Deviation: Altera Realm Trilogy Book 2 (56 page)

“What was he worried about?”

“He thinks you’re helping me with the Death Squeeze for Mellisandrianna.”

He nodded. “I got that. Why didn’t you just tell him what we were doing?”

“Because it was supposed to be a surprise. And besides, he was so angry. He said he didn’t know who I was anymore. It just made me angry, and you know how I get when I’m angry,” she said with a pout.

“Yes, I do. But so does Adam. There’s no way he’d accept your giving the ring back when you’re angry. He knows better.”

“Are you sure? I don’t know what I’ll do if I go back to our room and he’s not there.”

Gabe hesitated before placing his hand over hers and gently squeezing it. “I don’t need to read his mind to know how he feels about you. I’ve known him his entire life, and I’ve seen many women come and go.”

“I really hope there’s a point to this.”

He smiled. “He didn’t stay with any of them. Yes, I brought him here and put him in your path, but he stayed. Even after he stopped talking to me, he stayed. He’ll be there. I promise you that.”

As Syney’s eyes scanned Gabe’s handsome face, she realized how much she missed him. No one could calm her down like Gabe. He always seemed to know the exact thing to say. Sure, he had his own agenda to push, but he looked out for her. She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “I miss this.”

His face softened as he stared at her. Finally he nodded slowly. “Me too. But I’m OK with my replacement.”

“Adam isn’t a replacement. He’s something altogether different. So the job of best friend is still open.”

“I thought that was Noelle.”

“She’s something different too—more like the sister I never wanted to have,” she said with a laugh. “But you and I have always been different. Sometimes too different, but I know you’ll always be there for me, whether I want you there or not.”

He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek before standing up. “Do you have the stuff?”

“I thought you were going to wait?”

“I was, but I think tonight might be better. We need a happy moment.”

Gabe nodded and headed to his dresser. He pulled open one of the drawers and handed her a bowl of brown goop. “Good luck,” he said with a smile.

Syney took a few deep breaths as she stared at the mixture. “This is the right thing to do, right?”

He pulled her chin up to look into her eyes. “Yes.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “OK then. Thanks again.”

“Anytime.”

After a moment, Syney turned and left the room, feeling both settled and unsettled. She knew she wasn’t going to feel 100 percent until she talked to Adam and made things right. He had to know what she was going to do was necessary, but she also didn’t want to lose him. She paused for a moment before walking into her room. It was exactly what she didn’t want. The room was dark, with no Adam. She nearly fell onto the bed in tears, but something kept her on her feet. The room didn’t
feel
abandoned. She pulled Adam’s drawers open. All his clothes were still there. That was a good sign. Syney sat on the bed and eyed the door. Adam didn’t have many friends. She really didn’t know where he would go. But he was coming back; at least she hoped he was.

“Might as well make the best of it,” she said to the empty room. It took a lot of work to place candles all over the room, but once they were all lit, it looked like a scene from a romantic movie. All she needed to do was get herself to look just as good. She pulled out a small box from under the bed and lifted the lid. It was a pink silk nightie she’d bought in the market with Helen a few days ago. It was the most beautiful thing Syney had ever seen, and it felt even better, she thought as she slipped it on. The top lay just right, and the hem fell a few inches above her knee. She turned around in front of the full-length mirror and smiled. This was the exact image she wanted Adam to see on the night of their joining.
A preview the night before was OK with her too. She sat back down on the bed and waited. And waited. And waited.

She yawned a few hours later and decided to give up. He could still show up the next day, and if he didn’t…well, she’d deal with that when the time came. She just prayed Gabe was right and Adam hadn’t left. She frowned and walked over to the dresser to blow out some candles when the door opened. Adam looked around the room, lit only by candles, finally settling on Syney for a moment before he turned to shut the door. Syney chomped down on her lip as he walked slowly toward her. She should say something, but nothing came to mind. She finally settled on a little humor, if she could. “I…um…I thought you might have left, but your suits are still here, and I know how you are about your suits.”

He nodded. “It’s hard to find good custom ones.” He stopped a few feet from her. “I went to see Leaf.”

