Avery, healing the cracks in her weakening resolve. Remorse was there, too, just as it had been from the start, after she had first set foot on the Earth’s hard surface.
Regret topped both of those emotions, coming at her in seismic jolts and due to the possibility of this guy actually fulfilling her wishes by letting her go when maybe he could have helped her, if she’d let him. If she trusted herself to let him. He might have understood what had been done to her, and want to correct old errors.
“More pain,” he observed with a keen, appraising gaze. “I can feel it overtaking you.”
“It’s nothing I can’t bear.”
He nodded. “Do I play a part in that pain?”
“Do you believe you’re so important?”
His head tilted to one side, as if in viewing her from a different angle he might discover something pertinent that would help him to read her. Damn if she’d let him.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll honor your request and be on my way. It’s a shame, though, when we were getting along so well.”
Wait, Avery almost cried out, biting her tongue to keep from repeating that ugly earlier show of vulnerability that had resulted in a kiss. For her, vulnerability was rare and dangerous.
When he turned from her, she let him. When he looked back at her over a broad shoulder she had seen many times in secret, from afar, Avery managed to keep her expression smooth. The look she gave him was the same thing as a lie, and also a cover-up. Things had changed. Meeting this Knight face-to-face had softened her stance on the future. Seeing him in person had affected them both.
There was no going back.
Wait, she wanted to say again, because he wasn’t the monster she had struggled to believe he was, while knowing better all along. Though he was intelligent and experienced, the man once known as Perceval knew very little about his immortal beginnings. He was continuing to honor Britain’s famous old king’s credo of using might to fight for what was right. His side was the epitome of doing good. How could she have hated any of that enough to have stayed away?
Damn you...
The desire to be near you threatens to outweigh all the rest.
She didn’t utter the curses that stuck in her throat. Not even the worst ones. Weren’t the two of them in the same boat, living on and on with no end in sight? Did this man wish his fate had been otherwise, just as she did?
We do have things in common.
Maybe some regrets also haunt you.
Perhaps pain is also your demon?
He had retreated to the edge of the roof and stopped there. “Name’s Rhys nowadays. Rhys de Troyes. If you need me, call.”
“I won’t need you,” she said.
He nodded. “One thing I’ve found in this crazy, overextended existence is that we never really know how to ask for what we need, even when we do need something. That’s the real curse we suffer from.”
In a shaft of moonlight, the flash of his golden-highlighted hair was the last Avery saw of the blazing-hot immortal she had wanted so badly to despise, but couldn’t. After all the arguing, he had complied with her demands and was going away...like the goddamn gentleman he had probably been before the word Blood had been tacked onto his knightly status.
Moonlight, usually Rhys’s ally in his war against the monsters, seemed impossibly dull when she wasn’t standing in it. The overhead orb’s silvery shine didn’t matter to him at the moment. Neither did the possible return of the bloodsuckers.
Tonight, for the first time in a long while, he had experienced the kindling of a little thing called hope. And the reason at the core of this new emotion had sent him away. She had waved him off as inconsequential, perhaps too wrapped up in a mystery of her own to let a stranger share in that mystery.
He hadn’t gotten one straight answer from her, and he had so many questions.
Why the tattoo?
Why wings?
Chances were good that she wouldn’t help him out of this quandary, not if they met again, but when they did. Because he had every intention of seeing her again. In fact, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight completely, in case she used some of that power to disappear.
“Why the kiss, and why would you allow it? Distraction? Moment of weakness? Attraction? Are you as interested in me, as I am in you?”
Given that she could hear at least some of his thoughts and remarks, maybe she’d hear those whispered words. She hadn’t gone away. Not yet. Weird as it was, he was able to see the light particles that stuck around this pale vision like the shadows stuck to the street. From where he stood, it was easy to see the faint glow on the roofline.
She was there, all right. She hadn’t gone away.
Other things that hid beneath the cover of darkness were moving in and around the square now, as predicted. Most of the creatures in the supernatural world that moved with unnatural speed left a noticeable residue behind in the infrared spectrum. Rhys supposed that he also left that kind of trail. Not the pure, shimmering white of starlight, like hers, though. Seems every damn thing about her was unique, as was his growing need to get to the bottom of her appearance in London.
He had no idea what caused the inner light she wielded and doubted if anyone else did, either. Not anyone living, anyway. As he had told her, some mention of it would have reached him if anyone had gotten wind of that.
The dead were another matter needing consideration. As he had feared, news of the woman he’d kissed under the streetlight must have spread. He sensed the creatures coming. London’s vampires might also have seen the light this newcomer projected and been attracted to it.
Being stuck underground most of the time, the dark side probably hungered for light of any kind, including the shine of the Divine. And in some small way, the woman he had met tonight did exhibit a few Divine qualities. Her fake wings might have made her believe she actually was Divine.
She hadn’t wanted to leave him back on that street. At least he knew that much.
Rhys’s awareness picked up a sudden foreshadowing of the future. His sigils were aching. Energy pulsed through the tentacles of inky symbols on the back of his neck, urging him to turn his head.
This was a sturdy reminder that there was a war on, and that more abominations prowled the area nearby. He was needed to help defray the aftereffects of that war and had to resume his post.
But he was torn.
The light on that rooftop was a heady draw and nearly impossible to resist. She, whose name he still didn’t know, was equally impossible to forget.
“Monsters first,” Rhys whispered, hoping he’d actually believe it, because chaos would rain down if humans became aware of what resided in the shadows. For them, ignorance was bliss, as long as somebody
