“Starving,” I admit. “We never did get food last night.”
“Probably because of that power outage. Here.” He snaps his fingers and a wooden breakfast tray appears on the bed between us with a hot French press full of coffee, croissants, steaming eggs perfectly over easy, crispy bacon, and two glasses of cold orange juice.
That’s right. We have powers.
And
