“One of us must carry it back to Haven,” he insisted, lines of strain etching themselves into his features. “Better me than you. We’ve already seen it affects you far more deeply than it does me. I can survive it.”
He was fooling himself. The changes sweeping through him might be happening more slowly than they had with her, but they were just as damaging. Just as dangerous.
It was as if he were far away from her already and Shea knew she didn’t have much more time to reach him. She needed to get him to listen to her, as he had her. Sliding her hand up to cup his cheek in her palm, she shook her head and whispered, “We’ll find a way, Torin. But we can’t hold it. Neither of us can.”
He closed his eyes and she felt the battle raging within him. He was drawing not only on his own formidable strength but their combined essences to fight his way back from the dark.
“Look at me, Torin,” she said softly, waiting until his eyes opened and fixed on her. The blank, empty stare was unsettling, but she refused to be cowed. He had saved her; she could do nothing less for him. “You have to drop the Artifact. We’ll solve this. But I need you with me.”
He hissed in a breath and held it, caught in his lungs. She watched as emotions flashed across his face so quickly that it was hard to identify one from the other. All she knew was that she needed him. Wanted him. Loved him.
She hadn’t once said that word. Not to him. Not to herself. She’d hidden from it, like a coward. She’d become his mate, become his partner and still had withheld that word. Why? To maintain that one last link to the self-sufficient person she had once been? Was it fear? Was it cowardice? God, she hoped not. Just as she hoped that confessing to him now would be enough to release him from the grip of dark magic.
“I love you, Torin,” she said, her eyes shining with promise. “Do you hear me? I love you. Come back to me now.”
The Artifact hit the stone-littered ground with a hard thump and Torin swayed unsteadily as the black power drained from him as quickly as it had stolen over him.
He gave a harsh, short laugh and scraped one hand over his face. Then his eyes shifted to hers and Shea released a pent-up breath when she saw the swirl of gray that she knew and loved.
“The bloody thing’s a trap,” he said, reaching for her, pulling her into him so tightly she could hardly breathe. “Carrying it back to Haven’s going to be a challenge.”
“Can we shift it, magically? Maybe use a spell to transport it back separately?”
“God, no,” he said, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “I don’t trust the damn thing one bit. Who knows how it might react to a spell? It’s so powerful, Shea. I had no idea.”
“You beat it, though,” she murmured, nestling against him.
“Because of you.” He captured her face between his palms and turned her eyes up to his. “Because of what you gave me.”
His gaze moved over her features like a caress. She felt the tenderness welling up inside him and everything in her responded.
“I felt your love,” he said, “and that was enough to draw me back from the edge. Without you . . .” He shook his head and shifted to glance at the shard of black silver lying at their feet. The green grass around the Artifact was now brown and dead. As if just the touch of that dark magic was enough to suck the life from the ground. “I understand now, I think. What you and the coven felt so long ago.”
“It’s seductive,” she whispered, her gaze, too, fixed on the knot of black silver. Even knowing what she knew, she had to fight to keep from reaching for it. From fondling it. From feeling the black rush of energy swimming through her veins again.
“More than anything I’ve ever known before.” He tucked her in close to him again and wrapped his arms around her, seeking comfort, or offering it. “In the past, we, the Eternals, couldn’t comprehend how you could all turn your backs on what was right and just, for the sake of the promise of more power. But now . . .” His arms tightened like steel bands around her.