I felt him retreat and realized he’d slipped past my defenses when I’d gotten emotional. I brought my walls down again and tried to control my feelings.
Dark eyes stared down at me but the predator behind them seemed still for the moment. “I didn’t say it right, Summer. I saw you and realized who you were, and suddenly the universe wasn’t so cruel. I was far too excited to find you. I should have gotten to my knees and told you something else entirely.”
I shouldn’t have cared about anything he could say to me, but I felt a need to understand him. “What is that?”
His voice was soft, and not in a sensual way, though everything about the man was sensual. The words, however, felt tender. “I should have told you that I am yours, bella. I have been yours since long before you were born. I’ve walked the Earth plane for almost two thousand years and only now do I know what I was born to do.”
Tears clouded my eyes because he wasn’t pushing lust at me. Wonder. He was feeling wonder and tenderness, and I didn’t understand it at all. I didn’t know who he was or why he was here, and I definitely didn’t understand why I wanted so badly to soften beneath him and believe what he was saying.
I did not know why I did what I did next.
I let him kiss me.
* * * *
Zoey
I stared at the door in front of me, but I wasn’t terribly close. If anyone walked by, I was simply standing in front of my friend’s apartment, talking like we would every day.
But we weren’t talking about how our kiddos were doing in school or exchanging recipes. We were wondering how quickly I would get killed if Myrddin had the apartment secured.
“There’s no ward on the doors. But then the whole place feels like a void to me. I don’t trust my own instincts.” Sarah had her arms crossed over her chest as we stood outside her door and stared at the one that led to Myrddin Emrys’s three-bedroom apartment.
We’d spent much of the early evening with Henri Jacobs and Hugo Wells, two of the three academics who lived in Council headquarters. They were making a study of Gray’s prophecies, and one of them had made me sit up and pay attention.
Summer is coming. That was what Gray had said. I’d never read that particular prophecy or I might have known what he meant. The academics had assumed he was talking about the season. But he wasn’t and I knew it in my bones. Summer was coming.
Summer. My daughter.
I had to pray that she’d forgiven me.
“I don’t smell anything different.” Neil had joined us when the academics had shown up. He’d kind of slept through the lecture portion of the evening, but he’d been determined to do whatever he could once he realized I was going to run a job. It had been a long time since I’d done it. Neil and Sarah and Daniel and I had once been a crew. Dev had helped us out at the end, but then we’d become something else. Kings and queens and courtiers.
Today I needed to be a thief.
I needed to get into that room without the owner knowing.
“Who is his housekeeper?” No one on this floor did their own cleaning. We all had housekeepers and cooks and bodyguards.
“It’s Nina.” Neil leaned against the wall. “She takes care of cleaning for all of the apartments on this floor. She’s got a key and doesn’t have to do anything special to get in, so I think Sarah’s right about the front doors. Nina says it’s really creepy in there, and that was before Myrddin actually moved in. But she’s a shifter. Some of them find the witchy stuff worrisome. It’s not that they don’t like witches. They don’t understand the whole magic thing. Nina’s brother dated a witch and he was an asshole who cheated and got his dick twisted into a pretzel. So she has her reasons.”
Sarah shrugged. “Felix knows better.” She turned to me. “Are you going to try to mask yourself as Nina?”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t do that to her. He might not have a ward to keep people out, but we don’t know what else he’s got security-wise. If he’s got a spell that can identify anyone coming or going into his apartment, I won’t risk sending his anger someone else’s way.”