Lover Reborn (9 page)

She would have saved herself.

Saved the warrior across from her this anger of his…

She had used Tohrment’s dagger. Right after the birth, she had snapped and taken the weapon from him. Unable to bear the reality of what she had brought into the world, incapable of drawing one more breath in the destiny she had been condemned to, she had turned the blade upon her own stomach.

The last thing she had heard before the light had claimed her was him screaming—

The screech of his chair getting shoved back made her jump, and everyone at the table went silent, all eating halting, all movement ceasing, all conversation cutting off as he prowled out of the room.

No’One lifted her napkin and blotted her mouth under her hood. Nobody looked over at her, as if they had all failed to notice his fixation on her. But from down at the far end, the angel with the blond-and-black hair was staring right at her.

Shifting her eyes from him, she saw Tohrment come out of the billiards room across the foyer. He had a bottle of some dark liquid in each hand, and his grim face was nothing short of a death mask.

Closing her lids, she reached deep, trying to find the strength she was going to need to approach the male who had just left so abruptly. She had come here to this side, to this house, to make amends with the daughter she had abandoned.

There was another who needed an apology, however.

And though words of contrition were the ultimate goal, she would begin with the dress, returning it to him as soon as she finished cleaning and pressing it with her own hands. Comparatively, it was such a small thing. But one had to start somewhere, and the gown was clearly a generational one from his bloodline, given to her daughter to wear, as she had no other family.

Even after all these years, he continued to take care of Xhexania.

He was a male of worth.

No’One was quieter about her departure, but the room fell silent once more as she rose from her seat. Keeping her head down, she left not through the archway, as he had, but through the butler’s door that led into the kitchen.

Limping past the ovens and counter spaces and busy, disapproving
doggen
, she took to the rear stairwell, the one that had simple whitewashed plaster walls and pine stairs—

“It was his
shellan
’s.”

The soft leather sole of her slipper shoe squeaked as she wheeled around. Down below, the angel stood at the bottom step.

“The dress,” he said. “That was the gown that Wellesandra wore on the night they were mated nearly two hundred years ago.”

“Oh, then I shall return it to his mate—”

“She’s dead.”

A cold shiver went down her spine. “Dead…”

“A
lesser
shot her in the face.” As No’One gasped, his white eyes didn’t blink. “She was pregnant.”

No’One threw her hand out for the rail as her body swayed.

“Sorry,” the angel said. “I don’t sugarcoat shit, and you need to know what you’re walking into if you’re going to give that back to him. Xhex should have told you—I’m surprised she didn’t.”

Indeed. Although it wasn’t as if they had spent much time together—and they had plenty of topics of their own to tiptoe around.

“I did not know,” she said eventually. “The seeing bowls on the Other Side… they never…” Except she hadn’t been thinking of Tohrment when she had gone to them; she’d been worried about and focused on Xhexania.

“Tragedy, like love, makes people blind,” he said, as if he could read her regrets.

“I’m not going to take it to him.” She shook her head. “I’ve done enough damage. Presenting him with his… mate’s gown…”

“Is a nice gesture. I think you should return it to him. Maybe it’ll help.”

“Do what,” she said numbly.

“Remind him that she’s gone.”

No’One frowned. “As if he has forgotten?”

“You’d be surprised, my fair one. The chain of memory needs to be broken—so I say bring the dress to him, and let him take it from you.”

No’One tried to imagine that exchange. “How cruel—no, if you’re so interested in torturing him, you can do it yourself.”

The angel cocked a brow. “It’s not torture. It’s reality. Time’s passing and he needs to move on, fast. Take the gown to him.”

“Why are you so interested in his affairs?”

“His destiny is my own.”

“How is that possible?”

“Trust me, I didn’t set it up like this.”

The angel stared at her as if daring her to find falsity in anything he had stated.

“Forgive me,” she said roughly. “But I have done enough harm to that fine male. I shan’t be a part of anything that hurts him.”

