up and reaching for her wrist, preventing her from turning her back on him and their conversation. “Tell me what he said to you.”
She was flushing that pretty fuchsia pink again. It was charming on her in spite of the fact that she was stubbornly shaking her head.
“Did he proposition you, Marissa?” he asked, taking a stab at it and watching it hit her like a ton of bricks, the entirety of her neck and shoulders blushing into that glorious color. “Ah, I see he did.”
“Not … not a proposition as much as … a-an announcement of intentions.”
Well, well. So Jackson had made bold with her all on his own. Menes wondered how Jackson had managed to keep that secret from him. Menes was supposed to be the stronger soul, considering the amount of time he had spent on this earth alone, never mind in the Ether. It took great strength of will to remain lucid while in the disembodied state of the Ether. It was so easy to get lost in the mists of forgetting, or rather the mists of wanting to forget. Wanting to forget the violence of emotion attached to their last death, and all the ones before it. Wanting to forget the loss of all those mortals left behind who would not be there when they returned once more.
Just the thought alone had the power to bring him to his knees. So many. So many I have loved and lost over the centuries.
“Are you all right?” she asked, reaching to wrap her hand over the rise of his shoulder, the strength of her touch anchoring him and telling him just how visibly he’d been reacting to his to make me feel …s danger thoughts.
“I …” His professions of being just fine seemed to stick in his craw, held there tightly by the things left unfinished and unlamented. His comfort, his only comfort in all this turbulence of life and death, was his beloved queen. The longer she stayed trapped away from him in the Ether, the harder it became for him to push aside the darkness of his thoughts and centuries worth of memories. Of children lost, of friends gone to dust. “There is so much loss, when you live lifetimes the way we do,” he said, surprising himself with his honesty. “Some moments leave their mark on my thoughts and heart more than others. In my previous lifetime humans were at war just as the Templars and the Politic were. I was in the new world … America … and a great many young people were going off to die or find glory in battle. I have long since evolved past the foolish idea that with war comes glory. With war comes death and nothing more. No matter who is in the wrong, no matter whose cause is more just, to war means to reap death.” He felt the weight of his words like an oppression, as though an elephant had taken up residence upon his heart. “It is bad enough that as Bodywalkers we triple, sometime quadruple, the life span of the host that carries us, cultivating the opportunity for those we grow fond of to turn to dust and leave us longing for them, trying to fill the hole their passing has left inside of us. Not just some … all.” He looked into the concerned warmth of her eyes. “All whom we touch in our new lives will leave us. It is not unheard of for a Bodywalker to take his own life when the grief of living without his most beloved friends and family becomes far too difficult to manage.”
She was listening to him very intently, as if what he was saying was very important to her. He supposed that was because it was her job to make others feel that way. But the embittered thought didn’t stand. He had come to see the tenderness in her heart. She was genuinely focused on him, and empathizing as best she could with her limited mortal experiences. It was making his feelings all that much harder to keep control of. He wanted to fully disclose everything to her, but he did not want to have her thinking that being a Bodywalker was a hateful experience.
“Grief. So much of it,” she said softly. “You actually have to watch those you love age and pass on, knowing you will be left behind … forever. You can’t even tell yourself what so many human beings do—that