Hunter returned his attention to his cup, but instead of pouring black tea as he had in mine, the same pot spit out a hot, sugary brew of cardamom and ginger and creamy milk. One side of his mouth quirked at my astonished stare as he returned the pot to the table’s center. “You can have anything you wish when you’re dreaming, right?”
“Is that why you look like you?” I asked suddenly, lowering my cup. He was the Hunter I’d known, lithe and coiled strength beneath burnished skin, glossy black hair pulled into a low, blunt club. Jaden Jacks was more imposing, with his shock of bleached hair above a frame so large it almost burst. He was more like what you’d think a superhero would look like. Except, I thought, for those sun-spun eyes. Those hadn’t changed at all.
“In dreams you become as you wish to be.”
I didn’t know what that meant, and it made it sound like this was as much his dream as mine. So I concentrated on what I did know.
“You should have told me who you were,” I said, setting down my cup so suddenly it clattered against its saucer.
“I told you what truth I could.”
“Which part was truth, Hunter?” The part where he made love to me but was thinking of Solange? When he claimed he could tell me apart from any other woman by touch alone? Or was it when he told me the Light inside me was magnified because of the Shadow?
I waved my hand in the air, dismissing the subject before he could answer. It no longer mattered.
Not looking at me, Hunter took a deep breath, then paused. A moment later he tried again. “I once told you drinking almost killed me a decade ago, remember?”
I nodded, but didn’t tell him that I’d read the manual called Dark Matters. That I already knew about the night Solange nearly drove a tomahawk through his chest.
Solange then. Solange now.
“Well, it was really only three years past my metamor phosis. I was twenty-eight, in my prime. I was seduced, blindsided by… her.”
He shot me a meaningful glance, which told me he didn’t want to say Solange’s name. Names had power no matter what realm you inhabited. They could call a person to you, and alert them to your presence. Since he’d stolen a gem from her sky of stars, and was now having tea with the woman whose soul he held, I didn’t blame him.
My own voice fell to a whisper. “And why couldn’t you tell me that much?”
“Warren forbade it. And no one else in the troop knew. Warren wiped the memory of what I’d done from all minds but mine.” Eyes unfocused, he ran a hand over his head, pulling loose a few strands. “That was my punishment for succumbing to a Shadow.”
I believed that. On the night I’d given up all my powers, Warren told me he’d known Hunter would be attracted to me. He said that I, a half Shadow, was just Hunter’s type. Saying nothing, I glanced around the garden-the strange amalgamation of English Victorian and Asian chic-and sighed.
“Does it help at all to know I’d have told you the truth if possible?”
I jerked my head. “It only makes me wonder what else you were lying about.”
He bit his lower lip, eyes saying, Not us.
To refute, I motioned around the room.
Hunter leaned on his forearms and closed his eyes. Opening them again, he looked resigned. “I need to tell you about…it. About that night. I have to tell you all of it.”
“Over scones?” I asked acidly before shaking my head.
“I must. I-”
“I saw it!” I pounded the pretty stone table with my fist. “I read the manual. I saw the way you met in the bar, the fight”-the lovemaking-“atop the car. Everything! It was all there.”
“It’s recorded now?” He winced, the expressive cringe a half second behind the impulse creating it. It made me wince in return. “Of course it is.”
The events were over, and the open knowledge wouldn’t affect either the Shadow or the Light. Thus Hunter had no more secrets to hide, though somehow it made him look vulnerable. He ducked his head, nodding to himself, then dared a glance up. “And what about…the rest?”
Slowly, I licked my lips. “What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t it make even a little difference?”
“I didn’t read the whole fucking manual, Hunter.” He opened his mouth to protest and I held up a palm. “I don’t want to know what happened, okay? I don’t care about your reasons.”
“But-”
“I don’t need to know why you left me, only that you did!” It was out of my mouth so fast I jerked backward. Damn it!
Hunter’s gaze softened. “Jo-”
“No!” My turn to shake my head, and I did so. Hard. “We had another conversation once. After you kept me from slaying Regan in front of Ben.”
I stared down at the dark warm liquid cupped in my palms, remembering Regan, dead and harmless now, though she certainly hadn’t been then. She’d taken on an appearance similar to mine in order to seduce my childhood love. She’d known their lovemaking would kill me. Yet the only way to stop her would have been to put an arrow through her chest during the act…and that would have destroyed Ben. Hunter saved me from the decision by spiriting me away. And that night was the first that we’d made love.
I glanced back up at him, knowing we were remembering the same thing. “I told you then that I hoped someone, someday, would feel as strongly toward you as I did for Ben.”
And Solange was rabid when it came to him.
“But that wasn’t the truth,” I went on, pushing my cup away. “What I meant was I wanted someone to feel that way about me. Strong enough to put me first. To stay. No matter what.”
His voice softened, his eyes turned pleading. “It wasn’t that simple.”
I cocked a brow, voice flat. “So you’ve said.”
And I’d heard enough. I stood, wanting out of the earth room, or the jungle book, or wherever the fuck I was. My gaze momentarily caught on a flickering movement behind a flowing willow but the tree fronds only swayed in a soft breeze, sparkling with little lights and tiny chimes.
“Just finish the manual.” He stood too, pleading with his eyes. “It will make a difference. It will matter.”
It was a dark matter, I thought, jaw clenching. And I was gray. “Here’s what matters. You told your wife I’m the Kairos, and now she’s sent Mackie after me.”
“She’s the only one here in full possession of her soul. You, me, the other women. We all have less than her. We are less than her.”
“So your wife is invincible?”
His jaw clenched again at wife but he jerked his head. “Yes.”
I raised my brows. “All-knowing, all-seeing? As close to a goddess as you can come?”
“Over here she is the goddess.”
I tilted my head, thought about it a little more, then held out my hand. “Give me my gem.”
“What?”
“The one you said you stole from her sky. I want it.”
He narrowed his eyes, and there was that strange shifting of expressions again, one below the other. “I can’t.”
“Because the goddess will know if you do?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Then how the hell did you manage to steal a gem from her beloved soul sky without her knowing?”
Hunter froze. And laughter bubbled in the trees, ringing bells, sending the lights to sway. “Very good, Archer.”
I wasn’t the Archer. But Hunter didn’t know that…and therefore neither did Solange. She sauntered from behind an elm like the goddess everyone thought she was. I knew I’d seen movement there.
She was dressed in low-cut silver or gray, it altered depending on how she moved through the light, and swept the ground cover as she walked. She held up something misshapen and tiny that winked bloodred in the meager light.
“Hold her,” she told Hunter, and before I even had a chance to bolt, he had my arms pinned to my side. Yet his grip was gentle, like a caress, which made it worse. I got a whiff of his skin as his breath rustled my hair, and an image flashed through my mind, his naked legs folded like wings over mine. Cringing, I pushed it away.