The flat metal disk caught the light when Nate turned it from side to side, making the man turn to a hawk and back again. Or, if he stopped it halfway, there was a point where the image was both hawk and man.
It was a symbol of the bloodline, he knew. A family heirloom, nothing more and nothing less. But for a few seconds earlier that day, in the moment that he and Alexis had stood together on the carved altar and called their magic together, he could’ve sworn he’d felt the amulet respond. There had been a frisson of electricity, a jolting sense of change, of connection—there and gone so quickly he kept trying to tell himself he’d imagined it entirely. Only he hadn’t. He was sure of that much.
“Probably something to do with that wonky shield spell,” he said aloud, trying to talk himself out of the crazy thoughts that kept trying to shove themselves inside his head—gamer’s fantasies about magic amulets and the last-minute discovery of powers that could save the world. Thing was, this was reality, or at least a cockeyed version thereof, where men could do magic and orgasm was a pathway to prayer. Was it really so unbelievable to think the amulet was more than a decoration?
“It was your imagination,” he told himself for the fourth time in the past half hour, and forced himself to tuck the medallion back inside his shirt, next to the frigging adviser’s eccentric that he’d tried to give back earlier, only to have Strike tell him to keep it for now.
Which, goddamn it, meant he owed Carlos fifty bucks, because he’d bet the old bugger that he’d never be the king’s man, as his father had been.
Well, fuck that, he thought sourly, forcing himself back upright on the sofa with his feet on the floor, and trying to make his eyes focus on the laptop screen. He was just doing the last read-throughs on the storyboard before he e-mailed VW6 off to Denjie for programming and shit. The story was as close to perfect as he could make it, and it was time to let the thing go. Maybe even time to end the whole series, because he wasn’t sure there was more story to tell. Hera’s past had been uncovered and resolved, her mate found, wedded, and bedded—though not in precisely that order. She didn’t need the quests anymore.
And that was a hell of a thought.
Nate was scowling at the screen, wondering if maybe he should pull back on the whole happily-
ever-after thing, when someone banged on the cottage door. Figuring it was Carlos, come to see if he needed anything—and to do some more gloating—Nate called, “Go away; I’m not in the mood.”
The knock came a second time. For all of Carlos’s faults, he was pretty good about fucking off when told to fuck off, suggesting that whatever he’d come to say was important. Hoping to hell that it wasn’t, because he couldn’t stand any more drama today, Nate pushed to his feet and headed for the door, hissing against the pull of countless bruises from the day’s events.
Those small annoyances fled the second he swung open the door and saw Alexis standing there. In their place flared heat and want, and a sense of the inevitable.
She was wearing loose light blue yoga pants and a cropped sweatshirt two shades darker, in deference to the chill of the night air. Unlike her usual put-together outfits, which dared a guy to peel them away layer by layer, this one was easy access, two items, maybe a couple more if she was wearing panties and a bra. He was betting not, though, because he knew the outfit, knew it meant she was in the mood. Before, it’d been a signal, a sort of cosmic don’t bother prettying it up with speeches; I need to get off. Now, however, though there was heat in her eyes; there was something else, as well. There was warmth.
“Help you?” he asked, which was about all he could get out through a throat gone suddenly dry.
The year before, her answer would’ve been something along the lines of a coy, “I think we can help each other,” and it would’ve been accurate. But now she paused for a second, then said, “Can I come in?”
The question hung in the air, becoming everything. Before, they’d mostly used her rooms, or a spare bedroom elsewhere in the mansion. If he invited her inside his parents’ cottage, things shifted to a new level, a new degree of importance. If he invited her in, they would have each other, Nate thought, using the safe euphemism when his conscious mind couldn’t cheapen the act to sex, couldn’t call it making love. But more, they would do it with their eyes open to each other’s flaws and the ways they didn’t fit.
He cleared his throat, and yearned. “Why now?”
Her lips turned up at the corners in a sad, self-aware smile. “Because for the first time in a long, long time, neither of us needs anything from the other. This would just be us together, because we want to be.”
Which begged the question of whether he wanted to be with her, despite everything. And the answer, damn it all to hell, was a resounding, stupid-simple yes.
So he stepped back out of the doorway. “Come on in.” He probably should’ve said something way smoother, but what smoothness he possessed seemed to have deserted him. She didn’t seem to mind, though. Head high, she marched through, not looking at him. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright with excitement and, he suspected, nerves.
Or maybe he was the one who was nervous, and he was projecting like hell, knowing that if they had sex now it’d skirt the line of making a commitment he didn’t want. It was bad enough he’d wound up a royal adviser. He wasn’t letting the gods pick his girlfriend—or worse, his wife. He refused to use the Nightkeeper words of “mate” or “jun tan,” because he was a guy first, a Nightkeeper second. Or so he liked to think. The way things kept happening around him, exactly as the gods seemed to have decreed, he had to wonder about that. Problem was, he didn’t exactly have a decent out clause in his contract. Hell, he didn’t even have a contract; it was all blood and ancestors and destiny and shit.
And none of that mattered now, really. He’d already let her inside.
She stopped in the middle of the main room and looked around, unspeaking. He couldn’t read her body language or her expression, and suddenly he realized he cared more than he expected to what she thought about him all but living in his parents’ old place.
“You’ll make some changes,” she said after a moment. “I see you as more of a black-and-chrome sort of guy.”
That surprised a snort out of him. “That’d be my office back in Denver.” He wasn’t sure it suited him anymore, though. Wasn’t sure what the hell suited him except the sight of her in his space, and that was far from a comforting thought. So he went for light. “What, you don’t think shag carpeting is me?”
“Carpet can be replaced.” Her eyes lit on the paintings, and the oversize medallion. Like him, she was drawn to that wall, crossing to stand very near the painting of the Mayan ruins seen from above.
“The rest of this place suits you, though, or what I’ve seen of it. It’s practical and stripped down, and there’s not much in the way of family pictures or mementos, but there’s a sense of latent power and . .
. an honesty, I guess.” She shot him a look. “I don’t always like what you say, but I know that if you say it, you mean it.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that, or how to deal with the possessive clutch in his chest at the sight of her standing in front of his bloodline symbol. Yes, a thousand generations of his ancestors seemed to say, she’s for you. This is meant.