A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

She's fought them. She's fought us. Everyone, even herself, all her life.

He was certain she couldn't bear him healing the wound, but he could take three heartbeats to go to the nearest place to lift some basic first-aid supplies without notice, hoping the cause would balance the pilfering.

"David." She opened her eyes as he squatted there, one hand still holding her wrist, bloodstained knife in the other.

"It's all right. I'm here." Though he didn't read anything in her face, her lack of response mocked the words. "Maybe I'm making things worse, Mina," he said. "But for whatever reason, I can't seem to stay away from you. I've got to believe there's a reason for that."

He'd expected her to agree, or argue, but instead she gazed pensively down the long stretch of street, the desert beyond it. "If they do decide I have to die," she said, "you need to do it. Okay?"

"We're not talking about this."

When her other hand clamped over his, the ferocity, the sudden, contorted intensity of her ravaged face, surprised him. "Promise me. You say I matter to you." She shook her head as he opened his mouth. "Don't say it. I don't believe in love, and it doesn't matter anyway. But I know you're honorable. Promise me, when it comes to that, you'll... You're the only one I want to do it. The only one it's possible that I'll let do it without fighting and costing lives. You'll care, and you'll do it when it has to be done."

He couldn't stop himself anymore. He slid an arm around her, moving her so she was cradled in his lap, her injured hand pressed to her breast, smearing it with blood.

"I will be with you at the end and the beginning," he promised. "Angels say that to our fallen comrades. Okay?"

She stared at him, and it broke his heart, her obvious struggle to accept his words as truth, as if no one had ever made her a promise. So he made himself say the hated words to remove all doubt from her gaze. He suspected it was the closest thing to a declaration of love she would accept from him.

"If Jonah orders your death, I'll be the one to do it."

Fourteen

SHE laid her head on his chest. He tightened his arms around her, moved beyond words at the simple gesture of acceptance.

Lifting her, he rose and began to move toward the saloon. "There's a clean place in there for you to rest," he explained. She moved her head in a silent nod.

The door to one of the small upstairs rooms had apparently gotten stuck when pulled closed on the last day of filming. When he worked with the swollen wood and rusty hinges, fixing it with carpentry skills he'd remembered better than he'd expected, he'd found a utility cot, two folding chairs and a small pile of costumes and accessories starting to gather some dust. He suspected the cleanup team that came in after the film crew hadn't been able to get the door open, either, and so assumed the room that lay beyond it hadn't been used.

Since the cot was clean and had sheets, he laid her down on it, adjusted the covers to make her feel less exposed by her nakedness and sat on the edge. She tilted her head to look around the room, her expression distant, probing. A bit wary. She was back to being his witch again.

"Bad things happened here. What is this place?"

"It's a ghost town. Nevada has a small handful of them still standing. Most were abandoned when the gold was gone and nineteenth-century settlers moved on. But this place... disease hit it. Killed a lot of the settlers, enough that the rest were forced to move on, posting signs warning others against coming into the town. Looters came anyway, died here of the same disease, which was justice, since they killed some of the sick people to get their families to turn over the few valuables they had left. It was a long time ago, but you can feel the spirits that have lingered."

His gaze shifted as the thin layer of dirt on the floorboards stirred, a small ripple of acknowledgment. They both watched it settle.

"That's why you brought me here."

"I thought it would help."

"It did. I felt the dark energy when I was balancing. It confused me at first. But you don't belong here. How do you know so much about this place?"

He lifted a shoulder. "I explored the area after the Canyon Battle. Searching for any Dark Ones that went to ground. I liked the desert, the quiet of it, the open space. And I liked this place."

David stared down at her. The power of Mina's memory still haunted him, on a variety of levels, prompting him to continue, to say more than he'd intended. "Sometimes... I'm an angel, but the human part of me is drawn, for lack of a better word, to the remains of human spirits who don't understand why things happen the way they do."

"So this is your Graveyard." Mina swept her gaze over the room again, then back to his face. He had broken his promise at the Citadel, but maybe he was learning from his mistakes. She'd felt his frustration and distress when he couldn't help her the way he wanted, out on the street. He'd surprised her when he got past that to determine what she needed, and respected those needs more than his own desires. Now his voice, the steady, thoughtful tones, were soothing the bumpy terrain of her still-roused psyche, even as she sensed he could use some reassurance himself, though for what she didn't know. His skirmish with her as a dragon certainly wasn't the most intense battle he'd ever experienced. Regardless, it was moot, for reassurance wasn't something she knew how to offer.

"You didn't go to the Citadel to report to your captain, did you?"

"No. I needed to know more about you. To make sure I can protect you to the best of my ability."

She'd spent all her life guarding herself, hiding in the shadows, knowing that ignorance about her nature and capabilities was her best weapon in a world full of enemies. But for the first time, she had the hint that knowledge could be equally potent in the hand of an ally. From the way he looked at her, as well as how he'd dealt with her struggle in the street, she could tell he now understood about the darkness in her. Once he'd had a grasp on that knowledge, he'd saved her from his own folly, standing between her and a battalion of angels, his own Legion Commander. She'd never had an ally.

But that wasn't the only thing he'd learned. As he sat on the edge of her bed, so careful and still, she thought of the way he'd carried her up here. As if she were precious and fragile. There were shadows in his gaze as he looked at her, seeing something more than he'd seen before. As she looked more closely, she thought what was simmering beneath his calm facade wasn't distress. It was fury, barely banked. And not with her.

"And did what you find make me worth protecting?" she ventured. Though she didn't want to ask him the specifics, she was too fragile to deal with what that fury was. He already had the ability to make her feel things she'd never expected.

"You were that before I went there. I learned what I needed to learn. It just came at a much higher cost to you than it should have. I'm sorry."

"I don't understand you at all." Before he could respond to that with something she was sure would make him even more incomprehensible to her, she pressed on. "What did Jonah mean when he said I'm not your sister?"

David's features stilled. "He let you hear that. He didn't say it aloud."

"No."

"Son of a bitch." David rose, paced away. Since the skies didn't blacken and the building didn't crumble around them, Mina surmised that it was a general expletive, not specifically aimed at Jonah or his Maker. "This isn't about that."

"Are you sure?" she asked quietly.

His wing tips left trails in the dust on the scarred wood floors. She wondered if he would answer her, for the long moments before he did.

"You're right." David said at last, the two words barely audible. Then more strongly, "He's right, too. It is about her. It's about you as well. It's about anyone forced to accept a life so intolerable they view death with indifference." Turning to face her, he pinned her with that intense gaze that made her so uncomfortable, yet unable to look away.

"I didn't take a woman until I was twenty-seven."

That was a surprise, for she knew from Anna that angels, particularly the Legion, were very carn