Desolate (Desolation) (17 page)

Longinus scrambled into the room first, looking around as if there’d be someone to fight, someone to kill. He looked a little disappointed when he discovered it was only me. Cornelius hurried to the bed.

“What is it? Did he wake?”

I hesitated for a moment, but finally I lifted my hand and pulled it back. “He’s warm. I think. I think he’s warm.” My words stumbled over each other, rising in pitch with each new word.

Cornelius paused, like he might discourage me from harboring false hope. But he reached out and placed his hand on Michael’s shoulder. He glanced at me, his eyes wide with amazement, then looked back down at his hand as if it had burst into flames or something. “He is warm,” he said, his breath catching in his throat. “He’s warm!”

He looked at me and I laughed, a little strained, a little out of practice, but there it was. And when Cornelius joined me, we both laughed together—even while part of my brain whispered that while Michael might be warm, I never would be.

But Michael knew what I was and had loved me anyway. Once.

“Did he wake?” Cornelius asked when our laughter died away in a sour rumble.

I shook my head. “I put my mother’s necklace on him. Could that be it?” I pulled the edge of the blanket down enough that he could see the pendant lying on Michael’s chest. “And look—isn’t his mark fading?”

Cornelius’ eyes tightened and I could see him wrestling with whether he should humor me or not. He leaned over and looked at the side of Michael’s face anyway. Then he pushed up Michael’s sleeves and peered at the (definitely fading) marks on his wrists. “You may be right. I hadn’t dared hope such a thing could be possible.” The awe in his voice left me shaking with hope. Could Michael really come back? Could he really?

“But you will no longer be protected.” Cornelius studied my face, searched my eyes.

I was an expert liar so I met his gaze square on. “I don’t matter. Only he does.”

Someone else might have tried to convince me otherwise. Extol my value, my worth. But Cornelius gazed at me for a moment before nodding his head and returning his attention to Michael.

“Well, this is a blessing,” Cornelius muttered.

I reached out tentatively, my hand hovering over Michael’s forehead, waiting for Cornelius or Longinus to stop me. They didn’t. I let it fall ever-so-gently to his short-cropped hair, then swept my hand over his head. It was the barest of touches, but Michael gasped, arching his back, the tendons in his neck popping out.

I snatched my hand back.

“What did you do?” Cornelius asked—not exactly accusing, but close.

“I-I-nothing. I just touched him.”

Cornelius glanced at my hands, but I’d shoved them both under my armpits where the right one radiated burning cold like never before.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” He spoke softly, care coloring his words with warmth, but he still looked at my hands, hiding beneath my arms. “Are you all right, child?”

“Fine. I’m fine,” I snapped. 

I’m fine.

Fine.

Fine.

Or maybe I wasn’t.

My right arm burned like it had been flash-frozen.

Maybe I wasn’t fine at all.

chapter twenty-six

Michael

I could hear her voice. Feel her presence in the room. I longed to reach out to her, but I felt frozen as surely as if I’d been encased in ice. I’d been cold for so long. And I’d had many dreams of my love, though none as real as this.

She touched me, in the dream, and sent a chorus of screaming shards of ice singing through my already frozen veins. It hurt. It burned—but I wanted more. Hungered for her touch, even if it killed me. I wondered if I would ever get used to Hell, if the warmth of Asgard would ever leave me entirely. If I would ever stop dreaming of Desi.

With fervent desire I prayed it not to be so. I’d endure an eternity of freezing torture to see her in my dreams.

And then something new entered my mind.

A flash of golden heat followed by a delicious warmth that radiated from a point near the center of my collarbone. A feeling like warm honey spread through my veins—a small thing against the block of ice I’d become. Still, I felt my body relax a little for the first time in forever. Felt Loki’s iron grip on my soul release. Just a fraction. The smallest of concessions. But it was enough.

I took the first truly deep breath in what seemed like centuries. Even in sleep I could feel myself sink deeper into the bed on which I slept, feel the sigh of release.

“Cornelius!” Desi screamed.

My heart leapt, called to serve her, to care for her, but my body lay stone-still. This was not the dream I usually had, though I often dreamed of her need and my inability to protect her. Because I lived in Hell now. A place Desi had abandoned for me.

I felt a gentle touch—not Desi’s—but I couldn’t rouse myself. The murmur of voices hummed around me and I struggled to make sense of this new dream—though I began to suspect it to not be a dream at all.

When she touched my head, I knew.

Her fingers burned and tore into me like an ice pick. I felt like a drowning man who gasps for air only to be filled with water. I craved her touch, had waited for centuries to feel it again, but her touch would kill me while it fulfilled me.