Syney looked at his face. He’d been drinking. His eyes were the dead giveaway. They always looked hooded by his eyelids in a sexy way. “Are you drunk?”

He looked at her with his mouth open for a moment before answering. “Just a little.”

“But sober enough to accept my apology and remember it in the morning?” she asked with a small smile.

He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Syney closed the distance between them and ran her hands down the lapels of his jacket. “Good. I’m sorry for overreacting.”

Adam looked down at her for a moment before putting his hands on either side of her face. “It’s OK. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. I’m just worried.”

“I know you are, and I want to talk about it…rationally,” Syney said, pulling him to sit on the side of the bed. She sat next to him and took his hands. “You’re worried about what might happen to me if I kill Mellisandrianna. I’m worried what might happen if I don’t kill her. She’s gone after Noelle, Leaf, and you…and me.” She stopped as tears sprang to her eyes. “If I let her actually win, I might lose one of you or myself.”

Adam wiped a tear from her cheek. “It doesn’t have to be you who does it. I know at least four candidates, myself included.”

Syney shook her head. “No, it has to be me. And I’m not entirely OK with that, but I accept it.” She squeezed his hands and bit her lip. “I am scared about something, though, that I need your help with.”

“Anything.”

“I need a code question, something that you’ll ask, and if I don’t answer a certain way, you’ll know it isn’t actually me waking up with you.”

Adam stared at her for a while, his eyes filled with sadness. “What’s the weather like?”

Syney smiled. “Blue skies ahead.”

He nodded. “You should know, though, if Mellisandrianna does go into you, I won’t be able to kill you, even if it is her.”

“That’s OK. Just talk to Gabe.”

His face hardened a little at that.

“But,” she said with more conviction, “I’m going to do everything I can so it won’t come to that.”

He looked away for a moment before unbuttoning his shirt. “Then we need to work on getting rid of her.”

“By taking your shirt off?” she asked with a smile.

He tossed the shirt to the floor. “By practicing. Have you been able to do the Death Squeeze with Gabe?”

“Um, no,” she said with a laugh. “We haven’t been working on that actually.”

He gave her a confused look.

Syney stood and brought the bowl filled with brown goop to the bed. “We’ve been working on this.”

“And this is…?”

“This is what gets rid of your curse.”

Adam stared at the bowl before looking back up at her. “Just that?”

“Well, no, um…Where exactly is the curse?” She looked down his chest and felt her heartbeat pick up. Adam was perfect, right down to his chiseled smooth chest. Out of pure instinct she placed her hands on it, the feel of his skin under her hands causing her body to heat up in all the right places. She almost had lost track of what she was doing when he pulled one of her hands to his lower stomach on the right side. “Right,” she said with a giggle.

She closed her eyes and did as she had practiced with Gabe. She had to feel the curse with her mind and pull it forward. It took a few minutes before she visualized the curse. It was red and shaped like an egg, with a few squiggly lines through it. She felt her fingers heat up as the curse grew brighter in her mind. She heard Adam sharply inhale and hoped she wasn’t hurting him, but she knew there was still one more thing she had to do. Once the curse was as bright as she needed it to be, she whispered the words she had read out of the Daemon book that made the curse nonpermanent.

When she opened her eyes, she found Adam staring at her, a bemused look on his face. She smiled and pulled her hands back. There, shining bright as day on his stomach, was his curse. Pride swelled in her chest but disappeared as soon as the curse did. “Crap, I thought I had it.”

“You did for a moment, but it’s still there.” Adam ran his fingers over the spot on his stomach.

She frowned. “You don’t look happy about doing this. I, um, thought this is what we wanted.”

“No, it is. I just…I don’t want to remove it now.”

Syney’s heart sank. Maybe they didn’t make up as much as she thought they had. She sat up straight and swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“I want to wait until Mellisandrianna’s gone. Until we’re safe and our child is safe,” he said quietly.

