I ONCE BELIEVED I was tethered to this earth by gravity. An unseen force so great and powerful that it keeps my feet planted to the ground, no matter how far from reality I may drift. I always come back down. My existence was ruled by science.
Then a beautiful man told me that everything in my world could not be explained with science and logic. That there were phenomena so far beyond my realm of understanding that could only be measured as one thing: magic. And I realized that gravity was as superficial as my human life. It was an idea steeped in reason in a world without reason. So I really hadn't been bound by it at all.
I am held by a much greater force, something so powerful that I can't contain it. I can't control it. I can only live it, and pray that it will show mercy.
I realize that I am tethered by love.
Love for my family, my friends. Love for a man who still battles the urge to kill me. Who takes pleasure in hurting me with every soul-crushing climax.
I’ve become an illogical being, something that can’t be found in textbooks or studied in a laboratory. I am magic. And I am ruled by a love so erratic and unstable that I am forced to relinquish all control to it. It taunts me. It punishes me. It dangles serenity and happiness in front of me only to snatch it away, howling with delight at my agony. Yet, I keep holding onto it, keep entrusting my existence to this monster in hopes that it will deem me fit to capture it forever. Because without it, I have no connection to this life. No bond forged in blood and bone. No reason to breathe, no reason to live.
Love is my weakness. It is my enemy. It is my savior.
Once again, it’s testing me, seeing how far it could push me until I began to break. Jared had always been one of those invisible strings that kept me tied to my human life. I had been forced to cut the ones that bound me to Chris and Donna. Without Jared, how many more strings do I have left? How many more have to be severed before I float away into nothingness? How long can I go on before I want to cut the damn strings myself?
Alexander watches me pace the floor, so still that I forget that he’s there. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t even blink. He just watches me, remorse hardening his ethereal features.
I should hate him. I should cast him away to the Dark king as an act of penance. But even as I think it, I know I would never do it. I could never subject myself to that type of evil for a man whose only crime was love. That very same demon had stolen away the people we cared for the most.
“Shouldn’t he be back by now?” I mumble for the twentieth time. I hit redial, only to get the same automated message. We’re sorry. The line you are trying to reach has been disconnected…
I curse and try Dorian’s cell again, and of course, it rolls over to voicemail, informing me that his mailbox is full. “Fuck this. I’m going over there.”
“That is impossible, Gabriella.”
“How is that impossible? I was able to freeze you and Dorian just fine. Maybe I’m a fast learner.”
Alexander shakes his head. “Without proper training, you could be lost. Stuck between dimensions. Only your mind would be the key to finding you, and that could take us centuries.”
I huff out an irritated breath. “Fine. I’ll call a cab. I have to get to Jared, with or without your help.”
Again, he shakes his head, ratcheting up my anger by a few more degrees. “That would not be possible either. You cannot trust anyone. Humans especially.”
“So I’m supposed to hide? To fear the world? Am I not the Dark Light? More powerful than anyone else, even Dorian? Even you?”
His gaze ices over, and I watch him battle the darkness breeching the surface. “Humble yourself, child. From whom much is given, much is required. Don’t let pride cloud your purpose. Just as simply as you received these gifts of the Divine, they can be ripped away.”
I shake my head and look away, fighting frustrated tears. I know he’s right, and I know I’m acting like a spoiled child. But I can’t imagine what could be going on across town. Is Jared…dead? Was Dorian too late? Or could he have had something to do with it?
I’m sorry, little girl.
For what? For not saving him? For having a hand in his death? The thought nauseates me.
“He is an honorable man, Gabriella,” Alexander remarks, reading the turmoil in my glassy eyes. “He would never harm someone you loved, and would protect them as fiercely as he protects you.”
I look up at my father—my last living relative, biologically or not. “Do you truly believe that?”
“Yes. I trusted him with my life for nearly a century. No matter what animosities may rest between us, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. War bonds you in a way that goes far beyond friendships and emotional attachment. It builds brothers out of strangers. Dorian Skotos may have been misguided in pursuing you, but his intentions were good. And if he did not truly care for you, you would not be here now. I have witnessed him demolish greater men with his bare hands without a single inkling of remorse. He’s watched the burning of entire villages without a shred of guilt. But with you…he is different. He feels. He has managed to withhold his emotions for over two hundred years, only to have them purged from his soul by a young, beautiful girl. Imagine how incredibly difficult that must be for him—to not be able to contain his affections for the very creature he was sent to assassinate. I understand that inner battle, more than you could ever know.”
I’m stunned speechless, not only by his words, but the conviction in his voice. I believe him. And even though I may not really know him, I know Dorian. I know the man I met a year ago in that crowded club. And when he pressed his lips to my hand, leaving behind a trail of icy tingles, I felt something stir inside me. He wasn’t awakening the beast. He was recognizing it with his own. Accepting it. Showing me that he could love every complex piece of me—even the parts he didn’t understand.
I don’t believe he ever had planned to kill me. When I met him, I didn’t feel fear. There was no silent alarm blaring in my head whenever he was near. I was exhilarated by his presence. I knew he was dangerous on some level, but that only made me want him more. If I was scared of anything, it was losing him, only to be cast back into my mediocre ruse of a life.
