Page 48 of Blood of Dragons
“It’s just not the right decision for us.”
“So, she’ll marry someone else and have his children?”
He nodded.
“But not yours…” My throat constricted with tears I refused to shed, but keeping them in felt more painful.
He looked down into his coffee before he took a drink.
“Why not marry someone else?” I asked. “Someone who can give you a family?”
“Because I love her.” He looked up at me again, his expression hard with passion. “I loved her the moment I saw her, and I would rather love her deeply for my short time here on this earth than love another woman less.”
“I’m sorry, but I think her letting this happen is selfish.”
“She rejected my advances many times. Told me there was no future for us, but I pursued her relentlessly.” His eyes started to glaze over with the tale. “It turned into an affair, a secret that we hid from her subjects, and she told me it would be only physical, that it would last a short while until the flames were snuffed out. But she was wrong—because those flames only grew bigger. I told her I loved her and she tried to end it, but I refused to walk away. I didn’t ask her to marry me—I told her to marry me. She finally stopped trying to fight it. She married me under our favorite tree, and I’ve been happy every moment of every day. I have no regrets, nor will I ever.”
It was a beautiful tale, a tale that softened my anger toward her.
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you, probably to anyone, because a legacy that lives on after you is the only one that matters. But love very rarely makes sense.”
Black eyes popped into my mind, sitting just feet away from me, eyes burning deep into my soul. Hot fireplaces in empty bedchambers. His sweaty chest against mine. Angry fingerswrapped around my throat. None of that made sense either, but his mark would be on my skin forever.
“My legacy will be that I loved a woman with my whole heart—and it was worth it.”
It’d been a week since Talon and I had spoken.
I wondered if he would ever speak to me again. The last conversation ended on such a low point that I wasn’t sure if he wanted to face me again. I hoped that was the end of us, that I would never see those dark eyes again, but that hope was accompanied by a bottomless pit of sadness.
My eyes were on my book when I felt his stare in the dark. The sun had set hours ago, and the forest was deep in twilight. The fireflies floated everywhere, and the crickets sang their song. The peace was disturbed by the man so intense, his presence felt real even when it was a mirage.
I didn’t look up right away, staring at the words on the page until I had the courage to face him.
“You feel me.” His deep voice was calm and authoritative at the same time. “Now look at me.”
My fingers felt the weathered exterior of the hardback before I closed it. But it took me another moment to find the strength to lift my gaze and face him.
He appeared the way he always appeared, shirtless and barefoot, his eyes so intense they looked angry.
“Your breathing changes whenever I’m near you.”
“Because I’m scared.”
“The world should be scared of me—but not you.”
I gripped the book in my hand just to have something to do with my fingers. “Where are you?”
“In the armchair by the fire, where I always am.”
“How—how are you doing this?”
He paused before he answered. “One of my many gifts.”
I didn’t know a god existed until I came to Riviana Star and heard Commander Luxe describe the woman who walked through the trees with the glow of a thousand fairies, and now I viewed the world differently. “Are you…a god?”
His eyes narrowed slightly on my face. “Why do you ask?”
“Because…you don’t seem human.” He was unnaturally handsome, his face chiseled by an artist. And his powers…I’d never seen anything like it. Never heard of anything like it. “Because you have abilities that no mortal possesses.”