and he doesn’t blame you for thinking ill of him. He was the one who sent us out that night. He convinced us I needed to be directly on the Earth plane to finish my healing. If he hadn’t, we likely would have stayed in the pocket universe for another couple of days. We might have avoided Marini. We might have been able to contact the Order, and you wouldn’t have suffered at all. You would have been safe.”
“I doubt that.” It was nice to know that Myrddin was busy cutting me off from any argument I could make. It was a good tactic. If he acknowledged everything I might be able to say about him and agreed with me, I looked petty for nursing the grudge. He was excellent at this kind of politics.
What if the grimoire held more than the secret of how Myrddin had managed to banish Dev, Marcus, and Kelsey? What if it explained his hold on Danny and how I could break that unnatural bond?
Now wasn’t the time to have this argument with Danny. Now wasn’t the time to point out to him that not only had Myrddin selected the time when we would leave, but he’d made sure Zack had the very item in his hand that would save Daniel from being taken into custody. He’d been the one to place the Mantle of Arthur into Zack’s hands. The Mantle was basically a cloak of invisibility, and it had been used that night to save Daniel.
It wasn’t the time to point out that Myrddin had spent the days before Lee died with the demon Nemcox—the same demon who somehow managed to tell Marini when and where we would emerge from shelter.
Until I knew whether or not his influence over Daniel was magical, I needed to keep this whole conversation at bay.
“I doubt it, too,” Daniel said quietly. “Marini would have found a way. I know what you went through, Z. You have to know I would have done anything to have spared you.”
Spared me from being assaulted by Marini, from being forced to act as my enemy’s companion, and all the nasty stuff that came with the job. God, I thought I’d left that behind, but somehow it was still here between us. I didn’t want it to be. I loved Danny with all of my heart. I moved to him and when I touched him, I made sure I was doing it to comfort my husband, not to distract him. There would be time enough for that later, but with Devinshea in danger, I needed to let Danny know how I felt. “I don’t blame you for that. Not in any way. We all did what we had to to survive, and I wouldn’t take it back for anything. We’re alive and our family is safe. Had it happened any other way, Marini would have had his advantage, and the loss of life would have been far greater. I miss Lee every single day, but I wouldn’t change a thing, and I know he wouldn’t either.”
Daniel’s blue eyes burned through me. “I miss you, Zoey.”
“I’m right here.”
“But you’re not. You’re far from me. You’re as far away from me as Dev is right now and I don’t understand it. I’ll do anything to fix it.”
I believed him in that moment. I had to believe that the hold Myrddin had on Danny could be broken. All I knew in that moment was that my husband needed me.
I moved into his space, letting my hands find his chest. Sometimes we got so mired in the everyday parts of life that we forgot we needed to be more than parents, more than a king and a queen. We needed to find a place to be Daniel and Zoey, too. “We’re both feeling helpless right now.”
His hands found my hips and he dropped his head to mine again. “I miss him. He hasn’t even been gone for a full day and I feel lonely without him. What the hell do we do if…”
I stopped him because I couldn’t stand the thought of going there. “Myrddin’s going to find him. Between Myrddin and Nimue, we can’t fail.”
I rather believed that but for different reasons than Daniel would understand. In this case I believed Myrddin had caused a problem so he could be the one to solve it, and I would have to agree that he was helpful. It served him in no way to kill Devinshea. Dev was