"If I die, you take my place."
I stared at him. Did that mean . . . ? "No, that's not possible. I'm a flesh-and-blood being. I can never be what you are."
"You were never just flesh and blood, Risa. You were born half Aedh and became more so after what Marin did. When I snatched you from fate's pathway, I altered not only your destiny, but your very being."
No, no, no! How was something like that possible? How could I be born one thing and be made, on death, into another?
"What if I die? What if I decide to kill myself rather than become something I never wanted to be?"
Something flickered through his eyes. Anger, fear, hurt. I wasn't entirely sure. "You would not kill yourself."
"But what if I did?" I all but shouted.
"Then you would still become what I am—a dark angel."
I just stared at him. I couldn't do anything else. I was stunned. Broken. Betrayed. Again.
"Damn it, Azriel, why?"
"You know why."
"The mission. The key." I swung away, not wanting to look at him, not wanting him to see the hurt. It was always the damn key. Always about the damn mission.
"It wasn't about the damn mission or the key!" The sharp denial was accompanied by an explosion of anger that rolled my senses and just about fried my mind. "And if you'd listen to your heart and your body, you'd know it!"
I closed my eyes. Listen to my body, he said. Which implied he knew not only that I was pregnant but that the child was his.
So he'd saved what was rare and precious in his world. Not me. Never me.