The angel rubbed his eyes as if he had a headache. “Goddamn it. He doesn’t need coddling. He needs a good hard boot in the ass—and if he doesn’t get one soon, he’s going to
pray
to be in the shithole he’s in now.”

“I do not understand any of this—”

“Hell is a place of many levels. And where he’s headed is going to make this stretch of agony seem like nothing but spikes under fingernails.”

No’One recoiled and then had to clear her throat. “A way with words you have not, angel.”

“Really. You don’t say.”

“I can’t… I can’t do what you wish me to.”

“Yes, you can. You have to.”

W
hen Tohr had hit the billiards room bar, he hadn’t bothered to check which bottles he took. Up on the second-floor landing, however, he learned that the one in his right hand was Qhuinn’s Herradurra, and the one in his left was…
Drambuie
?

Okay, right, he might be desperate, but he still had taste buds, and that shit was nasty.

Striding down to the sitting room at the end of the hall, he swapped the latter for some good old-fashioned rum—maybe he’d pretend the tequila was Coke and put the two together.

In his room, he shut the door, cracked the seal on the Bacardi, and opened his gullet, sucking the hooch down. Pause for swallow and breath. Repeat. Annnnd repeat… and one more good one. The line of fire from his lips to his gut was kind of nice, like he’d deep-throated a lightning strike, and he kept the rhythm going, taking air when he had to as if he were doing the freestyle in a pool.

Half the bottle was gone in about ten minutes, and he was still standing just inside his room. Which was pretty stupid, he supposed.

Unlike getting drunk, which was pretty necessary.

He put all the booze down and fucked around with his shitkickers until he got them off. Leathers, socks, muscle shirt followed the trend. When he was naked, he walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and got in with both bottles in his hands.

The rum lasted through the shampoo and soap-up routine. When he started the rinse cycle, he opened the Herradurra and had at it.

It wasn’t until he got out that he began to feel the effects, the sharp edges of his mood recontouring and sprouting the peach fuzz of oblivion. Even as the tide came in to claim him, though, he kept up with the drinking as he went dripping wet into his room.

He wanted to go down to the clinic and see about Xhex and John, but he knew that she was going to make it, and they were going to have to sort stuff out on their own. Besides, his mood was toxic, and God knew, they’d had enough of that going around between the pair of them back in the alley.

No need to share the wealth.

He let the duvet dry his body. Well, that and the heat seeping gently through the vents in the ceiling. The Herradurra lasted a little longer than the rum—probably because his stomach had gone SRO between all the booze and the big dinner. When the tequila was done for, he put the bottle on the bedside stand and arranged his limbs comfortably—which wasn’t tough. At this point, he could have been packed into a FedEx box and felt okay about it.

Closing his eyes, the room started to go on an easy little spin, as if his bed was right over a drain and everything was slowly funneling out.

You know… considering how well this was rolling along, he was going to have to remember the safe out. The pain in his chest was nothing but a dim echo; his blood hunger was quelled; his emotions were placid as a marble countertop. Even when he slept, he didn’t get this kind of respite—

The knock on his door was so soft, he thought it was just the beat of his heart. But then it repeated. And repeated again.

“Goddamn, fucking hell…” He jacked his head off the pillow and hollered, “
What
.”

When there was no answer, he shot up to his feet—“Whoa. Yeah, okay…
hello
.”

Catching himself on the bed stand, he knocked the empty Herradurra on the floor. Wow. His center of gravity was now split between the pinkie toe of his left foot and the outer piece of his right ear. Which meant his body wanted to go in two directions at once.

Getting to the door was like ice-skating. On a Tilt-A-Whirl. With a helicopter as headgear.

And the knob was a moving target, although how that door was shifting from side to side in its frame without breaking was a mystery.

Yanking the thing wide, he barked, “What!”

There was nobody there. But what he saw sobered him up.

Across the hall, hanging from one of the brass sconces, was his Wellsie’s red waterfall of a mating dress.

He looked to the left and saw no one. Then he looked to the right and saw… No’One.

