On top of that, if I were to get thrown into the fight, it would be a terrible distraction to Carrick, so I agreed for us to play watchmen and be the last resort if we were needed. Otherwise, I was prepared to let Boral and Zaid pull me back through to the Earth realm.
“Pyke,” Carrick murmurs, his expression disgruntled. “He’s the perfect one to take Maddox’s place because we know Deandra won’t help.”
“Do you want to bring him fully on board?” I ask, wondering if Pyke would agree to a binding.
Carrick shakes his head. “I don’t think we need to. My history with Pyke is usually him joining me in frays because he loves the adventure. I can pose it to him in a generic way—we’re going into a different realm to steal a stone from a twisted Dark Fae. It’s just the sort of thing he’d love. If I can find him, that is.”
And with that, Carrick bends distance and disappears, presumably to find Pyke. I assume he’ll start in Faere, so we have nothing to do but wait.
Rainey and Myles had to leave. Myles’ aunt and uncle were coming into town for a few days, and they were going to hang with them on the Fantasia. They both, in turn, gave me long, hard hugs with similarly stern lectures on safety and to do as Carrick says.
Zaid ambles off to the kitchen, and Lucien disappears back toward the man cave. Boral takes out his cell phone, places a call to which he merely says to the person on the other end, “Up for some trouble this weekend,” and moves out to the patio to continue talking. I shudder thinking what Boral’s definition of trouble is, but there’s a good chance it involves something evil. Contrary to Zaid’s worries about his dad, I haven’t forgotten what an awful, twisted Dark Fae he is, and I certainly understand he’s not helping us to be altruistic but rather for his own personal gain with his son.
That leaves Titus and me and I’m more than happy for those circumstances. We didn’t get a chance to talk last night. I nod toward the living area and he smiles, understanding my silent invitation to hang out.
I settle into a chair, sit in it sideways, and hang my legs over the armrest. Titus sprawls on the couch opposite me.
Grinning, he says, “So… you and Carrick are star-crossed lovers or something, huh?”
Titus got a lot of details last night to fill in my short summary, but my reincarnations didn’t come up. They weren’t relevant to the prophecy.
“Apparently, I had my first life in 1015 AD. I was a shepherdess in Ireland, and Carrick saved me from being raped by a Viking. My name was Eireann.”
Titus whistles low with an amazed shake of his head. “That is unreal. I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“Probably because it’s a god’s curse I keep coming back?” I reply casually.
That causes Titus to straighten slightly. “Say what?”
A welling of sadness hits me, and I push it down. Sadness for the horror that Carrick went through when Rune killed me.
I tell Titus the full story of Eireann and Banan, using both Carrick’s narrative and the memories I saw in the Hall of Histories. He learns of our love, Banan’s desire to make Eireann immortal, and his foolish attempt to take the only means to do it from a god. Titus winces when I tell him the part where Rune killed me and then cursed Carrick to have me and lose me, over and over again.
When I finish, he shakes his head sympathetically. “I can’t imagine Carrick going through that. He never said anything.”
“Zaid, Lucien, and Maddox were the only ones that knew about me,” I reply softly. “It wasn’t something he easily shared, I guess.”
“What’s up with you two after this prophecy?” Titus asks hesitantly. “Because you and I both talked about the perils of an immortal and mortal being together.”
“Funny you should ask,” I reply, swinging my legs off the armrest and perching on the edge of the chair. I lean forward and lower my voice. “Clearly, I’m going to die, if not in the prophecy, then from Rune’s curse. Carrick says he’ll always wait for me to come back to him, and he’ll wait for me to fall in love with him again, then he’ll tell me the truth of our lives and take me to the Hall of Histories. This is how we’ll live, until I die again.”
“But…” Titus drawls. “Because I sense a ‘but’ in there.”
“But,” I say with a smile. “Carrick wants to use the Blood Stone when this is all over to see if it can make me immortal.”
“From what I learned last night, it seems it could work. It has the power of infinity, right?”