“I’m testing something. Call them. Now. Please.” He rarely said please, and maybe he was on to something. It was better than sitting there hating that she was sighing at Beauty and the Beast, because she knew the happy ending, and only a silly mortal would believe that it could ever be my reality, or hers for that matter.
I felt the need to reassure her, to put my arm around her and tell her that Cassius was just being demanding as usual, and part of me hated the false hope I felt that maybe I would get an answer.
“Okay.” Kyra took the phone typed in the numbers then put it on speaker, after three rings a sleepy female voice answered. “Mom?”
“Honey? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Whose phone is this?”
“Um…” Kyra eyed Cassius.
Huh, what a question. She was in the presence of immortals and getting twenty questions from an angel. No, she wasn’t okay.
“She’s fine,” I answered for her.
The phone went silent and then. “What was that?” Not who, what.
I frowned. How would she know based on my voice?
“That was Timber.” She gulped. “My boss.”
Could I sound any more boring? No, the answer was no.
“I’m confused. Why are you calling, honey? You’re worrying me. And that man sounds… unsafe.”
She had no idea.
Cassius cleared his throat. “Actually, we’re the ones that are worried, it seems your daughter knows something or maybe doesn’t know she knows it, and I think that it’s tim
e you tell her exactly what she is.”
Her mother gasped. “Who are you?”
Cassius shared a look with Kyra before saying in an authoritative voice. “I’m so glad you asked, I am the King of the Immortals, and I demand you tell us everything.” He said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, I almost barked out a laugh. Cassius never did things in half measures, did he?
Another gasp, and then what sounded like hushed voices before a male voice joined, I assumed her father. “So it’s true then?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.” Cassius said. “Is it true we exist or is it true that you know more than you’ve let on?”
Her mother sighed heavily. “It’s been a very long journey for our family with secrets we’ve been forced to carry for years.”
I eyed Kyra, confusion marred her vision, as if she didn’t understand the answer.
Cassius’s eyes chose that moment to go completely white as he nodded his head. Great, we were going to get the creepy voice, in three, two, one. Ah, there it was. “How many years has Kyra been reborn?”
The father cursed. “Millennia, centuries, nobody knows exactly, time is a fickle thing, you know that, don’t you?”
“And your job? To search for what?” Cassius prodded while Kyra wrapped her arms around her body, I’d never seen a person look more frail, so I did what any idiot with a brain would do, I jerked her against my chest and held her there.
It didn’t matter that I was darkness and she was light.
It didn’t matter that I probably didn’t deserve to even touch her, or that she calmed me more than I calmed her. Hell, I was probably making it worse, but I couldn’t just stand there. What mattered was that no matter what you are made of, you are still in possession of a heart, of a soul, of something that makes you recognize when someone needs you and because the Creator is in everyone—you are compelled to respond. So respond, I did.
What I didn’t account for, was the way she felt pressed against me, or the way her small hands inched around my body hugging me as I shielded her from words that seemed so much more powerful than a punch.
I held on tight.
And then I kissed her head, wondering what the hell had come over me as Cassius waited for the answer I wasn’t sure we were going to get.
And finally, her father said, “It was always passed down, our family secret, that one day she would be reborn and finally find her other half, that the curse would be broken, and each time someone in our family got pregnant it was only ever one child, a girl, with dark hair and hypnotic eyes, and every time her life was cut short, only to have history repeat itself. I woke up a month ago and heard it as clear as day, a voice said it was time, and then I dreamed of Soul of a man with white hair and red eyes, so we took our chances.”