I had decided before I returned to this place that I could not and would not raise my hand against your people again. Regardless of the consequences to me. I told my gods as much.”
She lifted her head from his chest, staring up into his eyes. “Why?”
“Because bringing you pain is more than I can bear to do.”
He lowered his head until his lips brushed across hers. “Never,” he whispered against her mouth, “has a great king been brought so low by one so slight. My heart, little Brigit, you hold in your hands. The mighty heart of an immortal king is more fragile than a butterfly’s wings in your grasp. No arrow, no weapon, could pierce its stonelike shell. And yet at your touch, at your kiss, it quivers like a frightened lamb. I find there is nothing I will not do if you only ask it. These things I admit to you with great trepidation.”
“Shut up and kiss me, King.”
His lips pulled into a semblance of a smile, and he lowered his head and kissed her deeply and thoroughly. It killed her that he couldn’t wrap his arms around her, but she twisted hers around his neck and kissed him back all the same. Passion rose up like heated mercury, filling her and spilling out. He obviously felt it, too, because he was as aroused as hell, and there was not a damn thing they could do about it.
Breathless, she lay against him and held him.
“I am sorry it has come to this, my love,” he told her.
“Don’t be sorry. This—” she said, touching his waist with her manacled hand “—this feeling between us…it’s good. It’s really, really good.” She blinked back tears. “The best thing I’ve ever known. The best thing in my life.”
“In mine, as well. Now and always.”
Straightening, Brigit said, “All we have to do is figure a way out of this mess.”
“If you can get the Chosens out by day, while the vahmpeers rest, so that there is nothing left to lure them to here, I can take care of the rest, my beautiful Brigit.”
She saw him staring intently across the room and turned to see what he was looking at. A row of massive white tanks lined the far side of the basement room, the boiler sitting a safe distance from them.
What was he thinking?
“How the hell am I going to do that?” she asked.
“With your power.”
She frowned at him, and he smiled softly. “I have learned much from you, Brigit. Now it is time for me to give you some knowledge in exchange. And it is knowledge you have been needing for all of your young life.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Utana.”
“Your power. I began to tell you this before your brother arrived to interrupt me. Your power to… ‘’splode’ things,” he said, using her own childhood term and smiling. “You already have it. I gave it back to you when we were still in the palace house with Nashmun.”
She frowned. “No. No, you gave me James’s power. The power of healing.”
Utana stared into her eyes, willing her to understand something, she thought, and yet she didn’t.
“Are you saying I can use the power of healing to get us out of this mess?”
“I’m saying that you can use your power of ‘’sploding’ to get us out of this mess.”
She blinked rapidly. “But I don’t have it.”
“Yes, you do. Your power and your brother’s are one and the same.”
She felt her eyes widen, her brows rise. A hum filled her head as she felt her reality beginning to tilt on its axis. “Our powers are opposites.”
“They are but opposite ends of the same stick,” he said.
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“Brigit, when you call up that beam of light…of…energy…”
He was taking his time, she knew. Searching for the right words to make her understand what he was trying to tell her.
“When you channel it through your body and out through your eyes, it comes to you from the very same source that your brother’s power of healing comes to him. It is no more than your intention and focus that determines what the power can do.”
She actually staggered backward a few steps, blinking almost sightlessly at Utana. “That can’t be true.”
“It is true, Brigit. You are no more the bad twin than James is the good one. You never have been. You are both channels for an energy that is neither good nor bad, but simply is.”
Brigit felt as if her head was