He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll figure out something.”
“Okay. I trust you.” Her low, fervent tone touched him as few things ever had. With all that he’d told her yesterday, her belief in him said so much.
They separated reluctantly and rose from the sofa. Once they were standing, Aidan pulled his pendant over his head, tugged her closer, and slipped it around her neck. It settled between her breasts and glowed with an inner fire, an anomaly he’d assumed was attributed to either the journey here or a reaction to this world. It had never crossed his mind that the stone might be reacting to Lyssa.
He pressed his palm over both it and her heart.
“I can’t take this,” she breathed, setting her hand over his. “It’s precious to you.”
He shook his head. “You are precious to me. Promise me you’ll always wear it. I’ve never removed it. I shower with it, bathe with it. There’s no reason for you to take it off. It can’t be damaged, and it won’t tarnish like Earth metals do. I need to know that this will never lose contact with your skin.”
“Aidan?” Her dark eyes were wary and capped with a frown.
“Just promise me. For my peace of mind.”
“Of course.” She lifted the stone to her lips and kissed it, then rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. “I will treasure it always. Thank you.”
“Thank you.” He held her tightly to him, his lips pressed hard to her forehead. Inhaling deeply, he tried to imprint the smell and feel of her into his memory so that he would never forget it.
“We’ll find a way to be together, Aidan.” Her small hands stroked down his back. “I refuse to think that it can’t be done.”
Aidan knew she felt that way. She survived because she refused to give up hope. That was why he couldn’t tell her anything until after he was gone. She would try to stop him from going if she knew he wasn’t coming back.
“Get ready to eat,” he said, stepping back and releasing her, keeping the careless smile on his face by sheer will-power alone.
Their fingers stayed laced together until the last possible moment, then she took the stairs, and he went to the dining room. Aidan arranged the books in such a way that his purpose and motivations were clear. He couldn’t let her think he’d left or was taken. He needed her to know why he was leaving, so that she could live with it. Accept it. Move past it.
She wouldn’t notice anything amiss at first, but later, when she looked closely, she would understand.
He saved the note for last, pulling out a chair and taking a deep breath before writing his good-bye.
He couldn’t do it face to face. It would be far too painful. Folding the paper, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it, then set it above the open pages of the book he’d stolen from Sheron.
The second book, the jeweled one with the references to Stonehenge and star alignment, seemed to have little or no relationship to the one the Elders kept hidden. If there were answers to be found in that, he couldn’t find them. It appeared to present more problems than solutions, like a puzzle that became more complicated the further into it he got.
Without conscious thought, his fingertips drifted over the text he’d translated.
“Beware of the Key that turns the Lock and reveals the Truth.”
The words struck him hard, each one an individual blow. He sat unmoving, his breath whistling in and out between clenched teeth.
The Key wasn’t going to open the Gateway to the Nightmares. The Key was going to reveal something the Elders didn’t want revealed. That was why they were hunting for it. That was why they wanted it destroyed.
But why the Key was a Dreamer and why the traits attributed to it were so important, he didn’t know. And the pendant…
His eyes closed on a shudder. There, in the ancient text, he’d found a drawing of the pendant Sheron had given him so long ago. A relic of the old world. A part of the prophecy the Elders had never shared with anyone. The stone would protect her, the glowing reaction it had to her proximity enhancing her abilities in the Twilight. She’d been able to create the door without it. With it, he imagined she would be able to keep Guardians and Nightmares away from the portal altogether. She would finally be safe in dreams.
When he’d first translated that section of the text, he’d been confused as to why something so dangerous would be given to him, a man who was sent out nightly to interact with Dreamers who might be the Key. Why wouldn’t it be locked away?
Then he’d read further.
The Key. The Lock. The Guardian.
Lyssa was the Key, as evidenced by the reaction of the stone, which was the Lock. He could only assume that he was the Guardian. And the result of the combination of the three?