“But I can’t go,” Rhoswen said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” said Carling, and she was surprised to find that she meant it. “But you have used me as an excuse to avoid living your own life, and I never gave you permission to try to curtail what I do or to control how I choose to do it. And I never promised that you could be with me for everything. I have some things I need to face on my own right now, and so do you.”
“Please, don’t make me leave,” said Rhoswen. “I swear I can change. I’ll look after the damn dog for you. You just said you needed me to hire somebody anyway.”
“No, Rhoswen,” said Carling. “That would not be the right thing for you, and I have been selfish for long enough. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t do this to me,” said Rhoswen. “You can’t just discard me like this, not after everything I’ve done for you.”
“I am not discarding you,” Carling said. She kept her voice even with an effort. Why did this have to be as much of a struggle as everything else had become with Rhoswen? “I am setting you up well and giving you plenty of time to adjust.”
The next half hour was as difficult as she knew it would be, but eventually it had to end because she wouldn’t budge no matter what Rhoswen said or how she pleaded.
Finally Carling’s patience came to an end. Her voice, edged with command, cut through the last of Rhoswen’s protests as she said, “That’s enough.” She sent Rhoswen, along with the dog, off to bed.
The younger Vampyre fled, and Carling sagged in relief as the atmosphere in the kitchen lightened considerably. Then she opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured herself a glass. She could no longer tolerate blood or bloodwine, and Vampyres remained unaffected by alcohol, but she could at least enjoy the taste. She sipped a glass and listened as the birds outside started to bellow with early-morning exuberance.
Then they fell abruptly silent, and she heard a giant rush of wings. Her spirit leaped at the sound. Moving with deliberation, she set her glass of wine on the table and stood to face the open door.
Moments later, Rune filled the open doorway with his long rangy body and hot sunlike presence. At some point he had shaved and changed into a black T-shirt that molded to his long muscled torso and another pair of faded jeans that were torn out at the knees. His hair was windswept, and he smelled like healthy male and the ocean’s salty air. His lion’s eyes met hers with a shock of connection she felt to her bare toes.
She remarked to no one in particular, “I notice that ten minutes was over quite some time ago.”
From several feet away, she heard his heart kick into a faster rhythm, fueling the fierce energy of his body in hard, powerful strokes. Rune said, “Apparently I needed more than ten minutes.”
She raised an imperious eyebrow. “Have you been sulking about something?”
“No,” he said. “I have been thinking.”
“That took you the rest of the night?”
The sun-bronzed muscles in his biceps bunched as he crossed his arms. He tilted his head as he regarded her. “Thinking,” said Rune in a deliberately even tone of voice, “requires a great deal of thought.”
“Well, that certainly is very Cheshire Cat– like of you. Along with your apparent knack for disappearing at times that are inconvenient for everyone else but yourself.” She tried out a scowl. It seemed to be an appropriate expression for such a morning.
“Are you trying to pick a fight?” he asked. He gave her a sharp smile that showed the edge of his white teeth. “If so, cool.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet,” she said.
He prowled into the kitchen. “Make up your mind. I like a good fight.”
She began to tap a bare foot, and his gaze dropped to track the movement. His face went still as he focused on the moment with a predatory laziness, like a lounging cat that was too comfortable to pounce but was liable to change its mind at any minute. She said, “You left when we were in the middle of a conversation.”
His smile vanished. “I’m well aware of when I left.”
“It was a conversation that interested me,” she informed him.
His mouth drew into that hard unhappy line from earlier. “It was a conversation that interested me as well, I promise you.”
“I am particularly interested in all the things that were left unsaid,” she said. “Why you were so upset, and why you had to leave so abruptly. You were also upset when I woke up. I had forgotten that until after you left. You were full of aggression, like you wanted to fight someone then too. I would like to know why that was, and who put you in that state.”
“I have things I need to say to you,” Rune said. “They won’t be easy to say and they won’t be easy to hear.”
“All right.” She gave him a curt nod and muttered a line from Macbeth. “‘Then ’twere well it were done quickly.’”
SEVEN
She turned away from him, toward her seat, and her gaze fell on the cool stove.
She said, “You have not eaten in quite some time. You must be hungry.” She had witnessed just how much Wyr tended to eat at several inter-demesne functions, and again on the trip to Adriyel. They could put away horrendous amounts of food, especially those who were athletic. “Do you require sustenance?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” he replied. “I went hunting when I was out.”
She whirled in dismay. If anyone could break through the wards she had set around the redwoods, he could. “Not in the forest?”
His expression changed. He said quickly, “No, not in the forest. I felt your wards and left the area alone. I went fishing.”
She relaxed and took her seat at the end of the table, closest to the open door. After a hesitation, he sat at her right. She regarded her half-empty wineglass as Rune leaned his elbows on the table. She sent him a quick sidelong glance. He was staring at the table’s scarred surface, his gaze as turbulent and moody as the storm-swept sea.
She had seen him in many moods, she realized—sharply predatory, laughing, angry, dangerously intent. This quiet contemplation of his added another dimension to those strong, handsome features. She wanted to ask what he was thinking, what had put the sharp lines between his brows, why he held that elegant mouth of his in such a straight, severe line. Reluctantly she realized just how fascinated she had become with him. What would she do, if they discovered a way to halt the progression of her disease, and then he simply went away, back to his life in New York? How strange, that she had so quickly become accustomed to his presence. She would . . . miss him when he left.
She let her gaze fall to the tabletop as well, disturbed by the direction of her own thoughts and the intensity of her own reactions to him.
Rune began to speak. “I was outside yesterday evening when Rhoswen called me,” he said. “It was close to sunset and you had faded again. We went up to your room, so I could see for myself.”
None of that was news. They had already been in her room when she had come out of it. But it was apparent he had to take his own path toward whatever was the difficult part he had to say to her, so she curbed her impatience and simply nodded.
He ran his thumb along a knife mark on the table. “When we got upstairs, I saw sunlight spilling out of your bedroom doors.”
Wait. Whatever she thought he had been about to say, that wasn’t it. She sat forward, her sharpened gaze returning to his downturned face.
Rune continued, “Rhoswen didn’t see it. We checked to make sure that the sunlight I saw—or thought I saw—wouldn’t burn her. It didn’t, so we stepped into your room. I went somewhere else. Rhoswen didn’t.”