Текст книги "The Shadows"
Автор книги: J. R. Ward
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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 42 страниц)
FIFTY-ONE
Selena’s hands were stiff.
Standing at the counter in the Brotherhood’s kitchen, she tried to open a can of Coke and found that her fingers refused to grip the tab right. Instead of pulling the metal lip free, they skipped over the top.
As all kinds of warnings went off in her head, she reined in the panic, and reminded herself that she’d spent three hours in the cold without any gloves on.
Making a couple of loose fists, she blew into them; then shook her arms. Cracked her knuckles. Tried not to start looking for other problems elsewhere in her body.
People who had her disease could still get minor-league frostbite.
She faced off at the can again, her heart pounding as she watched from a great distance while she approached the pop-top once more. She viewed her hands and fingers with dispassion, as if they were attached to someone else’s wrists, moved by somebody else’s brain.
Crack! Fizz!
She exhaled and had to steady herself on the granite.
“You okay?”
Covering up the relief, she smiled as Trez came in from the dining room. “Just getting some soda. I’m thirsty.”
“How’s your stomach?”
“Very well. How’s yours?”
As he came up to her, she had the sense that he was hiding something from her as well. And it was a shock to discover that in spite of her big living-the-truth speech after she’d come out of the latest Arrest, she wanted him to keep his secret, just like she wanted to keep hers: They’d had such a wonderful night; the last thing she needed was to ruin it with heavy conversation that would just expose problems that couldn’t be solved, and questions that weren’t going to be answered until it was too late.
“Tum’s just fine.”
She forced another smile. “Would you like to head upstairs?”
“That’d be great.”
Picking up her soda, she took the palm he offered her and went out with him through the dining room and into the foyer. The house was essentially empty, the Brothers off working, Wrath seeing civilians, Beth and Marissa and Mary at Safe Place, Bella babysitting L.W. and Nalla up in the new nursery suite, the doggen attending to their duties.
All of this was going to continue, she thought, when she was gone. All of the doors opening and shutting, menus planned and consumed, people living their lives.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she wanted to stay with them. She didn’t want to go on to what might well be absolute nothingness, an utter unplugging of who she was and what mattered to her and how she thought and felt.
Gone. Nothing left.
She had been trained—no, programmed, really—to believe in the afterlife, and serve the Mother of the Race, and adhere to traditions she had neither established herself nor volunteered for. And she had done all of that without question.
Coming to the end of her life, she wished she had asked and challenged and had a voice.
So much wasted time.
As she started up the stairs with Trez, she found herself wondering why, if there was a Fade and people continued up there . . . why had the Scribe Virgin demanded that everything on Earth be recorded in the Sanctuary? Why all of those volumes and volumes of lives lived . . . if after death, the people still existed only in a different form?
You had to preserve only that which could be lost.
Her heart started to pound, a sudden terror taking hold—
“Oh, shit,” Trez breathed.
Clearly, he’d read her mind. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s probably just nonsense—”
He threw out his free hand for the banister and weaved.
“Trez! What’s wrong?”
“Shit. Fuck.” He looked over at her, but his eyes were unfocused. “Can you help me to the room? I can’t see—”
“Dearest Virgin Scribe, let me get Doc Jane!”
“No, no, it’s just a migraine.” He steadied himself with help from her. “I don’t have a lot of time. I have to get upstairs to a dark room and lie down.”
“Let me call Doc Jane—”
“No, as you remember, I’ve gotten these all my life. I know what’s coming. It’s going to be hell for eight hours, but it can’t really hurt me.”
Selena tried to take as much of his weight as she could while they hobbled up to the second-story landing and then crossed over to the door to the third floor. His big body moved slowly, and at some point, he just gave up on his vision entirely, those eyes of his shutting.
Somehow, she got him up to his room and down on the bed.
“Dark is going to help,” he said, putting his forearm over his face. “And could you bring a wastepaper basket over?”
Hustling around, she turned off all the lights except the one in the bathroom and made sure there was a receptacle right next to his head. “Do you want me to take your clothes off?”
“Okay. Yeah.”
It was not exactly the experience she’d been banking on, but then again, her mood had gotten ruined even before this. And as she did the deed, she was oh, so careful with him, helping him with his jacket, then shucking his boots and socks, and doing away with his slacks.
