I couldn’t agree more.
She settles back at the table, coffee in one hand, doughnut in the other, and just looks at me. And looks at me. And looks at me.
I scramble to get my thoughts in order, to try to find a way to explain the jumble of emotions at work inside me. In the end, I settle for just letting the words tumble out in whatever order they want to. “I’m crazy about him and terrified of him all at the same time.”
She cocks her head, studies me. “You think he’ll hurt you?”
“Yes! But not in the way you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything, except that that man is devoted to you. You should have seen him last night when you were doing your trance thing. I thought he was going to lose his mind.”
“That’s part of the problem. The feelings between us, they’re just so . . . intense. More intense than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“And that’s a problem because?”
“Because I’ve never felt like this before. But we’re so different, we look at the world in such opposite ways. I mean, Lily, he thinks murder is an acceptable way to end a disagreement!”
Her eyebrows practically touch her hairline. “Alride?”
“He says no—”
“And you don’t believe him?”
“No, I do.” That was one of the conclusions I came to as I stared up at the ceiling in the early morning hours. “But it very easily could have been him.”
“So now we’re condemning guys based on what we think they’re going to do?” She shoves a whole doughnut in her mouth, contemplating while she chews. “I’ve got to tell you, Xan. That’s not the best idea you’ve ever had. How am I supposed to ever get laid again if I’m constantly worried about something the guy might or might not do six months or six years down the road?”
“I’m not talking about some mythical maybe, Lily.” And then I tell her everything Declan has told me in the last few days.
When I’m done, she does the last thing I expect. She kicks back in her chair and says, “I knew there was a reason I liked that man.”
I gape at her. “He told me he has every intention of killing people, Lily.”
“People who had every intention of killing you. Declan’s an eye-for-an-eye kind of guy. You didn’t really expect anything different from him, did you?
“Think about if someone tried to kill him. If they beat and tortured and emotionally devastated him. How would you feel?”
I’d want to fry the bastards. I don’t say as much, but from the way she bursts out laughing, I’m pretty sure she can read the expression on my face.
“Still, wanting to do it and actually doing it are two very different things,” I insist.
“I’m sorry, but has he actually killed anyone to avenge you? Even Kyle’s alive and that sorry excuse for a warlock should be wiped off the face of the earth. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed Declan hasn’t taken care of that already.”
Her vehemence shocks me. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yeah, I really do. If I could figure out how to do it without getting caught, I’d probably end him myself.”
Silence falls between us as I really don’t have anything to say to that. I think of my earlier thought, about wanting to destroy anyone who hurt Declan. I wonder if I was too harsh on him last night. If I used my fear of his darkness as nothing more than an excuse to push him away.
After all, he was dark when I fell for him.
“When I was looking at Alride’s body,” I say slowly, “there was this moment when I was glad that he was dead. Glad that he had suffered.”
“That seems perfectly understandable to me.”
“But it isn’t. Understandable, I mean. Even as I was feeling that way, I knew something was wrong. I could sense it, feel it. Like there was a darkness pressing down on me, taking me over.” I shudder at the memory.
“You think that darkness came from Declan.” Again, Lily is nobody’s fool.
“Maybe. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be the whole soulbound thing.”
“Because your souls are connected, you think Declan’s bringing you into the dark?” She tilts her head as she thinks. “But that theory only works if you’re also bringing him into the light.”
“I don’t think so. Remember what you said when you were researching what it means to be soulbound?”
“That was just one book. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I think it does.” Being soulbound sounds like a good thing, but the fact of the matter is, it’s pretty much the worst thing that can happen to two people. An Anathema born of the darkest magic possible, the only way out is death or the complete and total destruction of one of the pair’s souls. It’s why Declan planned to kill me all those years ago. He obviously didn’t follow through with it, but that just means we have this problem now.
“The longer he and I are together, the worse it’s going to get,” I tell her.
“So, what are you going to do? Be apart? That didn’t work for either of you and you know it.” She reaches across the table, squeezes my hand. “There are some things you’re going to be able to fight, Xan, and some that you aren’t. There’s nothing you can do about your connection to him. It’s time to accept it and try to live with it.”
“That’s the whole point—only one of us is going to be able to live with it! And Declan won’t hurt me. Not like that. He’d never allow me to lose my soul.”
“That’s a two-way street, Xandra. He would never do anything to harm your soul and you would never willingly destroy his. That’s a good thing. It’s why I believe you’re both going to make it out of this and have an awesome future together.”
“That’s the point. We don’t have a future. I can already feel him going darker. That’s what I felt at the Council’s headquarters last night and that’s what I sensed in him when we got back last night. He had blood all over him, Lily. Even if it wasn’t Alride’s, it was somebody’s.”
“What did he say when you asked him about it?”
“Nothing. That’s another problem—he won’t talk to me, really talk to me, so we can try to figure this out. I know he thinks he’s protecting me, but . . .”
I can feel tears welling up, but I refuse to let them fall. Tears won’t help Declan, won’t help us. So they’re worthless to me right now. “He’s so much stronger than I am, Lily. So much better at magic. There’s no way I’ll be able to fight him when things start to get worse. No way . . .” My voice breaks. I take a deep breath, force the words past the sudden tightness in my throat. “No way that I’ll be able to save him.”
And there it is, my worst fear, worst nightmare, out on the table for everyone to see. This is the terror that has haunted me for the past eight days, the nightmare that comes even after I’ve banished thoughts of Kyle and the ACW and what they’ve done to me. It’s not just my fear that Declan’s own shadows will overwhelm him, but that being soulbound to me will cast him irretrievably into the darkness. I could see it in him last night and it terrified me. That’s why I pulled back from him. Not because I was afraid of him, but because I was afraid for him. The longer we’re in contact, the closer we get, the faster one of us will be destroyed.
“I can’t hurt him like that, Lily. I can’t. It will end up destroying me as surely as I’ll have destroyed him.”
For a long time, Lily doesn’t say anything. Not that I’m surprised. There’s not much she can say. I’ve spent the last eight days examining the problem from every side I can think of and I’ve got nothing. I know Declan, who is so much more accomplished in Heka than I am, has done the same thing. If he’d come up with a solution, he would have said something. He hasn’t. Which leads me to believe that there really is no solution.