“I touched you. It didn’t affect me like it does the Scourge revenants. It burned, but it was bliss unlike anything I’d ever known. I would sacrifice anything…my very life…to touch you again.”
She swallowed thickly when she heard how his voice vibrated with emotion. It wasn’t only Saint’s voice that came to mind, it was Kavya’s. Damn. It would be so much easier if Teslar were a simple, animalistic killer instead of the complex, dangerous creature he was.
She nodded at his reddened palms.
“I still harmed you. If you can’t touch me, what do you want from me?” she demanded through clenched teeth.
“To look upon you would be sufficient, I think.”
Christina rolled her eyes, breaking their stare.
“If you start quoting poetry, I’m going to be sick.”
He smiled, slow and brilliant. The sight snagged her gaze, reeling her in. A dull, unbearable ache swelled in her breast, a painful longing for Saint. She dragged her eyes from Teslar and started walking toward the passageway. To call Teslar dangerous was like calling him cute. Words just weren’t sufficient to describe the impact of him.
She needed to get the hell out of that chamber.
“You will be my end, Christina.”
She turned, her mouth gaping open. Emotion so deep she couldn’t fully wrap understanding around it swamped her awareness when she saw that Teslar’s face was wet with tears, despite his radiant smile. Something passed between them, potent and unnamable.
“I told you I wasn’t what you thought,” he said. “I wasn’t what I thought. Touching you taught me that. I want to thank you for making me see the truth, Christina.”
“You can fake tears,” she said accusingly, her voice shaking. She didn’t know how she knew that fact, but she did. Just as she also knew, on some bone-deep level, that what Teslar said next was true, as well.
“I can. But I’m not doing it now.”
The energy level in the chamber seemed to grow and thicken by the second. She’d never before been in the presence of magic, but she knew it firsthand in that charged moment.
“Christina.”
She spun around, her entire body trembling.
“Saint,” she cried out, her voice cracking in both relief and anxiety at seeing him.
He stood just inside the entrance, his heartluster drawn, a still, eerie expression on his face as he pinned Teslar with his stare. He made a beckoning gesture with his hand and Christina moved. Saint pulled her behind him when she approached. She glanced around the arm that held his heartluster, wondering what Teslar would do.
She didn’t know if she was surprised or not when Teslar didn’t draw his weapon.
“So. You have finally won, Saint,” Teslar said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Saint rasped.
Christina sensed the brittle tension in Saint’s coiled muscles. She reached out and touched his waist, soothing him instinctively.
Teslar nodded toward Christina. His cheeks were damp with tears, but he wore a strangely calm, sublime expression, given the circumstances.
“You possess what I would die for.” Teslar’s words resonated in the subterranean chamber.
“Speak plainly or shut up,” Saint snapped telepathically. “You sound like Kavya, speaking in riddles.”
Saint was wary of his clone’s intentions, but he’d also never seen Teslar look this way, precisely. He seemed dazed…transported.
Teslar shrugged, his eyes still glued to Christina. “Kavya told me that one day, if I was fortunate, I would encounter something that would forever change my destiny, and in order to have that thing, I would have to sacrifice. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t understand. When I first saw Christina, I only thought of possessing her for my own.” He held up his palms, and Saint saw they were blistered and red. “Then I touched her, and found I wasn’t worthy enough to do so.
“It’s not what I had thought…my own end,” Teslar whispered in Saint’s mind, his gaze latched on Christina. “It beckons to me.”
Christina stirred behind him. He sensed her confusion…shared in it. Teslar’s behavior was strange, but also…familiar to Saint somehow, as though he’d read a passage in a play long ago, and a scene from that play was suddenly being enacted in real life, and he—Saint—was the main character, a crisis of doubt upon him.