Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,43
his mission and didn’t pose a threat, it was even more ambiguous how he should treat her.
It served no purpose to converse with her, but at the same time, he felt almost as if she was a part of him. As such, her ignorance and confusion about his actions… bothered him. As if half of him wasn’t calibrated with the other half of him. Logically, this would slow him down.
Wouldn’t it?
He’d used his connection to her to free himself from his bindings. Would she be able to aid his mission further?
And why the fuck did the hairs on his arm and nape practically stand on end when she was near? As if every part of him was magnetized to every part of her? Her nearness…confused him. She was short-circuiting his synapses.
“Two and a half hours,” he uttered reluctantly. “We are going to the Master’s new lair.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she nodded neutrally.
“What will happen when we get there?”
“I do not know.”
There was a period of silence when they both stared straight ahead at the endless blue skies, white clouds, and stretches of landscape surrounding them.
“Do you remember when we first met?” she began, apropos of nothing. “In my hometown of Zau?”
He decided not to answer. The question seemed mostly rhetorical. She appeared intent on strolling down memory lane whether he wanted to join her or not. Perhaps if he stayed silent, she would tire of speaking faster.
“Or when we saw each other again when I was reborn in my current life?” she persisted. “I was just a baby, but I knew you. I’d know you anywhere, in any form, Dalair.”
He continued to ignore her. Which did not deter her from having this one-sided conversation.
“Remember that talk we had in your room? When you told me about your one true love? Goddess above, I was so jealous! I cursed that princess that you gave your heart to. How stupid of her not to love you back like you deserved. How could she ever choose anyone over you. I swore I would never make the same mistake when I grew up…”
She huffed a strange-sounding laugh.
He couldn’t discern the exact shade of her emotion. Bitterness? Irony? Self-loathing? Or maybe all of the above.
“Only to realize after my Awakening that it was me who broke your heart. It was my earlier incarnation that screwed everything up. I wish I could go back in time and kick my own ass.”
He shifted subtly in his seat, growing increasingly uncomfortable, his entire body strung tight like a wire.
Though her words shouldn’t matter—they were just meaningless words that went in one ear and out the other—they nevertheless stuck on their way through the processor of his brain. Like an errant wrench thrown into a well-oiled machine, the gears in his head turned and ground until they screeched out of sync, as memories deeply buried in his archives suddenly rose to the surface of his consciousness.
He needed her to stop speaking.
As if she sensed his impending request, more words rushed out all at once.
“Can I just say something while I have you mostly to myself for a while? No telling when I’ll have another golden opportunity, given we’re headed towards the seat of all evil—”
“I’d prefer you didn’t speak.”
“—I love you, Dalair—”
“Irrelevant,” he grunted.
“—I’m totally, desperately, irrevocably and eternally in love with you. I just thought you should know. Even if you’re not really you. I’m not a big believer of holding this type of stuff inside. Well, maybe my past incarnations were more circumspect. But this incarnation is a sexually-liberated, equal-opportunity, Gen Z self-centered brat.”
“You make no sense.”
“I mean, you have Dalair’s body—and may I say—I’m extremely in lust with your body—”
“I know.”
“—but it’s your soul I love. It’s you I can’t live without. I don’t know if you remember everything from our past lives. It’s always weighed on me like an anvil that you never seemed to know how I felt. How I feel. I promised myself that when I saw you again, I wouldn’t keep these words unsaid between us.”
He gritted his teeth as a migraine of mythical proportions besieged his head, as if someone was jabbing giant needles into his temple.
He wouldn’t be surprised if his Master had done so during her experiments to strengthen his body, wipe clean and reprogram his mind. He didn’t recall most of it. For some reason, he only remembered his time with the Creature who guarded his bedside, tortured and tended him in