Was that really me? I looked way older than seventeen. All of my tattoos were visible, and they were like a breath of life blown across a corpse. I was so pale! And the circles under my eyes were truly scary. Slowly I allowed my gaze to drift down to check out my wound. It was awful, and so darn big! I mean, it stretched all the way from shoulder to shoulder. No, it wasn’t gaped open anymore like a hideous mouth, but it was a jagged, puckered red ridge that made Darius’s knife wound look like the scratch he liked to call it.
I touched the wound gently and winced at how sore it was. Would it always stay this raised? Okay, I realize it was incredibly shallow of me, but I wanted to burst into tears. Not because all hell was coming against us. Not because Neferet had turned über-dangerous. Not because she and Kalona might very well be threatening the balance of good and evil in the known world. Not because I was a confused mess about Erik and Heath and Stark. But because I was going to have a massively ugly scar, and I’d probably never be able to wear a tank top again. And what about if I ever wanted to let anyone see me, well, naked again? I mean, I’d had one bad experience, but surely some day I was going to be in a great relationship and I’d want him to eventually see me naked. Right? I stared at the nasty-looking, unhealed scar and stifled a sob. Wrong.
Okay, I seriously needed to stop thinking about this, and I definitely was going to quit looking at myself naked. It just can’t be good for me. Hell! It probably wasn’t good for anyone!
I hastily pulled the T-shirt over my head and muttered, “Aphrodite must be rubbing off on me. I swear I didn’t use to be this shallow.”
Nala was waiting for me on my bed in her usual place on my pillow. I slid under the sheets and curled up with her, loving how she snuggled against me and turned on her purr engine. I guess I should have been scared to fall asleep, what with the last Kalona dream visit I’d had, but I was too tired to think, too tired to care. I just closed my eyes and gave myself gratefully up to the darkness.
When the dream started, it wasn’t a meadow, and so, foolishly, I was immediately relieved and relaxed. I was on an incredibly beautiful island, looking out across a lagoon at a skyline that seemed familiar, even though I knew I’d never been there before. The water had a fishy, salty smell. There was a depth and richness to it, a sense of vastness that I recognized as belonging to the ocean, even though I’ve never been to the coast. The sun was setting and the sky was lit up with a fading brilliance that reminded me of autumn leaves. I was sitting on a marble bench the color of moonbeams. It was intricately carved with vines and flowers and felt like it belonged to another time and place. I ran my hand across the smooth back of it, which was still warm from the fading day. It was like I really was there, and not dreaming at all. I glanced over my shoulder, and my eyes widened. Wow! Behind me was a palace with beautiful arched doors and windows, all in pristine white, amazing pillars and wedding cake–like chandeliers peeking out of the elegant windowpanes and twinkling in the predusk.
It was enough to take my breath away, and I was really pleased with my sleeping self for making it all up, but I was also baffled. It all seemed so real. And so familiar. Why?
I turned my face back to the lagoon view, looking across at a domed cathedral and little boats and lots of other amazing stuff that there’s no way I could have imagined all on my own. The soft night breeze was coming off the water, bringing the distinctly rich scents of the dark water. I breathed deeply, enjoying the uniqueness of it. Sure, some people might say it was kinda stinky, but I didn’t think so, I was just—
Holy crap! A terrible skittering of fear fingered down my spine. I knew why this seemed familiar.
Aphrodite had described this place to me just a few days ago. Not in detail. She hadn’t been able to remember everything, but what she had been able to tell me had made a distinct and unsettling impression. So much so that I recognized the water and the palace and the ancient feel of it.
This was the place Aphrodite had glimpsed in the second vision she’d had of my death.
CHAPTER 23
“Here you are. This time you bring me to a place of your choosing, rather than me calling to you.”
Kalona stepped into view beside the marble bench, as if he had materialized out of the air. I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to control the panicked beating of my heart.
“Your Goddess is quite unusual,” he said in a friendly, conversational tone after he sat beside me on the bench. “I can feel the danger in this place for you. It surprises me that she would allow you here, especially because she must know you would call me to you. I imagine she believes she is warning you, readying you, but she is mistaking my intentions. I mean to resurrect the past, and to do so the present must die.” He paused, and with a contemptuous gesture waved away the riches on the shore across the water from us. “All of that means nothing to me.”
I had no clue what he was talking about and when I finally found my voice, all I could manage was a brilliant, “I didn’t call you to me.”
“Of course you did.” He was intimate and flirty, like he was my boyfriend and I was being kinda shy about admitting how much I liked him.
“No,” I spoke without looking at him. “I did not call you to me,” I repeated. “And I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“My musings are unimportant. All will be clear with time. But, A-ya, if you did not call me, then explain how I joined you in your dream.”
Steeling myself against the allure I already felt from just the sound of his voice, I turned my head to look at him. He was young again, and appeared eighteen or nineteen. He was wearing jeans that were comfortably loose and had that sexy, these-are-my-favorite-pair-because-they-fit-perfectly look. And that was it. He didn’t have shoes or a shirt on. His wings were miraculous. They were the black of a starless sky and glistened in the fading light with a silky beauty all their own. His flawless bronze skin seemed to be lit from within. His body was beyond incredible. It was like his face—so handsome, so perfect, that it was impossible to describe.
With a deep sense of shock I realized that was just like how Nyx’s appearance had seemed to Aphrodite and me. She had been so otherworldly in her beauty that we’d been unable to describe her. And, for some reason, that similarity between Kalona and Nyx made me incredibly sad, sad for what he might once have been and for what he had become.
“What is it, A-ya? What has made you look as if you would weep?”
I started to pick and choose my words carefully and then stopped. If this was my dream—if bringing Kalona to me was somehow my doing—then I was going to be nothing but honest. So I spoke the truth.
“I’m sad because I don’t think you were always what you are now.”
Kalona went utterly still. It seemed the perfection of his features solidified and turned him into the statue of a god.
In the dream I felt timeless, so it might have been a second or a century before he responded. “And what would you do if you knew that I have not always been as I am now, my A-ya? Would you save me or would you entomb me?”
I stared at his luminous amber eyes and tried to see through them into his soul. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t think I could do either without some help from you.”