His features were sharp, his eyes swirling with power. He wore his standard uniform of black T-shirt and black jeans and the steel tips of his boots winked in the lamplight.
“No,” Torin told him, disgusted. “She looks at me and sees only danger. Her memories are still blocked. But her body remembers,” he assured himself, remembering how she felt curled up against him. “For now, that’s enough.”
Rune moved closer, the scowl on his face deepening. “With the Awakening, her mind should have opened as well. How are we to claim them if they don’t remember?”
Torin turned his head to glare at his old friend. “We make them remember. Force their hand if we must. Remind them of everything that has gone before. We’ve waited centuries for this and for me, at least, the waiting is done.”
Rune crossed his arms over his chest as he met his friend’s glare with one of his own. “I know what is coming as well as any other Eternal. But your woman is the first to Awaken. It’s up to you to set us on the path. If this doesn’t work, we’re all fucked.”
Torin snorted. He didn’t need to be told that their mutual goals were balanced atop a dangerous precipice. Every Eternal had been marking time through the centuries until the moment of Awakening arrived. If they failed now, all had been for nothing. Which was why he would not fail.
“I know exactly what’s at stake here. Nothing will go wrong.”
Accepting his friend’s word, Rune nodded. “My witch is still unaware of what’s coming. Until she Awakens, I’ll stay here and help you.”
Torin smiled, surprising even himself. How long had it been since there had been anything worth smiling at? How many centuries of agony had he survived, watching his woman and being unable to claim her? The constant burning of unquenchable want had been his companion through eons. Now, though, he sensed the end in sight. The time when all of the waiting would be rewarded.
“When have I ever needed help getting a woman into my bed?” But even as the words left his mouth, Torin knew that this woman was different. This was more than a few hours of pleasure. This was eternity. And unless Shea gave herself to him with that knowledge, with complete acceptance, nothing would change and their chance would be lost.
“How will you spark the memories?” Rune demanded.
“She’s already having visions,” Torin told him. He’d been keeping watch over her for years. He knew that her aunt’s execution had opened a narrow path into the past for Shea. He’d seen her wake screaming from nightmares that she didn’t realize were actually memories. He’d watched as she fought to maintain “normalcy.” In secret he had given her his protection each time she ran from enemies both real and imagined.
And he’d hungered. Just as he did now.
Through lifetime after lifetime, Torin had burned for her and only her.
“She must recall the past. That life.”
“She will.” She had to. Torin turned his gaze back to the dark landscape as his thoughts drifted briefly to that long-ago age. To the moment when everything had changed for them. Images flew through his mind, clear and distinct. He felt the power rising. Felt the crash of failure, the terror and the raw grief of regret.
They’d given up much on that night.
All in a quest for too much power.
He pushed both hands through his hair and refocused his gaze on his own image in the glass. He was a man and not a man. A legend, yet more than that. He was, essentially, caught in a stream of time that had no definition.
Until now.
His gaze took in the man beside him. An Eternal. A brother. Less than human, yet more than mortal. There were others like them as well. Beings who had survived the centuries and who now had one chance for something more.
All that was required was for their witches to accept their destinies.
And them.
Chapter 4
Shea waited a few minutes after her gorgeous kidnapper left before she quietly opened the bedroom door. The long hallway was dark but for a few lamps set into the wall. The illumination they gave off was barely more than candlelight. There were at least six doors off the hall and at the end, near the head of the stairs, Shea spotted a woman with steel gray hair and a stick-straight spine sitting in a chair. The older woman was reading a book, but Shea wasn’t fooled. The woman