“In an old hunting cabin in Switzerland.”
“So far away,” she mused.
Twisting around, he straightened the silver garland wrapped around the tree. “Not when all I have to do is step through a gate to be anywhere in the world in seconds.”
“True,” she said. “But I thought you hated the snow.”
Reseph smiled. “I’ve learned to like it, I think. Reminds me of you.”
A dull ache began to pound in her chest, because she wasn’t ready for this “talk” yet. Her emotions were too raw. “But you don’t like to be alone.”
His shrug was halfhearted. “Without my family and you, I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
“Your family turned you away?” She’d hoped that with the return of his sanity, his siblings would welcome him back.
“They had no choice, Jillian. If Pestilence returns, I could turn on them.”
This again. She gathered the blanket more tightly around her. “That wouldn’t happen.”
“We can’t guarantee that.”
She felt like screaming in frustration. “God, Reseph, how can I have faith in you, but you don’t?”
Reseph turned away from her, and his voice went low. “I’ve had to spend a lot of time alone, Jillian. And it turns out that I don’t like myself very much. Now I know why I surrounded myself with people. I was shallow and vain, and I couldn’t let myself get attached to anyone.” He inhaled a shaky breath. “I went to Sheoul today to visit my sister’s grave.”
Grave? She understood loss far too well, and she drifted closer to him. But was it for his comfort, or hers?
“You have another sister? A Horseman?”
“Human.” He kept fiddling with the tree, rearranging ornaments and lights. “My real mother, the sex demon, abandoned me with a human female who raised me as her own. Of course, she wasn’t much better than the demon mom. My human mother left me alone to fend for myself so much that I think I was malnourished for the first twelve years of my life. Almost died in a fire once, because there was no one around to save me. I’m still not sure how I got out if it.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t know she wasn’t my mother until I was an adult.”
“That’s when you were cursed to be a Horseman, right?”
“Yeah.” He moved a red bulb next to a blue one. “My human mother gave birth to a girl a year before our curses.” Affection drenched his voice. “Ariya was great. The one thing that really made me happy. I didn’t see her as much as I should have… I was always out drinking and whoring. And then, after our curses, we all kind of went insane for a while.”
She’d read about their killing rampages, the destruction they’d caused everywhere they went. Reseph, having been cursed as Pestilence, had been given the power to inflict plagues on people, animals, and crops, and his swath of death had been widespread.
“When I finally went back home during a period of lucidity, I found that, as usual, my mother had left Ariya alone. I tried to take care of her, but…” His big shoulders rose and fell a few times before he continued. “But I went crazy again, drinking, sexing, killing. It was just two days, but by the time I got back home, Ariya was gone.”
“Gone where?”
“A demon took her. I tracked that fucker to Sheoul and made him suffer for days before I killed him.”
“And your sister?” Jillian asked weakly.
“She died when the demon took her through the Harrowgate.” He swung around, devastation etched into his expression. “Since she died in Sheoul, her soul is trapped there for eternity to be tortured by any demon who can detect souls.”
Horror sifted hot and cold through Jillian like dry ice, and she slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she mumbled into her palm. “That’s…” There was no word for it, so she gave up trying to find one.
“Yeah.” He inhaled, taking a very long time. “I buried her in the nicest part of Sheoul, and I didn’t leave her for months. I didn’t eat. Didn’t drink. I slept beside her grave. Limos finally found me and dragged me out of there. But it hurt like hell for so many years. After that, I guess I never wanted to love anyone like that again. I know I never wanted to feel like that again. Easier to be happy and unattached. Take the easy road, as Ares put it.”
“But you did get attached again, right?” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “You got attached to me.”
He laughed bitterly. “But would my old self have gotten attached? No. I’d have fucked you and left you so fast your head would have spun.”
His ugly words drilled a hole in her chest, but she soldiered on, determined to talk some sense into him. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You aren’t that person anymore. And you’re not the evil demon who tried to start the Apocalypse.” On some level, she still couldn’t believe she was saying things like that.
“But I’m not the Reseph you knew, either.”
“He’s the real you,” she insisted in what Reseph had called her stern frying-pan voice. “He’s the one who came out when there was no history to mold his personality.”
“Maybe.” He walked over and sat across from her on the coffee table. “Whoever I am, I’m going to fight for you. I want you in my life. I want you to be my mate, and I want you to bear my children.”
She blinked. Holy shit, she was going to fall over. When he jumped into something, he jumped all the way into the deep end, didn’t he? No testing the waters.
“You don’t have to answer now. I’m willing to wait. It’s probably best anyway.”
Maybe she was still reeling from the mate and children thing, but she was confused as hell about that last bit he’d said. “Wait? It’s not that I disagree, but… why is it for the best?”
“Because I’m still not sure I can keep Pestilence at bay. I’m not sure I can patch my head up enough to protect you.”
Her heart sank. Plummeted right to her feet. “Then we can’t be together,” she croaked.
He stiffened. “What do you mean?”
God, how could this be happening? “I can’t go through this again. I can’t be with you and wonder if someday you’re going to leave because you don’t have faith in your ability to control Pestilence.”
“It won’t be like that.” He took her hand and squeezed, tugging her closer. “I’ll be here for you. I might need time now and then, but I’ll be here. It might just be a while before we can settle down with a family.”
“How long?”
There was a long silence. “I can’t answer that. Not yet.”
“Exactly. I’m not waiting around for years, only to have you one day say it can’t happen.” Her eyes stung, and her vision blurred as she peeled away from him and got to her feet. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, and I know I can’t live through that pain.”
She steeled herself against the hurt in his eyes. The man she loved was in there, but until he realized it himself, she couldn’t back down.
“Go, Reseph. I love you, but I can’t be with you until you can trust in yourself the way I trust in you. I’m not going to compromise on what I want.” She’d done that with every man she’d been with, and her relationships had always ended badly. Reseph, more than any of the others, had the power to destroy her.
Reseph moved to her, but she sidestepped and gestured to the door. “Dammit, Jillian, I won’t give up.”
“That’s your choice,” she said. “But know that I won’t give in.”
The moment the door closed, Jillian sank to the floor in a pool of blankets. She wouldn’t cry. Not again.