The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,237

the name she had first given him, she opened her lids and glanced over. Her vision was wavy from tears, and he brushed her cheeks with his knuckles.

“You saved my brother,” he said.

“No, I didn’t. I was too late.”

“He survived.”

“It nearly killed him. This whole nightmare … nearly killed him.”

“You were not the cause, you were the solution I had been begging for.”

“I lied to you.”

“And I forgive you.”

“How?” she choked out.

He leaned up and brushed her mouth with his. “You’re easy to forgive. You risked your life to go find out the truth. You were the one who found the lies and turned everything around. You are the savior I’ve spent my whole life praying for, Your Highness.”

She shook her head. “Do not call me that. Please. I picked maichen because I don’t believe I’m better than anyone else. With beating hearts and open minds, we are all the same.”

“See,” he whispered. “You just keep getting more beautiful.”

She looked at him for the longest time. Then, with a shaking hand, she reached out and touched his face. In response, he pressed his lips to her fingertips.

“This is real,” he told her. “You can trust this. You aren’t going to wake up and have this be over. You and I? This is our beginning.”

“I love you,” she said in a rough voice. “I want no one else but you.”

iAm smiled and pushed in between her legs, bringing his body against hers. “And I feel the same way, my maichen. I love you, I love you … I love you…”

As he started to kiss her, she found it hard to believe that it was really happening. That he had come back to her. That once parted asunder, they now were cleaved as a single whole.

Pulling away a little, she asked, “You’re sure this is real?”

He shrugged and smiled at her. “Of course it is. You and I were written in the stars…”

With that, he kissed her lips again.

And she kissed him back.

EIGHTY-SEVEN

The meteor shower happened at midnight on the dot.

As Trez stepped free of the mansion’s warmth, and walked some distance past the courtyard and onto the descending drive, he got out of the lee of the exterior security lights, and that was when he looked up and saw the sky clearly.

Against a dense, velvety black and among the pinpricks of bright white stars, a sprinkling of flashes was cast across the sky, like gold dust let loose from an open palm.

He smiled sadly. “Thank you, my queen. I needed this.”

Watching the display, he felt both very alone and totally connected, especially as he reflected on that vastness above.

If anyone ever wanted to sense the infinity of time and existence, all they had to do was look at the night sky and feel their precious dead staring back at them. It was the great duality of union and separation.

It was just as his Selena had told him at the door to the Fade.

He wanted her beside him so badly that he’d woken up again with a wet face and a soggy pillow. But yet he was here, upright in his boots, prepared to somehow figure out how to breathe while the one who had made his lungs work was on the other side.

“I’m going to go now,” he said. “Come with me—”

Trez jumped and spun around.

Sure as he knew there was no one behind him, he could have sworn a gentle hand had rested on his shoulder.

He prayed it was the ghost of his shellan. If it wasn’t, he was probably losing his mind.

Short trip.

Wha-hey.

Closing his eyes, he had to wait a moment for the concentration to come … and then he was off, scattering his molecules through the cold, clear autumn night.

When he re-formed, it was in front of Sal’s Restaurant.

He supposed he could have gone around to the back, but no. This was a big night, a kind of reintroduction for him. He would enter through the front.

Going over to the keypad by the glass doors, he entered the code and then opened his way in. Instantly, the old-school Rat Pack decor sank in for him, the red-and-black flocked wallpaper bleeding into his retinas, the he’d-been-here-a-thousand-times sense seemingly both accurate and a lie.

Walking forward, he mounted the couple of steps and went by the hostess stand; then headed past the dining rooms and into the bar area in the back. The flap doors to the kitchen were over on the right, and he took his leather jacket off as