was hoping the moon would provide enough light to find him if he was there.
“Nope. Too busty to be Jackson.”
“Oh! I’m sorry,” she said to the woman sitting in the shadows.
“Don’t be. You don’t have the same ability to see in the dark as we do,” Diahmond said. “There’s not much in the way of privacy in a house with this many people in it.”
“I don’t know how everyone does it. I think I’d go mad if I didn’t have some sense of privacy.”
The Gargoyle regarded her for a moment, her eyes—a cool gray that could be seen in the moonlight almost as if they were aglow—moving over her briefly. “It’s the life of a royal,” she told her, almost pointedly. “It’s a price you pay for the good of your people. You bear with all the fuss and limitations it puts on your freedom because the people and their well-being means more to you than yours does. It takes a very special sort of person to be able to make that kind of sacrifice.”
Call her crazy, but Marissa got the feeling Diahmond didn’t think she fit that bill. She shrugged internally. What did she care what the Gargoyle thought of her?
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked her, moving farther out into the night, turning her face up to the moon. She had to admit, the night wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to wake up to. It was cool and crisp and full of curious sounds. expression on his face oihly
“I am merely at a loss to understand you. That is all.”
“What is so perplexing? That I won’t readily alter my life away so I can share it with someone else whom I hardly know anything about?”
“What would you like to know about her that could possibly change your mind?”
Ouch. Two points to the Gargoyle. The way she had said it implied there were circumstances she might approve of. Had she really meant it to sound that way?
“What is she like, your queen? I’m assuming you know her … you sound like you do.”
“I don’t know her half as well as her husband does. If he cannot convince you of her worth, then what can I say to convince you? I will not argue with you or wheedle with you, mortal girl. You do not understand this world, and I see that you fear what you don’t understand.”
Zing. Four points total. Wow. She hadn’t lost a battle of wits like this in ages. And never so resoundingly.
“What’s to understand,” Marissa said petulantly. “I die. She lives. Period.”
Diahmond smiled. “So simple. Yet so complex. Each Bodywalker comes equipped with a special ability. My lord pharaoh is telekinetic. Ramses can control the weather. Do you know what hers is?”
“I don’t …” Marissa said a bit lamely.
“Empathy. Emotions, mortal girl. She feels what others feel so keenly, that sometimes all that keeps her balanced is the man you are looking for now. Menes. Jackson. Call him what you will. Now, do you know what I fail to understand?”
“Do tell,” Marissa invited dryly.
“Here you have this proposition laid before you … a man who loves you and wants you to do something that will increase his passion for you a thousandfold. He has chosen you—I can only assume he sees something of worth in you—over every other woman in the world. And if you think he makes this choice lightly you would be terribly mistaken, so know that now. The last time he was sent to choose for her it took him eleven years before he found someone he deemed worthy enough. Do you know what that must have done to him? To wait so long? This man has offered you something that will make you stronger, make your senses keener, and will add untold amount of time to your life. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its pitfalls. It does. And to say otherwise would insult your intelligence. I don’t know you but I’m assuming you have some.”
All right, now that one was just low, Marissa thought with a sigh.
“Here he offers you this, and then on top of all of that …” she said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, “a love for all time. A love of the ages. Something no mortal woman on earth can lay claim to. A relationship with no doubt. No questioning. No insecurity. I know this because I have seen it. Iit all over ag
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“This is so cool!”