Sahvage blinked—and realized her mouth was not moving. She had somehow put the thoughts into his mind.
But all is not well, he thought with a shiver.
“You have been reborn,” he choked out. And thought of the headless guards. Of Zxysis. Of . . .
“Yes,” she said. Out loud? Maybe. He wasn’t sure.
“Would you like to introduce us?” Mae prompted. Like he and Rahvyn had been standing there, not talking out loud, for a while.
Refocusing, Sahvage drew his female toward his cousin—and wondered if he had to protect Mae against the female he had sworn to defend. Except that was crazy . . .
Right?
He tried to stare through Rahvyn’s eyes and into her soul, but he had never been a warlock. The magic had always been hers, and hers alone, to command.
“This is my Mae,” Sahvage announced. “Mae, this is my first cousin, Rahvyn. I’ve been looking for her for a very long time.”
He felt a little better as Rahvyn smiled shyly and bowed low; it was like some part of her still remained who he had once known.
“Greetings,” she said. “It is my honor.”
As Mae smiled and they started chatting, as if it was a normal first meet-and-greet of in-laws, Sahvage told himself not to worry. He needed to focus on the miracle, not worry about what any of it meant. Or where they were all going to go from here.
And yet . . . as happy as he was to see his blooded relation, he found himself frightened of the female.
Fuck it, though. His nerves were just shot, and why wouldn’t they be. He’d had enough near-misses with bad news in his immortal lifetime, and now that he finally had found his female?
He wasn’t into taking chances anymore.
Glancing around at his brothers, and then staring down at his beloved, he decided . . . well, maybe the universe wasn’t as unjust as he’d thought.
• • •
Off in the corner of the garage, standing apart from the crowd of fighters and females congregating on the driveway, Lassiter frowned. And frowned some more.
As he watched the two females embrace, and Sahvage, the missing brother, looked like he was worried he was about to wake up from a very good dream, Lassiter shook his head and tried to reframe the last week and a half.
The trouble was, the film reel kept with its final edit, none of the scenes altering, the soundtrack of conversations and inner thoughts remaining the same, the script evidently not subject to alteration.
“What the fuck is your problem, glow stick,” came a dry voice.
Great.
Vishous.
Exactly the brother he didn’t want anywhere near him at the moment. ’Cuz really, why bring a matchstick to a gas party.
“You look like someone broke all the remotes in the house.” There was a shcht of a lighter firing up. And then the scent of Turkish tobacco. “Come on, angel, this isn’t like you—and I can’t believe I’m jumping into your pool of weirdness, here.”
“I didn’t see her,” Lassiter murmured as he stared at the female with the long silver hair and strange, glowing silver eyes.
“Huh?”
“In all the visions about this . . . I never saw her.” Lassiter focused on the brother. “I don’t get it. I saw everything . . . the demon, the Book, Sahvage, Balthazar, Rehvenge . . . all of it. Even down to this scene here, although I couldn’t figure why it would be here and not the mansion. But I never saw her.”
He went back to staring through the crowd of familiar bodies, people blocking his view and then revealing her when they stepped aside. One young male in particular seemed to dote on her, bringing her a glass of milk from inside the house, but she seemed suspended and unconnected in the midst of them all.
Ethereal.
Beautiful—
Her eyes shifted around as if they were looking for something to light on, as if she were starting to feel overwhelmed and maybe wanted to escape—
See me, he thought at her. I want you to see me.
Her stare continued on past him. And then promptly doubled back.
As their eyes met, a shimmer of awareness, of heat . . . of purpose . . . went through Lassiter’s entire body.
“Well,” V said, “all I can tell you is that I never saw anything that was meant for me, true?”
Lassiter looked back at the brother. “Huh, what?”
“My visions. They’ve only ever been about the destinies of others, never my own.” The brother shrugged and started to walk away. “So good luck with that, angel. Or should I say, good luck with her.”
With a knowing look, the brother wandered off.
Leaving Lassiter with the strangest sense that the Gift of Light wasn’t an object at all . . . and that he and this silver-haired female were just getting started with each other.