His trip home had culminated in the depths of a city that was smaller than the one that she had seen from his car, but was still impressive, with its tall buildings and paved streets and beautiful, soaring bridges that spanned a broad river. Caldwell was indeed lovely at night.
Would that she had come for aught but an invisible good-bye.
When Manuel had pulled into some kind of underground facility for vehicles, she had let him go on his own. Her purpose had been served when he had safely reached this destination so she’d known she had to depart.
Alas, however, she had tarried down at street level, standing in her mhis, watching the cars go by and seeing pedestrians cross corner to corner. An hour had passed. And then some more time. And still she couldn’t leave.
Giving in to her heart, she had gone up, up, up . . . honing in on where Manuel was, taking form on this terrace outside his home . . . and finding him in the midst of leaving the kitchen to walk through his living room. Clearly unsteady on his feet, he kept running into pieces of furniture—although likely not because the lights were off.’Twas the drink in his hand, no doubt.
Or more accurately, all the drink he’d taken in addition to it.
In his bedroom, he didn’t disrobe so much as dishevel himself out of his clothes, and then he was into the shower. When he emerged dripping wet, she wanted to cry. It seemed so very hard to comprehend that merely a day separated her and him from the time she had first witnessed him thus—although, indeed, she felt as if she could almost reach through time and touch those electric moments when they had been on the verge of . . . not just a present, but a future.
No longer.
Over at the bed, he sat down . . . then fell over onto the mattress.
When he went to wipe his eyes, her devastation was complete. And so was her need to go to him—
“Payne.”
With a yelp, she spun about. Across the terrace, standing in the breeze . . . was her twin. And the instant she laid eyes upon Vishous, she knew something had changed within him. Yes, his face was already healing up from the damage he’d inflicted upon it with the mirror—but that was not what had altered. The inside of him was different: Gone were the tension and the anger and the frightening coldness.
As the wind whipped her hair around, she quickly tried to compose herself, swiping clear the tears that had glossed over her eyes. “How did you know . . . I was . . .”
With his gloved hand, he pointed upward. “I have a place here. On the top of the building. Jane and I were just leaving when I sensed you were down here.”
She should have known. Just as she could sense his mhis . . . he could feel and find hers.
And how she wished he had just kept going. The last thing she needed was another round of a male figure of “authority” telling her what she had to do. Besides, the king had already laid down the law. It wasn’t as if Wrath’s decree needed buttressing from the likes of her brother.
She put her hand up to stop him before he said one word about Manuel. “I am not interested in your telling me what our king already has. And I was just leaving.”
“Is he scrubbed.”
She kicked up her chin. “No, he is not. He took me out and there was an . . . incident—”
The snarl her brother released was louder than the wind. “What did he do to—”
“Not him. Fates, will you just . . . stop hating him.” As she rubbed her temples, she wondered if anyone’s head had actually ever exploded—or whether everybody on earth just felt that way from time to time. “We were attacked by a human and in the process of disarming him—”
“The human?”
“Yes—in the process of that, I hurt the man and the police were called—”
“You disarmed a human?”
Payne glared at her twin. “When you remove a gun from someone, that is what it is called, is it not.”
Vishous’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. It is.”
“I could not scrub Manuel’s memories because he would not have been able to field the questions put to him from the police. And I am here . . . because I wanted to see him home safely.”
In the silence that followed, she realized she had just backed herself into a corner. By having to protect Manuel, she had just proven her twin’s point that the male she wanted could not take care of her. Oh, but what did it matter. Given that she was prepared to obey the king, there was no future for her and Manuel anyway.
When Vishous went to open his mouth, she moaned and put her hands to her ears. “If you have any compassion at all, you will leave me to mourn here alone. I cannot listen to all the reasons I must needs separate myself from him—I know them all. Please. Just go.”
Closing her eyes, she turned away and prayed to their mother above that he would do as she asked—