My body lurched beneath her hand—the electric shock awakening my fuzzy brain.

She withdrew and I heard Cornelius ask her what she did.

But she hadn’t done anything at all.

“Are you all right, child?”

“Fine,” my beloved said, though she lied.

Because the burning ice that filled her veins was not her choosing—I knew its bite, its flavor. I’d lived with its constant presence since the moment Loki drew me down to Hell.

My love was not fine. Whether she knew it or not, Hell had reclaimed her.

chapter twenty-seven

Desi

For hours I sat with Michael, afraid to touch him, but desperate to do so. I leaned forward on my elbows, my left hand mere millimeters away from his, my right hand balled in a fist on the edge of the bed.

My eyes didn’t leave Michael’s face.

He continued to grow warmer, until he radiated heat like he used to. His skin grew less pale, but the mark didn’t fade any more than it had. At least it looked less troublesome now that his skin was no longer so deathly pale. No longer as pale as my own.

I stared at him and wished. Wished I could twine my fingers in his soft curls—but my touch seemed to hurt him. And Father had cut them all off, anyway.

Wished I could touch him.

Wished I could kiss him.

Thoughts of kissing him had captured my mind until someone touched my back. I jumped and my chair toppled over. Everyone looked at Michael, afraid the noise had disturbed him, but he slumbered on.

“Whoa, princess.” James put his hand on my back again while Miri leaned forward and took my hand. She was always touching me, even when I burned so cold, so untouchable.

“I’m okay. Look.” It was Michael they’d come to see, after all. Michael they
should
see.

“Oh ...” Miri breathed, moving to the other side of the bed where she got close to Michael’s face. She put her hand to his forehead like I had done, smoothed over his scalp, like I had done. But Michael remained calm, peaceful. The complete opposite of what happened when I touched him.

“What’s this?” Miri asked, picking up my mother’s pendant. “You took it off?”

I felt her concern flow outward like the waves of the sea. I shrugged.

“He needed it more than me. Plus,” I said, pointing to the mark on his cheek. “It made him warm up, and made the marks fade a bit, too.”

“Yesssss,” she drawled. I glanced at her and saw her face in a wide smile. James had a hand on her lower back as he studied Michael, his expression soft. They loved him. No matter what happened to me, he’d still have them. Plus, he could always go back to Asgard.

A part of me knew he never would. No matter that I wasn’t good enough for him. That he could never trust me again. Never love me again. I knew that even though I’d broken his heart, he wouldn’t really leave me. At least, that’s what I hoped.

“Does Cornelius think he’ll be okay?” James asked. The front door opened with a creak and I heard Knowles come in, talking animatedly with Cornelius.

A moment later he stood in the doorway to the small room. We were already crowded—a priest isn’t expected to have company in his bedroom, after all.

“His Claiming?” Knowles asked without any preamble. He stared at Michael, but I knew he spoke to me.

“Fading—do you think it will go away?”

He glanced my way, then pushed to the front, leaning down to look more closely at the mark on Michael’s face. I slipped out of the chair and stepped back without question. I probably shouldn’t have been there anyway.

“He’s warm—what did you do?” He turned on me and I felt a momentary flash of irritation.
Why does everyone keep asking me that?

“I didn’t do anything.” My guilt—because I’d done everything; I’d done it all—flared in my heart like a beacon.

I opened my mouth again, then snapped it shut. There would never be enough words to excuse all I had done.

“She put this on him,” Miri said, picking up the pendant a little and holding it to the light. “Cornelius says he began to grow warm after that.”

“You took it off?” Knowles demanded. Again I bristled beneath his accusatory glare.

“I thought he needed it more than me.” I picked up the chair to . . . I don’t know what. I set it back on the floor with a solid thud, and turned for the door.

“Desi, I am sorry. It’s only—you need its protection, too.” He managed to soften his voice, but when I faced him his expression still held that same hard edge. His Shadow lurked dangerously close to the surface.

“He needs it more than me.”

Knowles held my gaze for a moment before nodding, somewhat reluctantly, and returned his attention back to Michael.

Cornelius shuffled into the room and took Knowles by the elbow. He whispered something to him, then the two of them left, closing the door behind them. Miri and James didn’t seem to notice the exchange.

But I’d heard every word.

“We need to talk,” Cornelius had said. “When she touched him, he—well, let’s just say I am concerned.”

I didn’t sit back down. And I didn’t listen in on their conversation in the front room—though I could have.

I rubbed my arm, wishing it would be warm.

Wishing I wasn’t always wishing, and that I could be the girl that Michael could love.