She laced her fingers through his. “Tell me, Dayan, the truth about all of you. I need to know. What are you?”
The healing chant stopped abruptly at her softly spoken words. Desari glanced at Darius. “Perhaps we can return at a more convenient time to check on you, Corinne,” Desari offered gently. She smiled sweetly at the healer. “Gregori, would it be an inconvenience to return at a more suitable time?”
Gregori lifted an eyebrow at his sister. Aloud he sighed. “I think it would be best. We will return later.”
Darius cautioned Dayan silently.
Be very careful, Dayan. She must not be upset in any way. Gregori will monitor her heart from a distance, and I will watch over the infant. She has need of answers, and I believe she is more receptive than you give her credit for.
Corinne watched as the three Carpathians left the room and quietly closed the door behind them, leaving her alone with Dayan. He stood up abruptly, restlessly.
She looked up at him with her large, clear eyes. “I think it is time for you to talk to me about what and who you are. Start at the beginning. Where are your parents?”
“They are dead — murdered, as your mother was,” he answered starkly. Dayan paced restlessly across the room, swept a hand through his long hair, leaving it disheveled in the wake of his marauding fingers. He suddenly reached down and caught up his beloved guitar, holding it close to his body like a talisman.
Corinne smiled to herself. His guitar. She was beginning to notice that he needed it in his arms when he was nervous, and he was nervous now. He was adept at asking her questions and invading her mind to get to know her, but he didn’t like that same spotlight turned back on him. She had never seen him so nervous. “Dayan.” She said his name softly, gently, and patted the bed beside her. “You look like a caged leopard in a zoo, pacing back and forth.” She didn’t add that he reminded her of a little boy clutching his favorite blanket. “Is it so bad to trust me with the truth?”
He looked down at her, his black eyes brooding and moody. “What happens if you cannot accept me as I am? What happens if I frighten you with the truth and your heart fails you?”
“Do you think I’m that weak, Dayan?” she asked gently. “My body is fragile — I’ve learned to accept that — but
I’m
not a weak person. I never have been.” She held out her hand to him. “Stop pacing and sit by me.”
Dayan stood for a long moment, his guitar across his chest, his eyes reflecting inner turmoil. Slowly, reluctantly, he crossed the room to sit carefully on the bed beside her. He enveloped her small hand with his larger one. “My heart could not take your rejection, honey. Not for one moment. Be very sure that you want to have this conversation now.”
“I am certain, Dayan. You think your feelings for me are very strong. Well, I have loved before. John.” She said her husband’s name and silently watched Dayan’s involuntary wince. “Don’t feel that way about him, Dayan. He was a remarkable man and deserved far better than a woman who didn’t love him the way he should have been loved. I know how strong my feelings for you already are. I tried to tell myself the attraction was purely sexual, but I think about you — your expressions, the way you smile, the turn of your head. Everything. Even the silly things like how you can be childish sometimes. I find myself thinking it’s an endearing trait. That’s not due entirely to chemistry.”
He sighed. “I am not going to ask what is childishly endearing.”
She smiled at him. “No, you’re not. You’re going to tell me about your childhood. About yourself, so I get to know you.”
He brought her fingers to his mouth, wanting — no
needing
— the reassurance of being close to her. “I grew up with Darius, Desari, Barack, Syndil and another called Savon. We were alone as children, with no adult to guide us. It was Darius who took responsibility for us. He was six years old and already showing signs of great power and strength of will. It was Darius who took most of the risks for us.”
His teeth were nibbling anxiously at her fingertips, but he seemed unaware of it. Corinne regarded him steadily. “How did a group of children like that slip through social services? How did you all manage to eat and sleep?”
“We were separated from our people and were believed to have been murdered along with our parents. There was a shipwreck, and we ended up in Africa. That is where we grew up. Our band travels with leopards; we raised them. We actually learned quite a bit from animals. It was a difficult time but also very rewarding.”
Corinne’s small teeth scraped at her lower lip. She believed him, although it seemed impossible that six children could survive in Africa alone. The continent was wild and untamed. Something in her recognized the truth in his simple explanation, yet she knew there was much more he wasn’t telling her.
“Dayan,” she said softly, bringing his dark gaze to hers. “You either trust me or you don’t. You have to make up your mind.”
“What if I tell you I am not human?” He said it quietly, his teeth biting harder at her knuckles. “What if I told you my parents had died during the Turk wars? Would that frighten you away from me?”
Corinne’s heart accelerated for a moment, and she was glad for the diversion, happy to be able to concentrate on slowing it down, giving herself time to think. She had suspected there was something not quite human about Dayan, but to hear him confirm it was something else altogether.
The Turk wars? What did that make him?
“I would hope I’m not that big a coward. Are you something other than what you’ve shown me? Because the man I’m attracted to is gentle and caring and unbelievably wonderful.” She was feeling her way, trying to encourage him and yet give herself the time she needed to assimilate the information he was giving her.
He looked away from her, unable to face her condemnation. “I want to be gentle and caring, Corinne, but in truth I am a predator,” he said regretfully. “You are all that is good and right within me.”
Corinne shook her head in denial. “You’re so much more than a predator, whatever that means, Dayan. You’re a poet without equal. The words that pour out of your soul, the incomparable music you make — that is who you are. The other is a part of your nature, perhaps, but only a small part. You couldn’t say the things you say, the beautiful words you give to me, without feeling them deep within you.”
He opened her hand, studied her lifeline for a moment before pressing a kiss into the center of her palm. “I felt so many things in my youth, so much music, it seemed I
was
music. I heard it everywhere, in the earth and sky, the trees, the animals. I heard it and knew it was my world. Slowly it faded away. It was terrifying to realize I was going to lose it, so I wrote songs, hundreds of songs, thousands of songs, pouring out the notes and words and committing them to memory. Over the years those memories were what I relied on to get me through the darkness. I didn’t feel the words or music anymore, but I had the memories to sustain me. I could touch others who felt the joy of love and laughter and draw upon their emotions to create what I needed.”
He studied her face, his black gaze drifting over her possessively, lovingly, with so much hunger and need she could feel her body melting under his scrutiny. “You cannot possibly understand until you are able to merge your mind fully with mine. I knew utter bleakness, a black, empty void. Without my music, without my soul, I wandered the earth not understanding what I was, not willing to accept what I was. What I am.”
She touched his face with gentle fingers. “What you are is a man with exceptional gifts, Dayan. The things you are talking about I see occasional glimpses of — I won’t pretend I don’t — but that is not who you are.”