The Evolution of Fae and Gods (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 3)

I don’t know much about Rune, but I know any man driven by love and deprived of it would be inherently dangerous. Throw in the fact he’s the god of Life, and someone was going to pay.

“No,” Carrick agrees with a shake of his head. His eyes darken once more, but his pupils are lit with fire. “He summoned Eireann to him and she appeared right before me, her neck already in his hand. I remember her terrified eyes as she had no clue what was going on. She was staring at me when Rune snapped her neck and killed her.”

“Oh God,” I moan as I jerk my hand hard away from Carrick. It goes to my heart, which is pounding with terror and pain for Carrick’s loss. “That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever heard.”

Carrick doesn’t move toward me, but merely shakes his head slowly. “No… it’s not the most awful thing you’ve heard.”

Bile rises in my throat, and I have no clue why. Haven’t I heard the worst? Carrick was so very deeply in love with a woman whom he was willing to sacrifice everything for, and she was murdered right before his eyes.

No wonder he drew the line between us that it could never work.

No wonder he was going to ascend without a backward glance.

“When we were dancing a bit ago,” Carrick says, and the abrupt change of subject startles me. “You said there were a lot of things about me that you no longer wondered about.”

I nod sluggishly because that seemed like a lifetime ago. I was expressing my love for Carrick, but now I know he can never return it. He had his one shot, and it ended in murder and heartbreak that couldn’t be healed.

Reaching into his back pocket, Carrick pulls out a piece of paper folded into fourths. In the soft outdoor lighting and glow of city lights, he unfolds it, and I recognize one of my drawings.

He holds it out for me to see, and I study the charcoal sketch I had done of Carrick’s face months ago. I had pulled it from my journal and crumpled it up, then regretted it and tried to smooth it out, but it was smudged.

Still, it was clear in most places, portraying the man as I remembered him as at our very first meeting at Fallon’s gallery.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I looked at you this way the first time we met?” he murmurs.

I stare at the drawing. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. I’d become so enamored of Carrick, so caught up in my own dramas, that I had forgotten there was a time I was convinced he hated me.

And yes… in that drawing, he had hated me.

“You captured me accurately,” Carrick says, and that hurts. “I mean… you missed the surprise at first, but you nailed how much I loathed seeing you that first time at that very moment.”

I try not to let that hurt, but fuck… it does. I swallow hard. “Why?”

“Because I knew you.”

That’s it.

No explanation.

“You knew me?” I ask, aghast at the implications. “You were having me followed or something? You knew about my abilities before that art show?”

“No.” Carrick shakes his head, voice a low rumble of pain as he lets the drawing in his hand fall to the patio and steps into me. I don’t think to step back, but let myself get caught as his hands come to the sides of my neck to hold me in place. “I knew you because you are Eireann. I knew you from that curly red hair to the line of your nose and those fucking green-gold-blue eyes I looked at every night for seven years before we went to bed.”

“What?” I rasp, my head starting to spin. “You mean… I was reincarnated?”

He nods, a bitter curl to his mouth. “Yes, and not for the first time.”

“I don’t understand,” I mutter, attempting to pull away from him.

He refuses to let me go, dipping his head closer. “Rune knew how much I loved you. He hated how I made a play for the elixir, so sure in my love for you, when he was too afraid and plagued with doubts to use it himself. He hated more than anything that I killed his chance. Killing you that one time wasn’t enough pain to visit on me. So he cursed me and made it so you were destined to be reincarnated time and time again, and he put you in my path so I would run into you each and every time.”

My stomach rolls, and nausea rises in my throat. I tear out of Carrick’s grasp, bending over and placing my hands on my thighs as I take deep breaths. He makes no move to touch me, and I lift my head to see him.