The Celestial Kiss (33 page)

Hearing him say it felt like having a weight removed from my chest, and I collapsed into him a little more.  He was worn down, exhausted, and paper thin from all the grief of the past few weeks.  He’d lost his father and his mother, and now his brother had run off too.  But the joy on his face was pure, untainted.  I held fast to him and he held tightly onto me, while we tried to figure out what exactly this meant for us.  “All those years that your father…
Arich
… kept you locked away…everything that Xian ever did or said to you…it was because they were scared of you, Lilith.”

I laughed, because it was a ridiculous thought.  About as ridiculous as being descended from a crazy witch who had eaten the hearts of a werewolf and a vampire so that she could obtain the powers of both.  That made me laugh more, and I laughed so hard that James eventually joined in too.  I had to wipe away a tear when our laughter finally subsided. 

We walked together into the maze, to the courtyard where we had lay at the start of a storm not even seven days ago, something beautiful kindling between us.  We lay exactly as we had that night, watching the tree branches sway and the clouds pass us by without a care in the world.  “You’re not dying.”  James repeated, kissing my cheek and pulling away just enough to see my face.  “Because my bite had no effect on you.  We aren’t bound.  You aren’t bound to anything, or anybody, Lilith.”  I didn’t understand why he kept saying my name.  I liked the thrill of it, but something about its implication I wasn’t fond of.  “You can do and be whoever you want.  You cannot be controlled, not by anybody.  You don’t need to be afraid anymore, ever, because you are the zenith.  You’re as free as it gets.”

His smile was sad, despite his best effort to make it appear otherwise.  He couldn’t keep it out of his eyes, which just might be permanently scarred from all the carnage he’d witnessed recently.  I grabbed him and held on tight, because I didn’t want to let go, not now or ever.  I closed my eyes, trying to understand the gravity of what this meant, but thought only of Janna screaming in anguish.  Smoke billowed still, black against the clouds as the fire had spread to the neighboring trees and carried to us on the wind.

Xian could be anywhere, perhaps even watching us from just a few yards away.  I had been right when I’d realized he needed me alive for something, and that something was power.  He would not let it go so easily, like smoke slipping through a crisp autumn sky.  But the thought didn’t scare me—at least, not as much as it had just a week ago. 

I was something beyond his control, something he could never be.  I was the thing that could control the man that nightmares were made of, the girl who could keep even the most powerful of men from absolute rule.  I had been all along.  No, there was nothing to fear…not from Xian.

“You gave me my freedom already.”  I pulled away so that I could see him and squeezed his hand.  “I was free all along, fighting for something I already had.”

“What now?”  James asked.  It seemed like a funny question, coming from the King.  But he wasn’t the king to me.  To me, he was the thing I’d been fighting for, the one that had helped foster those things in me, those feelings of love and acceptance, of another and myself.  He was all I wanted.

“I don’t know.”  I admitted.  “But whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

“As boyfriend and girlfriend?” A playful smile tugged at his lips.  Despite his grief, he looked lighter than I’d ever seen him. 

“As the King and the woman who loves him.”

James folded me into him and pressed a kiss to my forehead.  “As King and Queen.  Wherever we go from here, we go together.”

I let my eyes close, relishing the weightlessness of this feeling.  A whole new world of problems had been presented to me, Julius was dying, and Janna was a disaster.  There was a stranger in the house who claimed he was my brother, a vampire who we had no idea what to do with, and a mountain of ashes miles away that had been people once, both good and bad.  The vampires were running loose, Xian had escaped, and there were dozens of women and children and men inside awaiting their marching orders.  But for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t worried.  We stayed there, barely moving, barely speaking for hours, until the moon danced and the stars cast a pattern around us.  Because for the first time in a long while, I had nothing but time.