“But I do have a question.”
Forehead furrowed, Aegaeon said, “You wish to know why I went into Sleep as I did.” Shoving a hand through the thick fall of his hair, he swallowed hard. “Truly, my love, I raged at myself all my years of Sleep. You were the only one of whom I dreamed.”
His expression was torn and ragged, his shoulders taut. “I loved you too much,” he ground out. “Until it frightened me to the bone. So I chose the cruelest possible way to push you away.” Rough words, his face shredded with emotion. “It makes me a coward, but I hope, in time, you’ll find a way to forgive me and see the insanity of love that drove my actions.”
Sharine stared at Aegaeon. “That’s it? That’s the best excuse you could come up with for being such a colossal ass?”
Aegaeon’s jaw fell open. “My pet, what has gotten into you?”
“Tell me the truth.” A flat demand. “Why did you do it? Why did you seek to re-create the two most horrific moments of my existence? Why?”
He stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. “I’m not lying. I am Aegaeon! I don’t lie!”
No, he simply used and threw away people when he was done. Do you think he actually believes what he’s saying to me? She had to ask for an outside opinion, she was so flummoxed by this strange turn of events.
Titus’s answer wasn’t the disgust she’d expected. Instead, after a long pause, he said, I think, Shari, some part of you did scare him, for you are a woman with a rare light within. I don’t believe Aegaeon can love anyone but himself, not in truth, but there was something about you that made him want to be other than he was . . . and instead of taking that risk, he chose cowardice and cruelty.
Sharine heard an unmasked depth of feeling in Titus’s words, but she also heard a painful clarity. “What was the trigger?” she asked Aegaeon with conscious gentleness, not to be kind, but because she needed him to stop blustering and give her an answer.
His jaw worked before he turned away and strode to the end of the roof then back. “I began to think what it would be like to have another child and soon I started to want it,” he admitted. “Where before, I could imagine siring that child on any one of my harem, then I saw only you.”
All artifice and vanity stripped from his face, he bunched his hands, flexed them open. Once. Twice. “Our son was a delight, courageous and wild and curious, because of you. You were the reason for my joy.”
Sharine believed him. He’d orchestrated an act of inexplicable cruelty because he’d been running from his own emotions. “Yes,” she said at last, her voice soft. “You were a coward.”
He flinched, as if she’d landed a physical blow, and she knew that to Aegaeon, her words were more vicious and wounding than any cut from a blade. But she wasn’t done. “I feel no anger toward you any longer,” she said, “but neither do I feel any sense of love or affection or even interest.”
Her world was now far bigger than he would ever be; she’d outgrown Aegaeon for all that he was an Ancient. There was an incredible sense of finality in that knowledge.
“But,” she added before he could respond, “if you do anything to hurt our son, I will find a way to end you.” Absolute calm in her words because they were the truth. “I know archangels can only be killed by other archangels, but should I come after you, I won’t meet you face-to-face in battle.
“I’ll be cunning and stealthy in my vengeance, and I’ll find you when you believe yourself safe. Then I’ll cut off your head and put that head in a dark cavern where no one can hear you scream, and I’ll come back every so often to chop off any parts that have regenerated.”
Titus’s stifled laughter inside her head was nothing in comparison to the naked horror on Aegaeon’s face.
“You are yet mad,” he whispered. “I thought you were recovered, but . . .”
Sharine smiled.
One of the most powerful beings in the world took a step back from her.
“I’m quite sane,” she said in the same gentle tone filled with serene resolve. “I also have the respect of people from members of the Cadre to the most junior servant in your court. My threat