I could have loved her, you know. If I’d let myself. But sometimes you have to make hard choices.”
He didn’t answer, because she was right. But it didn’t make him hate her any the less. He supposed he would have to take her with him. Destiny wouldn’t be happy if he left her behind, but he wished he could. Right now, they needed to get under cover, and he needed to wake her up, make sure she was okay. He held her tighter.
They didn’t meet anyone on the stairs and at last they were out of the building and standing in the warm night air.
He could magic her back to the spaceship. Then come back here. But he was due to meet up with Rico and Dylan to deal with the explosives soon.
“We need somewhere safe, close by. Any ideas?”
“My laboratory on the Trakis Four.” She thought for a moment. “I need to go there anyway. I want to destroy my work. I want to make sure Kinross can’t reproduce it. That no one can reproduce it.”
That sounded like a good idea. What she had done would never be right or justified. “Hold my arm,” he said.
She frowned but reached out and touched his arm. He whispered a spell and a moment later they materialized at the side of the great ship.
He shifted Destiny in his arms, time to wake up sleeping beauty.
At least now he could be sure she wouldn’t be so eager to return and do her duty.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That’s when you shout, “‘Do your worst, for I will do mine!’” and you will be remembered forever.”
—Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Destiny felt the soft touch of lips against her own.
She blinked her eyes open. For a moment the world was blurred and then, hovering above her, Milo’s face came into focus.
A sensation of warmth filled her, and she realized it was happiness. She’d never really been happy before in her life. She hadn’t expected to see him again. She’d thought it was over. Now she reached up with a trembling hand and touched his cheek.
“My beautiful warlock,” she murmured.
He turned his face and kissed her palm and tingles ran up her arm, along her nerves to settle in her heart. She smiled as he closed her palm around the kiss but kept hold of her hand.
“I thought you would never wake up.”
She thought back. The injection, then the darkness. They’d been going to operate on her. In that moment, as she had fallen asleep, it had come to her what her role in life was. She’d wanted to scream in denial because she’d been such an idiot. She’d thought herself so important. And with that knowledge had come the realization that it was over. Finished.
Yet here she was.
And somehow it didn’t matter anymore. The look in Milo’s eyes was enough to banish the dark thoughts.
“You saved me,” she said. Her body felt weak and lethargic, but she forced herself to sit upright and lean against the wall behind her, her gaze never leaving his face.
“Of course I saved you. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
She nodded. “I thought you would fly away and leave me behind, and I’d never see you again.” She blinked and a tear slipped down over her cheek. She let it fall. “I love you. I know you don’t want my love, but you have it anyway.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “I thought you were dead. I thought I was too late.” His eyes darkened and he closed the space between them and kissed her. Closing her eyes, she sank into the caress.
He drew back way too soon. “I never wanted to love you.” He gave a rueful smile. “My experience of love has not been…something I was eager to repeat. But it was beyond my control. I think it was a lost cause from that moment you first looked at me.”
As a declaration of love, it could have been improved upon, but it was enough. Milo loved her. She sighed. “It was love at first sight. Just like in the romances.”
He kissed her again and afterward, she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest, listening to the rhythmic thud of his heart.
In a second, she would move, because she had a feeling that they weren’t out of danger yet and Milo loved her,