to be forced to turn back after he came dangerously close to unconsciousness. No one in his condition could survive a night in the cold of the mountains without some kind of shelter.
Even knowing he’d never have made it, Xavier wanted to tell his younger self to keep crawling, to find his way back to the village and to Nina. “By the time I returned, the nearby villages had been long deserted and people farther out knew nothing.”
His shoulder muscles knotted, his fist clenching in her hair. “I asked over and over.” Yet the mountains were big, and back then the people who called it home often moved because of fear or need or environmental factors, a multitude of reasons. It wasn’t improbable that Nina hadn’t spoken to any of those same people when she came to look for him. Especially since she’d returned long after him.
“Why do they call you Ani?” he asked, his heart in a painful vise.
“It’s what my rescuers named me at the time when I wasn’t myself . . . and after . . . when I thought everyone was dead, that you were dead, I didn’t want to be Nina again.”
A heartbreaking answer that betrayed the depth of her pain.
“I searched for you,” he said, needing her to know, to believe. “I’ve been true, loved no other.” Falling to his knees as her tears began to flow again, he dared say the words he’d held inside for so long. “Say you’ll forgive me, Nina.”
“Xavier.” Going to her knees in front of him, she shook her head and his heart sank, his world narrowing to only her face and to this instant that might forever break him.
“There is no need for forgiveness.”
He took a harsh breath, another.
“I know you did what you did out of love.” Her kiss was a benediction. “I love you, Xavier. I’ve listened for your voice even after the world convinced me you were dead.” Her fingers shaped his lips. “I’ve loved no one but you.”
Shaking, he was the one who fell into her embrace this time. She held him with love in every breath. “My Xavier.”
• • •
“THE regeneration might not work,” she said to him a long time later, as she sat cradled against his chest while he leaned his back up against a sturdy tree with dark green leaves. “This is the second and final attempt.”
He was happy to hear no worry in her tone that he’d feel differently about her. She knew he loved her, regardless of her physical appearance or health. “You’re revered as a nurse.”
“I have an apprentice who acts as my eyes, and together, we manage.”
She was more than managing, he thought, considering the fidelity she’d engendered in people used to being loyal only to those they’d known all their lives. “I have connections now, Nina. I can get you to better doctors if you want.”
“I’ve learned to live how I am, even thrive, but I could do my work better with both eyes or at least some vision.” Her fingers grazed his jaw. “I’m selfish, too. I want to see you again.”
Joy was a sweet pain through his veins. “Then we’ll find the best specialists.” He knew Judd and Kaleb would both help him without question; family, he’d learned, had many different faces. His now included two Psy with deadly abilities.
“There are others here,” Nina said. “So many people still isolated, disbelieving of the changes within the Psy and unwilling to return to the lives they abandoned in order to survive. Many need proof they won’t be murdered should they return to their lands. Others need medical help, access to wider education—”
“I’m with you.” Xavier had fought beside his friends for years. Now it was his time to walk beside Nina. He’d said good-bye to his parishioners at the outset of this journey, wanting to go into it with his whole heart and soul. But he hadn’t abandoned them. Never would he do that to people who had given him as much succor as he had them.
He’d left them in the gentle, capable hands of a young woman of God who was ready for her own congregation. She had strength enough to offer a shoulder to those in need and heart enough to open it to any soul that walked through the door.
He was at peace with his decision to leave San Francisco, could think of no better life than to live it beside Nina. “I’ll call on every favor I have to