Before she could brace herself, Charlie took that final step toward her so his body pressed against hers. He lowered his head, his mouth almost touching her lips. “We were never just friends, no matter what lies you tell yourself. And yeah. Charlie Creagh doesn’t live here anymore.”
For the first time in her life, Ari felt cold in Charlie’s company, cold and vulnerable. But more worrisome was the naked longing in his regard—a longing that seemed mixed with a frustrated amount of blame and anger. His warm breath blew across her face in a huff and she realized his intent as his head took that last dip toward her.
She jerked back, shaking, feeling lost. “Stop.”
Something flared in his eyes, something like rage, before he banked it.
“I need time to think about this.”
Charlie leveled her with an unimpressed look. “You’ve got two days to make up your mind. In those two days I’ll be back here, same time, same place.” He stepped toward her bed, the flames of the Peripatos engulfing him.
They needed to get the emerald back so he wouldn’t be able to do crap like that. Ari shuddered, surprised to find herself so physically affected.
An awful truth was trying to push its way to the forefront of her mind.
The awful truth that perhaps the Guild was right after all.
Perhaps Charlie was beyond saving.
3
Where the Sky Meets the Sea
“Ari asked for you again,” his brother told him softly as he stepped beside him. They stood together on the brilliant white balcony of Red’s stylish home in Santorini. People of wealth occupied the traditional Greek village—celebrities, business people—and it was no longer the place of quiet solitude it once had been. Red knew he was a source of curiosity. That the people around him would look to one of the larger homes that gazed over the unreal crystal blue waters of the Aegean and wonder at the tall red and blue-haired man.
Red cared nothing for their inquisitiveness.
He came here for one thing.
To be close to his love.
Sala had loved coming to visit him here. She loved the startling beauty of the water contrasting against the whitewashed walls of the homes. She loved how, on a cloudless, warm day, the sky would meet the water and one wouldn’t know where the other began. She said the sky and the water were like her love for him—she didn’t know where she started and where he ended.
They were two halves of one piece.
Agony ripped through Red. He imagined that he could still see the scattering of her ashes across the water below his home. His love’s beautiful face flashed before him and at Glass’s words, it shimmered, changing to the face of his love’s daughter.
He shook himself, glancing at Glass who stared out into the water. “I’m surprised. After I gave Charlie that emerald, I expected her to be angry with me.”
Glass shrugged. Red had noticed Glass had taken to dressing in mortal clothing—jeans and T-shirts—and he did not need to wonder at the change. “I think she understands that it was done to protect them. You didn’t know the boy well enough to have understood how destructive he could be. And as for Ari, she seems … frightened. I wonder if we are missing something.”
Red ignored the flare of concern and deflected, perusing Glass’s attire. “Perhaps if you weren’t distracted by the young Ginnaye, you would know.”
That earned him a sharp look.
“Leave him out of it.”
A new concern needled him. Glass was growing close to Trey and Red feared that it would end as badly as his relationship with Tamir had centuries ago. Tamir had been the only man Glass had ever loved and their mother had killed him in front of them. Since then, Glass had shown little interest in men beyond sex. Until now.
“Red … what of Ari?”
He sighed inwardly and turned to face the water again. The truth was he had been unable to face Ari because she looked so much like Sala. After his initial anger had cooled, he realized that he did not blame Ari for what had happened. Sala had foolishly jumped into the situation because she read the situation wrong and lost her cool at the sight of Ari in White’s clutches. And in her foolishness, she’d left him and Ari alone without her.
Ari.
Red frowned, trying to ignore his growing fatherly concern and feelings of shame—as though he had abandoned her these last few months, when she was never supposed to be his to abandon.
He hit out at his other concern instead. “The boy will grow old and die. What then?”