She swallowed. Hard. Were Gwen and Chloe here, she knew they would echo that counsel. They’d taken such leaps, and look where it had gotten them. Who was to say it wouldn’t work for her?
There was only one way to find out. Nothing risked, nothing gained.
She drew a deep, fortifying breath. I love you, she whispered the words in her mind. She hadn’t had a lot of practice with those words, had only ever said them to Gram, and long ago to parents, both of whom had gone away. She wet her lips. “Adam, I—”
“Bloody hell, spare me whatever sniveling excuses you’re about to offer,” he snarled. “I didn’t frigging ask you to take the elixir, did I, Irish?”
Tears filled her eyes and her teeth clacked shut. Oh, she hadn’t needed that reminder! She was all too aware of that fact. And that he’d never said so much as one word about any kind of future together. Nor a single word that seemed to hint at any degree of commitment or emotion. Oh, there’d been sweet words in bed, even out of it, but none of those things to which a woman was so attuned, those seemingly casually spoken phrases that hinted at a tomorrow and a dozen tomorrows after that. No mentions of an upcoming holiday, or a place or thing he’d like her to see. No subtle words that were really subtle pledges, testing the water, seeking like response.
Not one.
Her declaration clotted in her throat. And suddenly she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit in the car with him one moment more.
She slammed on the brakes, jammed the car into park, and hopped out onto the road, walking blindly, scooping angrily at fog. The external environs too accurately mirrored her internal landscape: Nothing was clear, she couldn’t see ten steps ahead of her, couldn’t get a fix on where she’d just been.
Behind her, she heard his car door slam.
“Stop, Gabrielle! Come back here,” he commanded roughly.
“Just give me a few minutes alone, okay?”
“Gabrielle, we’re not on Keltar land,” he thundered. “Come back here.”
“Oh!” She stopped and turned abruptly. She hadn’t realized that. When had they left Keltar land?
“No,” a cool voice said as Darroc stepped out of the fog between them, “you’re not, are you?”
Then Darroc was turning toward Adam, and she heard a sudden, sharp, short burst of automatic gunfire.
And Adam was flinching, jerking, great splashes of red spreading across that cream fisherman’s sweater, his dark head flying back, arms outflung. Falling back, going down.
And Hunters were closing in all around her.
She felt their talons on her skin, felt a broken sob clawing its way up her throat.
And then she fainted and felt no more.
Ah, ka-lyrra, I look at you and you make me want to live a man’s life with you. To wake with you and sleep with you, argue with you and make love with you, to get a silly human job and take walks in the park and live so tiny beneath such a vast sky.
But I will never stay with another human woman and watch her die. Never.
—FROM THE (GREATLY REVISED) BLACK EDITION OF
THE O’CALLAGHAN Book of the Sin Siriche Du
23
Gabby raised the plastic shade over the plane window and stared out into the dark night sky.
Alone, hence visible, she’d had no choice but to book a flight, putting it on her credit card. The only flight available had been the red-eye, and she had three lengthy layovers to look forward to, in Edinburgh, London, and Chicago.
When she’d regained consciousness, she’d been lying in the road.
Alone. With a sick, horrid feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Watching the man she loved being brutally shot had been the purest hell.
She’d heard the bullets ripping into his body with dull, wet sounds, she’d seen his blood spurting, and—if it had indeed been only an illusion courtesy of the queen, as she prayed it had been—the look of pain and shock on Adam’s face had been stunningly, horrifyingly real.
She’d forced herself up on shaky legs, trembling, desperately looking around for someone to tell her that it hadn’t really happened. That the queen hadn’t really let him die.
But there’d been no one there to reassure her. Only thick, swirling fog and aching silence.
Apparently, Faery was done with her.
There wasn’t even any blood anywhere; no sign that anyone had ever been on that road but her.
So what, she’d raged, shaking her fist at the dense bank of clouds above her, I don’t even get to know what happened? That’s bullshit. If you think I’m just walking away without explanations, you are so wrong! Where is Adam? What happened? Show him to me! Tell me he’s okay!