Taking a bit of comfort in my realization, along with Alexander’s vehement description of Dorian, I walk over to the couch and sink into the cushion, releasing a world of confusion and frustration in a heavy sigh. I don’t look back at Alexander, but he knows I’m waiting for him to accept my invitation to join me. When he sits in the adjacent armchair, I look up at him with apology in my gaze. I’ve acted like a brat since he arrived. This man escaped captivity and lived in hiding for twenty-one years, fueled by the hope that we could one day be together. And in the past two days, we’ve hardly had the opportunity to have a decent conversation.
I want to know my dad. I want to know about the Warlock that betrayed his race for a woman he was programmed to despise. A woman that he had been trained to kill. What secrets lie behind those ice blue eyes? What hidden pain is he concealing under that controlled, stoic guise?
“Can you tell me…how? How you came to know my mother? Natalia?”
A smile twitches his lips just at the mention of her name, and I imagine her face manifesting in his mind. “She was a brave warrior, highly trained and cunning. Incredible strength and speed. Of all the Dark Hunters, she was the most revered. Had killed more of my men than I’d like to admit.” He chuckles, as if the thought of the beautiful, petite woman slaying men twice her size was amusing. But I can see that he not only loved her—he respected her. He admired her skill.
“When Dorian and I were given the order to hunt her after lesser men failed, I was excited at the chance. Finally, a real fight. Something to break me out of the monotony of my existence. Something to make me feel alive again. But what I found instead was so much more. I was…intrigued. I hadn’t been interested in much more than killing for many decades. But I found myself curious of her. Desiring just a moment of her attention.”
I try to picture the day in the woods that my mother wrote about in her journal. The day she first saw my father while perched atop a tree. I find myself smiling too. “Do you think she felt the same? Do you think she was also intrigued?”
“At first, no,” he replies with a shake of his head. “She abhorred everything the Dark stood for. We were not a merciful people. We slaughtered many of her kind through years of fighting. I could understand her hostility—she was sent to extinguish us. That was her objective. However, she was not without compassion. Maybe she saw how much war had withered away my will to live. Maybe she found honor within me when I did not expose her that day.”
“Why didn’t you? Why did you lie about seeing her?” I’m on the edge of my seat. This is the most we’ve spoken to each other since he arrived. There’s so much I want to know about him, my mother, even Dorian. He could answer all the questions I’ve been harboring for the past two decades.
“I do not know. But I believe it was something bigger than both of us that kept us from killing each other that day. It was destiny—the Divine’s will. He would not have spared us otherwise.”
“And what about the next time? When you ambushed her in the abandoned warehouse? Did you plan to spare her then too?”
He shrugs, and it looks like a foreign gesture for him, as if he is not familiar with the movement. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I failed to strike. I told myself that I had been fooled by Light illusion during our first encounter. I had not planned to let it happen again. There was no deception in her golden eyes as we bound her from all sides. She didn’t cry or show one ounce of fear. She was bold and proud and radiant. Her Light was brighter than any I had ever seen.”
My mother was a gorgeous, badass woman, even in the face of Death. Wow. What a legacy to live up to. What I wouldn’t give to have the chance to learn from her.
“I had to seek her,” Alexander continues, immersed in the tale he’s probably replayed over and over since the day he was torn away from her. “I had to figure out why I was so drawn to her. It was driving me mad, distracting me from my work. Dorian was suspicious. We were closer than brothers, yet he had never seen me act so reckless and unpredictable. I knew he wouldn’t approve, so I set out to find her on my own. Naturally, the Hunters were nomadic, but my tracking abilities were superior. And when I found her, she nearly killed me.”
“And you let her.”
He nods once. “Yes. I was on her territory. It was foolish of me, but I hadn’t been able to think rationally since that day in the woods. When she realized that I would not fight back, she bound me, but she healed me.”
“She healed you? So the Light can heal the Dark?” So I do have a chance at helping the people I love?
“More or less. Our magic is like positive and negative charges. Yin and yang. We are opposites in every way. To heal me, she had to reabsorb her energy. Then she gave me her life force so I could regenerate.”
“But didn’t that…change you?” Wouldn’t that make him more Light?
“Not in the way you would think. It created a physical bond between us. Slight and temporary, given the small amount of herself she transferred to me, but I felt her living inside me. And it only solidified my desire to know her.”
I look away from his mesmerizing gaze to find that I’ve somehow shifted closer to him and am on the very edge of the couch. I’ve been so engrossed in his story that I didn’t realize I’d been moving.
“So that’s what did it? That’s what made you—”
My next words are cut off by a garbled scream, as blinding pain sears my back. I try to reach behind me, convinced that someone has taken a red-hot branding iron to my skin. I can smell my own flesh burning, melting straight down to the bone. Alexander is already on me, ripping off my shirt as I double over on the floor in pain, shrieking, crying, choking. I vomit through sobs until I’m too weak to even heave.
“Oh, no,” Alexander gasps in horror behind me.
It’s the last thing I hear before I pass out face down in my own bile.