Flamebound A Lone Star Witch No(58)
Again, Declan doesn’t look impressed. “The world’s a fucked-up place, Xandra, filled with fucked-up people who will be drawn to a power like yours. The Council went after it once and it’s only a matter of time before they go after it again. Once that rabbit’s out of the hat, it won’t take long before every asshole with a little magic and a plan comes calling.
“What’s so special about me? I’ve been latent for twenty-six years and now that I’m not, I can see dead people. It’s not exactly a power that’s in high demand.”
“I keep telling you. You don’t know what your magic is yet. Yes, communing with the dead is the first power to have woken up in you. But there’s a lot more still buried. When they come out, you’ll be more powerful than your mother ever dreamed of being.”
His words strike a chord deep inside me, send me reeling, though I work hard not to show it. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“How?”
“The same way you can sense my magic. I feel it deep inside you.”
“And you think my magic makes me a target?”
He gives me a no-shit look. “I know it makes you a target. Otherwise, the ACW never would have come after you. Their deaths will prevent that from happening again—especially if I kill one or two of them.”
His words send terror skittering through me. “You have to stop thinking like that,” I tell him firmly. “Self-defense is one thing, but revenge is totally different. You can’t actually sanction the killing of eight people just because you think it will keep me safe.”
He’s never looked more serious than when he says, “I’d let a lot more than eight people die to keep you safe, Xandra. If you don’t know that, then you don’t know me at all.”
“That’s ridiculous! I’m not that special, Declan.”
“You’re that special to me. I told you yesterday. Nobody hurts you and lives.”
The shadows are back, and in that moment I see him more clearly than I ever have before. It shakes me to my core as understanding, true understanding, of his perspective, seeps in for the first time.
We see things differently—magic, the world, ourselves and each other—will probably always see things differently. For some people and some things, that’s fine. I don’t care if he likes red wine while I like white or that he’s a night person while I’m definitely all about the day. Those differences don’t matter. But our magic, our power, those differences, change everything.
I understand Declan’s anger. I do. If someone tried to hurt him, kill him, I’d hunt the bastard myself. Take great joy in watching him rot in prison forever. But vengeance of the type Declan demands? Sanctioning violent, premeditated murder? Or doing it himself? That I can’t understand—or get behind.
He doesn’t say anything as I think this through, just sits there watching me with implacable eyes. There’s a part of me that wants to throw myself into his arms and beg him to see reason. But there’s another, bigger part that knows that he won’t. That he can’t. Not as long as the darkness surrounds him like a cloak.
As the realization sinks in, I want to scream, to cry, to beg the goddess to—what? Beg her to do what? I ask myself a second time. To take the soulbinding away? To take Declan from me? Because if I can’t accept him, walking away is the only route left to me.
No! It’s a soul-deep cry, an instinctive claiming that goes deeper than black and white or right and wrong. I will never ask the goddess for that because I will never let him go. Declan is mine. Above and beyond the soulbinding, above and beyond family and duty, magic and mayhem, he’s mine and he will stay mine.
If that means the shadows that are so much a part of him eventually become a part of me . . . well, then, I’ll deal with that when it happens. Because anything else is nonnegotiable.
Declan knows what I’m thinking. It’s in every implacable line of his face, every steady breath he forces himself to take. He must be a hell of a poker player, because he’s giving away nothing. But for me, that’s his tell. Because lately when he looks at me, there’s so much emotion in his eyes, his face, that I can’t help but know what’s going on inside him.
I pull him close because I can’t do anything else, press soft kisses to his eyes, his cheeks, his forehead. With each press of my lips, he relaxes a little more, that terrible rigidity draining out of him inch by inch. By the time I get to his lips, he’s ready for me, his hand tangling in my hair as he holds me in place. Then he ravages me, using his lips and teeth and tongue to brand me in a way I won’t soon forget.