“I’ma keep the shirt on. I just don’t have the energy for it.” He captured her hand and tugged her into a sit by his hip. “Not the way I’d planned on ending tonight.”
She kissed his palm. “What else can I do for you?”
“Just let me lie here for the next six to eight hours. And don’t worry, like I said, all of this, from the headache to the nausea, is normal. Unfortunately.”
“What causes this?”
“Stress.”
“Do you want me to call iAm?”
“Shit, no. He has too much on his plate already. Actually, I think he’s why I got it.”
“Is there something wrong with him?”
As Trez fell silent, she wanted to press, but he was ill.
“You don’t have to go,” he said.
“I don’t want to disturb you.”
“You won’t.” He rubbed her hand with his own, and his lips, which were the only part of his face showing, broke into a smile. “I love your hands. I’ve told you that, right? They’re so smooth and soft . . . long fingers . . .”
As she stayed with him and he ran his fingertips from the inside of her wrist to the base of her fingers, she felt her panic melt away. Nothing felt strange in those joints anymore. So it definitely had been the cold.
A little later he let out a soft moan, his mouth flattening, his body tensing up. And then he began to swallow.
“I need you to go,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry—I don’t want you to see this. . . .”
“Are you sure—”
“Please. Now.”
It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she got to her feet. “I’m in the house, okay? I’m not leaving. Call me if you—”
He jerked over onto his side and reached for the bucket. Pausing over the thing, he opened his eyes and pegged her with a frazzled stare. “You need to leave now.”
“I love you,” she said, rushing for the door. “I wish I could help.”
She wasn’t sure he’d even heard her as she slipped out, and just as she shut the door, the sounds of him retching made her wince.
For a split second, she thought she might camp out in the hall beyond his room. But then, as she debated where she was going to sit on the floor, she realized that she couldn’t get her grip off the doorknob.
Her palm had frozen on the brass.
* * *
“Of course I am not quitting. Don’t be daft.”
As Assail addressed his cousins in the kitchen of his glass house, he was in a vicious mood—and sinking even deeper into anger upon Ehric’s inquiry.
“But the King—”
“Has no right to interfere in matters of commerce flowing to humans.” He conveniently avoided thinking or commenting upon the conflict-of-interest issue. “And I have no intention of complying with that order of his.”
“So how do we proceed?”
“He will have us followed. That is what I would do were I he. I want the two of you to go activate the warning to my colleague. We’ll suspend operations briefly and reconnoiter.”
“Aye.”
After the pair of them left, he stayed in his kitchen so that whatever Brothers had been stationed around his house would have him in plain view. Taking out his vial of cocaine, he discovered it was, once again, nearly empty, but at least there was enough to tide him over.
When he finished partaking, he went into his study on the other side of his home. It too had glass windows, and he turned on the desk lamp so that they could keep a good eye on him. Sitting down, he looked at the piles of papers he’d made. Investment accounts. Brokerage accounts. Monies in the U.S. and abroad.
Growing, growing, growing.
The fortune at his disposal had turned another corner about a month ago, the laundered money from the Caymans transferred into more legal accounts in the U.K. and Switzerland.
So much, and all of it accumulating interest, dividends, and appreciation.
When he had started in the business of drug dealing, shortly after he had come to America from the Old Country about a year ago, he had already been doing very well for himself even by his standards. Now, there was double that amount in his various accounts.
Picking up a random sheaf of papers, he looked at his month-end report. The daily one in his computer was even more recent.
In spite of his largesse, the idea that Wrath was getting in the way of his pursuits infuriated him to his marrow.
Just not for a reason he would admit to anyone.
Without this . . . he had nothing.
What had started as an extension of his European businesses had grown into his raison d’être, the sole purpose he had in his life, the only drive that got him out of bed in the evening, and dressed, and out the door.
To be fair, he’d always enjoyed making money.
But ever since last winter . . .
Cursing, he leaned back in his leather chair and put his head in his hand. Then without looking, he reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and took out his phone.
He had memorized Sola’s number long ago.
But he hadn’t called it. Not since she had moved away from Caldwell to Miami with her grandmother. Not since she had left here to get out of exactly the kind of criminal life he was leading.
Going into his phone, he went to the numerical dial pad. As he had so many times before, he punched in the sequence of ten numbers, one after another, his fingertip finding and following the pattern he knew by heart.
