Burning Skies (Guardians of Ascension #2)(46)
Author: Caris Roane

She chewed and stared at her sandwich. She dabbed at her mouth with a cloth napkin. “There is so much to be said for this new world,” she began. “I feel satisfied here.” She put a hand to her chest then sighed. “But I miss my life on Mortal Earth, at least the one I shared with my family.”

“Your family?” Oh, this couldn’t be good.

She looked at him, her chin lifted slightly. “I was married on Mortal Earth.”

He lifted a brow. “You left your husband behind?” Somehow that just didn’t fit with his instincts about her character. Havily would never have abandoned her man, an assessment of her essential strength of spirit that drove a spike straight into his heart. Once committed, Havily would never abandon her man. Oh, God, this just kept getting worse.

She sighed. He watched her shoulders fall. She picked at a piece of lettuce that had fallen to her plate. “Scarlet fever went through Vancouver Island and took him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. He was such a joy. A really good man.”

And very different from me, he thought. “What was his name?”

“Duncan Morgan. We had a farm, the most beautiful farm with dry-stone walls to keep the sheep in their pastures, turnstiles like the old country.”

“So Morgan is your married name.”

“Yes.”

“No children?”

She paused and set her sandwich on her plate. He had a feeling she wouldn’t be picking it up again. “Three daughters. Three beautiful little girls, all of them with the sweetest red hair.” The words were quiet and fell like stones. Shit.

He was silent as he chewed. His thoughts whirred in his head. He knew the answer to the question he was certain he shouldn’t ask, yet not to ask seemed rude, even insensitive. “Did you lose them at the same time?” The room felt suddenly shrouded in fog, the kind that dampened all noise.

He heard the choppy breath she took. “Yes.” The word disappeared into the fog.

Jesus. What did he say now? “They must have been young.”

“Yes. Very. We buried them on the farm. I wanted them near me. Then Duncan took sick and three days later he was … gone, too.”

He set his sandwich down as well and turned toward her. He saw the stiffness in her jaw and shoulders and he knew a sudden truth about her. “You haven’t told anyone here, on Second Earth, have you?”

She met his gaze. She shook her head.

“Why not?”

Her lips parted. A frown wrinkled the small space between her brows. She released a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure why I told you but now that I have, given how old you are, and how alone you are in the world, I suspect you’ve had your own losses.”

Not to share also seemed insensitive. “Through the centuries, yes. I had three wives. One divorced me and I don’t know what became of her. Death vampires took my first and third wives. As for the children, one ascended to Third. I think about him, wondering what his life is, hoping he’s still alive.” He smiled suddenly. “I hope he is and I hope he’s happy.”

“I’m sorry about your families.”

“And of course you know about Helena.”

“Kerrick’s wife, your sister.”

“Yes.” He looked away from her. Shit, his heart hurt just thinking about her, and it had been two hundred years. Would that wound ever heal, ever really heal?

She put her hand on his arm. “Tell me about her.”

He took a sip of Dos Equis. The bottle clinked on the granite when he set it down. “You would have loved her but then everyone did. God, she was like sunshine. No matter how bad everything got, she could walk into a room and light up the dullest day.

“Maybe losing her was so hard because she was the last of my family left here on Second Earth. I’d come to rely on her. We were always in each other’s houses, which meant of course that Kerrick was around her a lot. So of course he fell in love with her. I suppose it was just a matter of time.” He still held the bottle of beer in his grip. He thumbed the condensation up and down.

“I don’t think the warriors believed me when I said I’d kill Kerrick, but I would have. I was that crazed when she died.” He glanced at her, saw the stricken look in her eye, and shunted his glance away. But he kept talking. She ought to know the worst about him. “I would have killed him because his marriage to Helena had gotten her killed. I’d begged him over and over not to marry her. I begged them both.

“I know you think I’m a worthless deserter. Maybe I am, but if I hadn’t left that day, I would have killed him. And I was sick of it, all of it, of the battling without end, that my sister and her children died in that horrible explosion, and of Greaves’s endless moves and countermoves.

“I snapped and I knew it. I think Endelle knew it, too. I think she knew I had to leave. Of course she yelled at me, but we’d known each other a long time and she didn’t try very hard to prevent me from going. She only asked one thing of me—that if she needed me to come back, I would. Which I did four months ago.” He looked at her and held her gaze. “And now I’m here again.”

Without thinking too much, he leaned toward her and captured her lips with his own. She didn’t retreat; instead she kissed him back, a tender action that surprised him, almost as though she expressed gratitude rather than desire.

This journey with her had taken a sudden sharp turn. She had borne children and lost them, not to a war as Kerrick had, or as he had lost a beloved sister, niece, and nephew, but to the diseased imperfect nature of Mortal Earth existence. Nor had she shared this information with anyone else. They were both intensely private people, one more similarity that seemed to be binding his heart to hers. So … yeah … shit.

Her phone chimed. She picked it up but held it between them, the speaker function still on. “Hi, Jeannie,” she said.

“We’ve got her. A house in north Peoria and she’s in full-mount.”

“Right now? She’s in full-mount right now?”

“You know what that means. If Greaves doesn’t have her yet, he will soon. You ready to go?”

She dipped her chin to Marcus. He nodded. She took his hand.

“We’re ready.”

Is there a vampire on Second Earth who does not lead a double life?

—From Treatise on Ascension, by Philippe Reynard

Chapter 11

Parisa stood in the courtyard, just outside the open sliders. Her wings were fully emerged and she reveled in the cool breeze that wafted from the air-conditioned house over her naked body and into the warm dry outdoor air.