As Syney stared at Adam, the image of her son popped into her mind. She didn’t know how to deal with that. If the curse wasn’t removed soon, what did that mean for the baby? Finally she nodded. “OK.” She picked up the bowl and put it on her nightstand. She looked at him once she sat back down and gave him an awkward smile. Without the removal of the curse, the rest of the evening seemed anticlimactic and a little awkward. “So…”

“I don’t think you should attempt the Death Squeeze,” Adam said.

“Oh, OK. Why?”

He moved to fully face her. “First I don’t think it’ll work. Gabe was right the other day. You have to really want the other person dead, and as much as you think you really want that, when you get in that moment, you might waver. It takes more than hate to kill someone.”

Syney sighed with frustration. “But that’s the only thing I have going for me. I haven’t been able to summon my energy since Gabe unbound my powers, and I don’t think that would even work.”

“You’ll want it to look like an accident or illness.”

“Why?”

“If Mellisandrianna dies, and it doesn’t look natural, as the seated queen, you’ll be scrutinized. But if it looks like, say, a heart attack, no one will be the wiser.”

“So we’re back to the Death Squeeze.”

Adam shook his head. “I think you should pull the life force out of her.”

She stared at him for a moment, not realizing what he was talking about. Then she thought of that night when she had pulled something from him. Was it his life force? “I don’t…I don’t think I can do that on demand.”

He took her hands and placed them back on this chest. “You can with practice.”

She tried to pull her hands back, but he held them there.

“If you can do it to me, you’ll be able to do it to her,” he said.

“But I don’t want to do it to you.”

Adam smiled. “You need to practice, and I’d rather you do it with me than anyone else. You should explore every part of yourself, even the ones that may make you feel ashamed.”

Syney shook her head and rolled her eyes. It was annoying to have her own words thrown back at her. “Me, stealing life forces…isn’t that the same as you drinking blood?”

“You’re right, but
you
need to be able to do this.
I
don’t need to drink blood.”

She sighed and looked at her hands pressed against his hard chest. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. I’ll stop you before you do any damage.”

“How will you know?”

Adam reached over and cupped her face. “I trust you.” He laughed when she rolled her eyes. “And I can hear my heartbeat. When it gets too slow, I’ll stop you.”

Syney took a deep breath. This all seemed so dangerous. Not to mention the fact that doing this was one step in the direction of being more like Mellisandrianna than Syney ever wanted to be. But on the other hand, Adam was right. If she pulled the life force out of Mellisandrianna, the likelihood of her fighting back would be low. But that was the one thing Syney was most scared of—she had to get up close and personal with the scariest person alive and hope the witch wouldn’t fight back. “OK. But we need to be careful.”

He dropped his hand and nodded. “Of course.”

“Then let’s do this,” Syney said, pressing her hands firmly against his chest and closing her eyes. She had no idea what she was doing. The last time she did this, it was spontaneous, without any preparation. “What am I supposed to be doing?” she asked, her eyes still closed.

“Try thinking about pulling my life force away.”

She frowned but tried it anyway. Nothing happened.

“Trust yourself, Syney. You’re extremely powerful, but you don’t believe it most of the time.”

She smiled at his words. He had such faith in her—in her power, in her goodness. At that moment she vowed to prove him right from now on. The second she thought it, her fingers tingled with energy. Her eyes flung open, and she watched as Adam struggled to breathe. “I’m going to stop,” she said out of fear.

“No,” he said, still struggling.

“But I’m hurting you.”

“You’re…slowing…my…heart.”

Syney looked down at her hand, now covered in a glowing red light. Although it was a beautiful sight, it also scared the life out of her. “Adam, I want to stop,” she said quietly.

After a moment he finally nodded. Syney pulled her hand back and watched as the red light slowly faded. Adam slowly caught his breath. “Are you OK?” she asked him.

He nodded. “That will definitely work.”

Frowning, she ran her hands down his chest. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

Adam placed his hands over hers and looked at her in the eyes. “I’m fine. Not even tired. And most important, this works. I think we should practice more.”

“Right now?” she asked.

“No,” Adam said with a laugh. “I’m a little sore.”

Syney pouted and sat back. “So I did hurt you.”

“It’s OK. Trust me.”