No, he hadn’t called her. But on a regular basis he did this: ten numbers that were anything but random to him, punched into his phone . . . and cleared away without him having hit “send.”
If the King took his livelihood away? Then he was going to have fucking nothing to do but stew in the fact that the one woman he wanted was utterly unobtainable.
Woman. Not female.
She was human, not vampire. Hell, she didn’t even know that vampires existed.
And therein lay the catch. Even if he broke out of the drug dealing? It wasn’t like he could go down to Miami, show up on her doorstep, and be all like, Hey! Let’s pick up where we were!
Not going to happen—because sooner or later, his species was going to come out and then where were they going to be?
For some reason, the stillness and silence of his glass house sank in, reminding him exactly how alone he was—and would be if he stopped his drugging. Hell, his cousins were not going to be content with sitting around and mourning a female they were not in love with—he would lose them, too.
God, he was rather pathetic, wasn’t he.
More to the point, what was he going to do?
With the cocaine sizzling in his veins, his brain made a sudden A + B = C calculation that was based on a totally . . . preposterous idea.
Which nonetheless offered him a rather stunning solution to all this.
Straightening in his seat, he frowned and looked around the room, his eyes going on a wander as his brain pick, pick, picked apart the plan. When he could find no fault, he cleared Sola’s digits from the screen of his phone and dialed Ehric. When he got voice mail, he figured they were probably still dematerialized.
A second later, his phone rang and he answered, not bothering with a greeting. “Have you left the symbol for him yet?”
Ehric’s reply was muffled by the wind down by the river. “We’ve just arrived.”
“Wait for him. Do not reveal yourself.”
Assail continued to give instructions, and at the end of it all, Ehric’s response was perfect: “As you wish.”
Assail ended the call and sank back into the chair. Taking a deep breath, he cursed. This was going to be a lot of work. But it was the only solution he seemed to have.
Plus, the fact that this would consume him for the appreciable future? Was exactly what he wanted. And if it didn’t work? Well, then he’d be dead and he wouldn’t care about anything anymore.
Not even the woman he longed for with every inch of his body and all of his black, misbegotten heart.
Her mother had gotten it right with that name of hers.
Marisol had indeed stolen his soul.
FIFTY-TWO
iAm had not intended for Trez’s words to sink in any more than the cold breeze had when they’d been standing in the courtyard. He had planned to go inside, eat something fast, and forget that whole interaction had occurred. Go about his night. Head over to the clubs and the restaurant. Push papers, take control, make some decisions that were concrete and solid.
Instead, he was stuck in the foyer, staring up at the three-story-high ceiling that had been painted by some great artist. The subject matter was, he supposed, inspirational: heroes on venerable steeds, fighting in the clouds, heavenly warriors who were brave and strong and on the side of the righteous.
But all that glory wasn’t why he’d gone into pause mode.
Trez’s destiny was a house of cards, a delicate, tricky thing that had had to be managed all of both their lives. Every move iAm took had to be careful, deliberate, and calculated with the goal of survival.
His brother’s.
He was a centuries-old virgin because of it.
Hell, he hadn’t even looked at a female, like, ever.
Whether Trez had been banging them in the clubs, or throwing porn up on the TV, or talking about what he’d done all over his desk, in the back of his car, outside in the fucking parking lot, iAm had never had any interest in any of it.
He’d been a flatline motherfucker.
Mother-not-fucker, as it were.
And yeah, he’d tried on the whole gay thing for size, wondering if maybe he was attracted to men and males.
Nope.
It had gotten to the point where, if it weren’t for the fact that he washed them every night, he’d have wondered whether or not he had any balls.
Ask yourself what’s going to be left for you after I’m gone. If you’re honest, I don’t think you’re going to like the answer any more than I do.
Without being aware of having come to a decision, iAm turned on his heel and went out through the vestibule. On the front stoop of the massive gray mansion, he stood in the wind . . .
. . . and then took flight.
On the journey to his destination, flashes of the past battered at him: Trez escaping from the palace. iAm being held until he promised to bring the male back—which had been the last thing he’d actually intended on doing. The mad hunt.
The cabin on Black Snake Mountain.
