Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,29

heart thundered so loudly she thought everyone must be able to hear it.

Could the lines refer to when Dalair had sacrificed himself to save her when she was Kira? Or when he surrendered his body, heart and soul to her during the two nights that they’d pretended they were different people, in different circumstances? When she’d loved him with everything she had, everything she was.

But he never knew. She’d been too much of a coward to tell him clearly.

She’d broken his heart that first night. She saw it in his eyes the next morning. She saw his miscomprehension, self-loathing, perhaps even a kind of hate for her as well.

She’d chased after him as she always did. A married woman shamelessly coveting her husband’s brother. But when they were alone together, in the light of day, she still couldn’t tell him.

She told herself it was to protect him. No one could know about them. There were spies and enemies everywhere. So many reasons to keep her secret…

But the real reason she hadn’t told him the truth, once and for all, was cowardice: She didn’t know if he loved her back.

They hadn’t had much time together before a gulf of ten long years divided them. After she married Cambyses, he disappeared. Went away to war and fought a bloody path up the military ranks. They lived separate lives.

They were never meant to be together.

She’d not had one single word from him in all that time. Desperately, she soaked up bits of news from Cambyses and Dalair’s mother, Vashti. She tried to be a good wife; it was her duty. And she happened to like her husband. Even love him.

Just not the way a woman loved a man.

She couldn’t know how Dalair felt when she saw him again. A mighty warrior. A hard man. She didn’t realize that when she gave herself fully to his love making, abetted and welcomed their betrayal of Cambyses, he’d given her his heart as well.

His heart. His pride. His body. His tortured soul.

And ultimately, his life.

She didn’t know…Not then, when she was in the midst of it all. Only later, when it was too late, did she realize her folly. What she’d done to avenge him…the unquenchable hatred and fury she felt toward the world at large, including herself.

Her cowardly, miserable, useless self.

“Sophia, snap out of it!”

“Sophie, don’t go into the dark place!”

It was Benji’s voice and small arms wrapping around her waist, golden head butting into her sternum, that pulled Sophia out of her own head.

She blinked and tried to focus on his angelic face. Those topaz blue eyes that shone with an inner light, as if there were rays of sun trapped within them.

“You’re my guardian angel, you know that, Benji?” she whispered so that only he could hear, her voice husky with emotion.

That was a damned close call.

“That’s why my name is Benjamin Larkin D’Angelo,” he returned in a much louder whisper. “Daddy told me. My middle name means Brave Warrior. Silent and fierce. I’m your warrior angel, Sophie.”

She grinned, ruffling his haphazard tumble of buttery curls.

“Maybe not the silent part.”

The boy shrugged as if to say, nobody’s perfect.

But in Sophia’s view, Benji was absolute perfection. She wanted to bottle up his bright light and carry it with her forever. Benji always chased the darkness away.

“I guess your reaction means that those lines from the Zodiac Prophesies struck a chord with you?” Eveline brought their attention back to the issue at hand.

Sophia gave a weak nod.

Striking a chord was putting it mildly.

“Well, hang on to those thoughts because I have more.”

“Maybe I ought to sit with you, Sophie,” Benji volunteered, tugging on Sophia’s hand until they both sat around the oak table, and the others took their seats as well.

Yes, this seemed civilized, Sophia thought. Sitting placidly around a table in the library, floating theories from ancient texts that could provide the clues either to destroy or save the world as they knew it.

No biggie.

“What more?” she asked, her muscles tensing in anticipation.

The Sophia before her Awakening would have believed that ignorance was bliss. What you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you. But the Sophia she was now, with all of her hard-won wisdom, knew that ignorance was dangerous.

You couldn’t prepare for the threats that would come. Perhaps Destiny would make it so that you couldn’t avoid your fate even if you tried; that’s why they called it Destiny. But if you knew enough, maybe you could fight it, change it, bend it to your