Down at the far end of the hall, the robed female was going as fast as her limp would allow her, her frail body shifting awkwardly under those folds of rough cloth.

He probably could have caught her. But, shit, he’d obviously scared the crap out of the female, and if he’d been unfit for conversation at the dinner table, he was now unfitter-er.

See? He was even making up words now.

Plus he was buck-ass naked.

Weaving his way out into the corridor, he stood in front of the gown. The thing had obviously been cleaned with care and prepared for storage, its sleeves stuffed with tissue paper, its hanger one of those jobs that had a padded insert for the bodice.

As he looked at the dress, the effects of the alcohol made it seem as if the skirting was caught in a breeze, the bloodred fabric waving to and fro, the weight catching the light and reflecting it back at him at various angles.

Except he was the one moving, wasn’t he.

Reaching up, he lifted the hanger from where it had been slung over the sconce, and carried the gown inside his room, shutting his door behind them both. Over at the bed, he laid the dress out on the side that Wellsie had always preferred—the one farthest from the door—and carefully arranged the sleeves and the skirting, making minute adjustments until it was in perfect position.

Then he willed the lights off.

Lying down, he curled on his side, putting his head on the pillow opposite the one that would have supported his Wellsie’s head.

With a shaking hand, he touched the satin of the filled-out bodice, feeling the whalebones set within the fabric, the structure of the dress built to enhance a female’s gentle, curving body.

It was not as good as her rib cage. Just as the satin was not as good as her body. And the sleeves weren’t as good as her arms.

“I miss you.…” He stroked the indentation of the gown where her waist would have been—should have been. “I miss you so much.”

To think she had once filled this dress out. Had lived inside of it for a brief time, nothing but a camera shot of one evening in both their lives.

Why couldn’t his memories bring her back? They felt strong enough, powerful enough, a summoning spell that should have had her magically reinflating the gown.

Except she was alive only in his mind. Ever with him, always out of reach.

That’s what death was, he realized. The great fictionalizer.

And just as he would have reread a passage in a book, he remembered their mating day, the way he had stood so nervously to one side of his brothers, fidgeting with his satin robe and his jeweled belt. His blooded sire, Hharm, had yet to come around, the reconciliation that had arrived at the end of his life still a century in the making. But Darius had been there, the male looking over at him every second or two, no doubt because he’d been worried Tohr was going to pass the fuck out.

Which had made two of them.

And then Wellsie had shown.…

Tohr slipped his palm down to the satin skirting. Closing his eyes, he imagined her warm, vital flesh filling out the gown once again, her breath expanding and contracting the confines of the bodice, her long, long legs holding the skirting up off the floor, her red hair curling down to the black lace of the sleeves.

In his vision, she was real and she was in his arms, looking up at him from under her lashes as they had danced the minuet with the others. They’d both been virgins that night. He’d been a fumbling idiot. She’d known exactly what to do. And that was pretty much the way things had continued throughout their mating.

Although he’d gotten pretty goddamn good at the sex, pretty fucking fast.

They had been yin and yang, and yet exactly the same: He’d been a sergeant with the Brotherhood, she’d been the general at home, and together, they’d had it all.…

Maybe that was why it had happened, he thought. He’d had too much luck and so had she, and the Scribe Virgin had had to level that score.

And now here he was, empty just like the dress, because what had filled both him and this gown was gone.

The tears that came out of his eyes were silent, the kind that seeped out and soaked the pillow, traveling over the bridge of his nose and falling free to drop one after another like rain from the lip of a roof.

His thumb went back and forth over the satin, as if he were rubbing her hip as he had when they’d been together, and he moved his leg over so that it was on top of the skirting.

It wasn’t the same, though. There was no body underneath, and the fabric smelled like lemons, not her skin. And he was, after all, alone in this room that was not theirs.

“God, I miss you,” he said in a voice that cracked. “Every night. Every day…”

From across the dark bedroom, Lassiter stood in the corner next to the highboy, feeling like crap while Tohr whispered to the dress.