As iAm resumed his form, he had a moment of straight-up nausea as he took in the ragged, weathered structure with its rough vertical siding and its cedar shingles and that rock chimney which extruded from the roofline like a bad tooth. It was . . . exactly the same. Not even kind of the same, with different windows or shrubbery growing or trees that had fallen or overgrown.
No, for a split second he wasn’t sure whether this was years ago or right now.
Shaking himself, he walked to the front door. The hinges creaked as he opened things up, and at least he was better prepared for what he saw.
Precisely the same. From the placement of the no-frills furniture, to the old-fire smell, to the drafts that wheedled their way through the walls.
He closed the door behind him and walked around, his boots making the rough-cut floorboards clap and groan. Over by the river-rock hearth, he found a generous supply of wood—guess the last hunters who had used the place had been good little helpers and ready to pay shit forward.
His hands shook as he laid logs on the andirons and shoved pine needles underneath. Taking out the lighter he kept on him thanks to having worked with a lot of temperamental gas cooktops, he lit things, fanned them, got the flames up and rolling.
He told himself it was a waste of time and heat. She wasn’t going to come. There was no way she was going to come.
He was just going to hang here for a half hour or so, play witness to his brain sinking into some dark, dangerous territory, and then put out the fire and head back to Caldie.
The clubs. He would go to the clubs first, and then—
The sound of that creaky door opening made him stiffen.
maichen’s scent flooded the interior.
Cranking his head around, he lifted his eyes. There in the doorway, she stood in the flesh, her robes flapping in the cold wind rushing in from behind her.
She was both a ghost . . . and soul-shatteringly vital.
And as he looked at her, he knew exactly why they had both come.
FIFTY-THREE
Selena took the long underground tunnel to the training center slowly. It was a case of one foot after the other, from the base of the short stairs that led into the subterranean passageway to the door that opened into the office closet. Every time she had to enter a passcode or push her way through a jamb, she waited for the reconsideration to hit her. The turnaround to happen. The back-upstairs to be made manifest.
Instead, she ended up not just emerging into Tohr’s work space, but going through its glass door and coming out into the concrete corridor beyond.
The clinic was about thirty yards down, that collection of doors coming after all kinds of alternate destinations presented themselves: weight rooms, gyms, locker rooms.
Her feet didn’t stop at any of those.
No, they took her right to the one place she had resolved never to return to voluntarily.
Her knock was quiet, an opportunity for a no-reply either because nobody was there (score!) or they were busy helping someone else (sad, but a relief, too) or so engrossed in work they didn’t hear her (which was like leaving a voice mail for someone you didn’t really want to speak with anyway).
Doc Jane opened up. And did a whoa-hey! recoil. “Selena, hi.”
She lifted her palm up lamely. “Hi.”
There was a pause. And then the doctor said, “Is this a social thing or do you need . . .”
“You’re probably pretty busy, right.”
“Actually, after having been slammed for about three days straight, I’ve just been catching up on medical records.” The female eased back. “Come on in if you like.”
Selena braced herself. Stepped over the threshold. Tried desperately not to look at that exam table.
Meanwhile, Doc Jane went over and sat down on a rolling stool, folding her white coat around herself and crossing her legs. The scrubs she had on underneath were blue. Her Crocs were red.
Her eyes were forest green. And grave.
Selena started to walk around, but everywhere she looked, all she saw were glass-fronted stainless-steel cabinets with torture instruments in them. Rattled, she eyed the door to the corridor, which was shutting slowly, silently, on its own.
Like the lid of a coffin.
“Hey,” Doc Jane said, “I was just going to go stretch my legs. You want to join me for a couple of laps around the gym?”
“Oh, God, yes. Thank you.”
The pair of them went out together, heading down passed a number of doors and many, many yards of corridor. When they got to their destination, Doc Jane opened the heavy steel panel and turned on the caged ceiling lights.
“I know it’s weird, but I love this place,” Jane said. “The wood with that beautiful honey-yellow color and everything smells like floor cleaner. Which is kinda nuts, because I hate chemicals in the air or on things.”
As the doctor started them walking around the far edge of the basketball courts, Selena was pretty sure that the pace was kept slow on purpose.
They’d made it down the short side, under the hoop, and through the left turn to head along the bleachers before Selena said anything.
“I think . . .” Tears came to her eyes and she realized she was terrified.
“We have all the time you need,” Doc Jane said softly.
