She let her head fall back against the chair. “Fine. There may be a connection. The island started to become visible when I began to have the episodes.” She discovered she was breathing hard and forced herself to stop. She told him, “But I can’t figure out what would link the two things together, so I still don’t understand why it happens.”
“May be a connection. May be a connection?” Bloody hell. A chill rippled down his spine. If Carling’s episodes were so Powerful they affected the land around her, what else might she be affecting? What could her episodes do to the world around her when she wasn’t in an Other land? He ran an impatient, long-fingered hand through his tousled hair. “Did you have any episodes on the trip to Adriyel?”
“A few,” she admitted reluctantly.
His sharp gaze stabbed her. “I don’t remember any anomalies occurring in the landscape, and I sure as hell didn’t . . . well, I didn’t sense anything remotely like what happened here today.”
She shrugged and shook her head. “We can’t even be sure there is a correlation. If there is, Adriyel is still one of the largest Other lands in the Northern Hemisphere, with several crossover passages not only to Earth but also to Other lands. I think it would take something of unimaginable size and scope to affect it. This island is one of the smallest known Other lands with just the one crossover passage. And as far as you’re concerned, you were never around when I went into a fade. I was close to one when Niniane was kidnapped and Tiago injured, but focusing on healing Tiago helped me to stave it off for a time. By the time it hit, I was back in our encampment ‘resting.’ I had another one earlier at the hotel, but I don’t think you had arrived in Chicago yet.”
His jaw tightened. “I’ve got about a hundred pages left to read of your research. Is any of this in your notes?”
Her gaze fell from his. She said, “No.”
After a moment he said between his teeth, “Much as I would like to, we’re not going to waste time on having a conversation about why the hell not.”
She said stiffly, “There was no point in writing it down. It’s neither scientific nor productive to state this thing seems to happen, and at the same time this other, apparently unrelated event also seems to happen, and I don’t understand any of it.”
He looked incredulous. “Out of all of what is going on, being scientific is what matters the most to you?”
Her brief flare of anger faded. She rubbed her face. She said with a sigh, “It matters that I leave behind the best work that I can, so hopefully someone can move forward with the research. Then maybe they can find a cure or some way to halt the progression of the disease in a way that I haven’t been able to. It will not do anybody any good to leave behind fruitless speculation that contains, in the end, more desperation than sense.”
Silence spread through the room. It was filled with such tension, her muscles clenched. Rune pushed off the back of the chair and came around. She watched him warily as he scooped up one of the ottomans, placed it in front of her and sat down on it. Her expression chilled as he reached for her hand, but she allowed it. For the moment.
He looked down at her fingers, and she did too. They appeared so slender and delicate in his much larger, square-palmed hand. Appearances were deceiving. She had lost count of the number of creatures she had killed with her bare hands.
Rune’s anger and aggression had vanished. She wished she could find a way to keep the sight of his lean, handsome face from hurting what was left of her tired, useless heart. The emotion was just another thing she didn’t understand about herself, and she didn’t know how to make it stop. She wished she had the ability to make the most of this fleeting time because it would be gone all too soon. She wanted to regard Rune’s male beauty in a way it deserved, with simple pleasure.
When Rune spoke next, his voice had gentled. “You have become too used to the thought of dying.”
She did not bother to dignify that with a verbal response. Instead she lifted an eyebrow.
He told her, “I know, but take what I say seriously, Carling. I think the mind-set may lead to some sloppy thinking. You no longer have the luxury of centuries or even years ahead of you for research. You can’t afford to be passive or silent about things right now just because they don’t make sense to you.”
She regarded him for a moment. Then she shocked them both, as she lifted her free hand and laid it against his warm, lean cheek. He froze, his gaze startled.
“I think you’re a good man,” she said. As old as she was, she had met far too few of those over the years. As a woman of Power, she had tended to attract men of ambition. Not that ambition was necessarily a bad thing, but it tended to skew ethics and perspectives. In the end there had never been anyone secure enough in his own power to not feel threatened by hers, nor anyone who was more interested in her than in meeting his own agenda. And there had never been anyone strong enough to make her believe in him beyond all else. She smiled at Rune. “I appreciate that you want to help me, and I am happy to try to fight for my life. But I’m afraid you may be tilting at windmills here.”
He gave her a crooked smile in return, his cheek moving under her palm. “Earlier I was pretty convinced I was Alice in Wonderland. Come to think of it, I faded out of sight on a few people, so I was actually the Cheshire Cat as well. I don’t think channeling Don Quixote should pose any problems.”
Amused, she said, “You’re not making any sense.”
A dimple appeared beside his mobile, sensual mouth. “That is only because you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I’ll give you one thing,” she told him. “That was actually a very Cheshire Cat thing to say.”
“Now we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he told her. She started to let her hand fall away from his cheek. He caught it and pressed a kiss to her palm. He let go of both of her hands before she could react. Confused, warmed and somehow disappointed when he released her, she laced her hands together and held them stiffly in her lap. He said, “I’ll catch up on reading the rest of the research on my own. For now, I want you to tell me everything, even if it is conjecture or if you don’t understand it.”
She frowned. “You say we should not waste time, but I don’t see how—”
He overrode what she was about to say, his gaze stern. “You have to start trusting me a little bit. Not a lot. Not, I think, outside your comfort zone. But I am actually a very good investigator, and I’m quite experienced at deciding for myself what information might or might not be useful.” Then the sternness melted from his eyes. He gave her a coaxing smile. “And I can be so terribly charming while I do it. You’ll see. It’ll be fun.”
Her mouth shut with an audible click of her teeth. “Oh for heaven’s sake, all right.”
“Good, we’re making progress.” His expression as he regarded her was filled with such lazy, caressing warmth, she wanted to bask in it all night. He looked at her as if she were the only thing in the world that mattered. It was heady, exotic, dangerous, completely irrelevant stuff. She straightened her spine as she tried to drag her recalcitrant self back into line. “First, I want you to tell me what you experience when you have an episode.”
“Episode episode episode,” she said with sudden venom. “Gods, how I’ve grown to hate that word.”
“Oh-kay,” said Rune. He switched gears with apparent ease. “We’ll have to start calling it something else. You suffer from an extreme case of attention deficit disorder.”
She glared at him and grumbled, “Whatever.”