Selena wiped under both eyes. “I’m afraid to talk about it. Like if I do . . .”
“Are you having some symptoms?”
She couldn’t speak. But found herself nodding. “I think . . . yes.”
Doc Jane made an mmm-hmmm sound. “Do you want to tell me what they are?”
Selena put out her hand, the one that had gotten frozen on the doorknob, and flared her fingers wide. As she flexed things open and closed, her mind went on a wild ride of Are they worse? Are they better? Are they the same?
“Your hands?” When all she did was nod again, Doc Jane asked, “Anywhere else?”
At least this time she could shake her head.
“Do you remember,” the doctor said, “when an attack came before, whether or not you had any prodromals?”
“What does that mean?”
“Any sort of advance warning?”
Selena brushed at her eyes again and wiped her hands on the pants Trez had taken off her body no more than a half hour before. With a surge of agony, she wanted to go back to that moment, back to the time before her disease had started talking again.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember ever noticing anything. But before . . . I used to ignore it as much as I could. I didn’t want to think about it.” She glanced over at the doctor. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come back down to see you, you know, after I . . .”
Doc Jane batted at the air. “God, girl, don’t worry about it. There are no hard-and-fast rules, and you have to do what feels right. People need to direct their own lives.”
“Is there anything we can do for me? Anything . . . we should do?”
The healer took her time in answering. “I’m going to be straight with you, okay?”
Ah, yes. Nothing was available. “I’d appreciate it.”
“For the last forty-eight hours, there have been a lot of people searching for solutions. Manny’s reached out to his human contacts. I’ve talked with Havers. Rehv headed up to the symphath territory—and I got a text from iAm saying that he went to the s’Hisbe.”
“Nothing?”
“Havers is only aware of patients who struggle with localized episodes, like arthritis flare-ups that hit hands or knees, hips or shoulders. Nothing with the systemic symptoms as severe as you present with. He treats the patients with anti-inflammatories and painkillers—even though he’s tried some human drugs, he hasn’t had any breakthroughs of note when it comes to prevention or cure. And neither the symphaths nor the Shadows have any familiarity with the issue.”
Management. That was the best she could hope for.
“Can you tell me how much time I have?”
Doc Jane shook her head. “I can check your inflammatory markers. But I don’t really have anything to compare them to—and the attacks come on fast, from what I understand. That suggests a sudden surge, like an earthquake.”
They kept going around the gym, heading down, down, down to the distant end, where there was a door marked, EQUIPMENT ROOM AND PT.
“I guess we should go back and check my . . . you know.” Selena circled the air next to her with her hand. “Inflammation things.”
“We can if you want. I think the important thing is that you do whatever makes you feel supported and calmer.”
“Okay. All right.”
A moment later, she felt Doc Jane take her hand and squeeze. And as she looked over, she was shocked to see the emotion on the healer’s face. Such stark sadness, a pain that went deep.
Selena tugged the other female to a halt. “This is not your fault.”
Those forest-green eyes went around the cavernous expanse of the gym, not landing anywhere. “I just . . . I want to help. I want to give you the rest of the many, many years you’re due. I want you to live. And the fact that I can’t find a solution . . . I’m so sorry, Selena. I’m so sorry—and I’m going to keep fighting. I’m going to keep trying, looking. . . .”
It seemed liked the most natural thing in the world to put her arms around the woman and hold on.
“I’m so sorry,” Doc Jane choked out.
Later, Selena would realize . . .
. . . it was the first of her good-byes.
* * *
maichen had struggled to find the cabin. Black Snake Mountain was easy enough. East side of the peak was also not a problem. And the scent of the fire should have been simple because even when she was in molecular form, her sense of smell was strong, and there was nothing clearer than smoke on a Fall night. Even so, it had been difficult. She had traveled through the air, searching, searching. . . .
She had been on the verge of turning around and going back, an aching sadness taking hold within her—but then that smoke had come upon the breeze and she had crisscrossed over its trail, tracking the strength of the scent, zeroing in on its source.
And there was the cabin he had spoken of.
She had Shadowed up to the thing, staying in her energy form, shooting over the scruffy ground, going around the small, simple structure—reassuring herself that it was, in fact, him and him alone.
Taking form, she approached the door and knocked. When he didn’t answer, she opened the way in.
He was by the fire, crouched down, tending to the flames.
Instantly, his big body rose to a stand, the flickering light behind him creating an aura.
As she stepped inside, the wind caught the door and flipped it closed, the slam making her jump.
“It’s cold in here,” he said roughly. “I’m trying to get it warmer.”
Seeing him was enough to make her completely unaware of her surroundings. She could have been in a desert, on the ocean, off to the polar ice caps and nothing would have registered.
“Come closer.” He beckoned her with his hand. “To the fire.”
Her body obeyed him without hesitation, although it was to him she went, not the flames. And as she stepped beside him, he moved back as if he didn’t want to crowd her.
“Let me get you something to sit on.”
Before she could tell him not to bother himself, he went over to a bedding platform and pulled the soft pad off the top along with some rough blankets. With sure hands, he arranged everything and then once again moved away.
The sex rolling off of him was irresistible.
As cool as he was trying to be, as respectful as he was being, she could sense the need in him.
And yes, she realized . . . this was indeed why she had risked so much to come here.
She wanted him, too. Even though it was going to create a crisis. Even though it was irresponsible. Even though it made no sense.
She had followed the rules all her life. But there was no responsibility or duty that was even half as captivating as he was—and her time for what relative freedom she had was running out.
Lowering herself onto the bedding, she crossed her legs under her heavy robing. “Please. Sit with me?”
“You sure you want me to.” He loomed over her, his dark face absorbing that playful light.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He lowered himself to his knees, his heavy-lidded eyes moving over the robing that covered her from crown of head to sole of foot.
“Will you let me see you,” he said in a deep voice.
maichen swallowed hard. Then she lifted her hands to the mesh that covered her face—but it was to hold the masking in place. “I am afraid.”
“Of what?”
What if he didn’t like what he saw?
“I already know you’re beautiful,” he said, as if he read her mind.
“How?”
He touched the center of his large chest. “I see you in here. I know you . . . in here. You are very beautiful to me, no matter what you look like.”
Acutely aware of everything that she hadn’t told him about herself, she whispered, “We do not know each other.”
“Does that matter to you?”
“No.”
“Me, neither.” He frowned and looked into the fire. “The last couple of nights, with everything going on with my brother—it’s been an eye-opener. I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to get on with living, instead of keep going in this neutral-zone nightmare, waiting for the ax to fall.”
“Is your brother . . . is he going to come back to the Territory ever? They say . . . he refuses his duty, even though the Queen has decreed after the mourning . . .”
She had to stop. The anxiety was too great.
She was supposed to come unto her mate untouched.
That was not going to happen.
But what could the Anointed One do to her? They were both being forced into the mating, and tradition dictated that he was essentially her property.
A protest from him would be like a chair making an argument against being sat upon.
iAm shook his head. “After Trez loses Selena, all bets are off—and frankly, that Princess? She isn’t going to want what’s left of him, not unless she’s into necrophilia. He’s going to be dead whether he’s walking or in a grave.”
maichen hung her head. She had never not known about the mating that awaited her. It had been part of her rearing, the expectation that the Anointed One was destined by the stars to be her impregnating mate—and that with him, through him, she would ensure her mother’s bloodline continued to rule over the s’Hisbe.
Preordained. Written in the sacred stars.
She had accepted what was her due the same way she had accepted everything about her life, from her station to her loneliness to the perennial sense that she was missing out on so much through no fault or choice of her own.
She cleared her throat. “I would imagine that the Princess would let him go, if she could. She would not want anyone to suffer, most especially one who had lost a female of worth.”
“Do you know her?”
“I have attended her.”
“What’s she like?” Before she could answer, he put up his hand. “Actually, I don’t need to know.”
“I think she would say that she is as trapped as your brother. I think . . . she is in a jail of destiny, too.”
He rubbed his face. “That actually makes me hate her less. I guess I never thought about what it’s been like for her.”
“She was told of her destiny just as he was. She has not chosen any of this.”
iAm gave a short laugh. “Maybe they can tell the Queen to go screw. If both of them refuse to play the game, it could be all over. Not that it’s going to save my brother from losing his love.”
“But the stars have revealed their destinies.”
That dark stare swung back to her. “Do you believe that? I mean, do you actually think that the alignment of a bunch of disinterested planets a million light-years away should be used as a map for people’s lives? I don’t.”
