Destined (Desolation #3) (33 page)

The couple was led to Asgard, but Desi and I stayed behind. When I looked away from the celebrants, I found Desi watching me.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

Before me stood my love, her skin a pearlescent glow, a smile on her lips that I’d dreamt about for eons. Her left hand clasped on and off the hilt of her sword as if she didn’t quite know what to do with it. A beautiful glow lit her cheeks and strands of her black hair fluttered around her face.

But it was her eyes that drew me in. Her gold-flecked eyes that told me everything I needed to know.

She was here.

And she was mine.

I gathered her into my arms and for a long moment just held her. Just her and me, our arms wrapped around each other, our souls caught up in our intertwined spirits so there was no longer any separation, just us. We were one as we’d never been before, the Genesis within our souls uniting us. I didn’t know how long we stood like that. How long she held me in her Halo, and I held her in mine. We were one. We were complete. And I knew—I
knew
—we would never be apart again.

Things were different. Things had changed.

And that was a good thing.

When our glory finally faded, when our kisses had slowed and we’d said
I love you
about a million times, I found we were standing in a hospital room. The lights were dim, but Desi had her own light which radiated outward with a pearly glow. James lay on the bed while Miri sat in a chair next to him.

My heart rejoiced to see them!

“Desi!” Miri hissed. “You gotta be careful, ya know. You can’t keep popping in all magical and fairy godmother-like.”

Desi smiled, a warm blush rising to her pale cheeks while she drew her radiance inward. “I knew you were alone,” she said. 

I squeezed her hand. I had so many questions. But, “How did you know?” could wait.

“How is he?” She let go of my hand and I felt a tiny twinge of regret, which I ignored. I hadn’t waited a hundred lifetimes to not be okay with waiting a few moments to touch her again.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Miri said, her voice ringing with happiness. “He might even be able to go home in a day or two. They said he was hypothermic and dehydrated, but his temperature regulated pretty quickly. He hasn’t woken up again, so they don’t know if—”

Desi placed her hand on James’ forehead and he stirred. His eyes fluttered.

“James! James!” Miri leapt to her feet. She kissed his forehead and put her hand on his chest. “Wake up, James,” she whispered.

Desi stepped back and reached for my hand. 

“What did you do?” I whispered.

She shrugged as she smiled up at me. “I woke him up. He’s always been a sleepyhead.”

I yanked her to me and wrapped my arms around her waist. “You are full of surprises.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Her smile grew into a Cheshire cat-like grin, then she surprised me by leaning upward and kissing me. It had been a long time since she’d done that. Just been free with me. Just loved me. With nothing between us.

No doubt.

No fear.

Just love.

The door to the room swung open and a pair of nurses, both wearing hospital scrubs, hurried in. Desi and I stepped out of the way and squished ourselves into the corner of the room while the nurses bustled around James. Miri backed up until she stood against the window, but she watched the activity with joy on her face, her hands in the manner of prayer, pressed to her lips. I heard her whisper a prayer of gratitude and healing and I smiled. It made me glad that she’d kept her faith through all of this, despite everything. A faith that still had a place in the world.

James cleared his throat and opened his eyes. Miri bounced on her toes, barely restraining herself from flying into his arms.

“How are you feeling Mr. Mason?” 

“I’d feel a helluva lot better if you’d let my girlfriend kiss me,” he said.

“Well, there’ll be plenty of time for that real soon, I think,” the nurse said. “Keep this up and you could go home as soon as tomorrow.”

“Not tonight?” James pled.

“We’ll see what the doc has to say.” She jotted down some notes in the chart that hung on a hook outside his door, while the second nurse took his blood pressure. 

“120 over 80,” she said to the nurse with the chart. She took the cuff off James’ arm and gave his hand a squeeze. She leaned down close to him. “You’re gonna be just fine, baby.”

I watched his eyes grow wide with surprise. 

“Lucy?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper. Desi squeezed my hand, and the nurse smiled and left the room, closing the door behind her.

“Did you see that? Did you hear her? Wha—? Was that—?” James half sat up, staring incredulously from Desi to the door.

For her part, Desi smiled and gave a half-shrug. She let go of my hand again and stepped forward, pulling one of James’ hands out of Miri’s grasp to hold it in her own. “It’s good to see you, James.”

“Good to see you too, princess.” But he couldn’t take his eyes off of Miri.

“Hey, we’ll let you guys . . . you know.” Desi barely concealed her laughter as she took my hand and I pulled open the door.

“Hey, princess,” James called before we’d closed the door. 

Desi leaned back into the room. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She pulled the door shut and we walked out of the hospital the usual way—one step at a time.

After a mile of walking hand-in-hand, saying little, we realized it was a really long way back to St. Mary’s. An even longer walk to anywhere else we might want to go. Michael pulled me onto a bus stop bench and put his arm around me. 

“Where are we going?” he asked.

I’d been mulling it over since leaving the hospital and still didn’t have a good answer. “With Longinus gone and Cornelius . . .” I didn’t know exactly what had happened, but I knew he no longer lived, could feel his absence in the world around me, could feel the hole he’d left behind. “And Miri is at the hospital.”

“I know. That’s what I was thinking, too.”

We fell into silence for a while longer and watched a bus approach from down the street. When it pulled up in front of us, the doors opened. “You gettin’ on?” asked the sour-faced driver.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. She glowered at me, closed the door and drove off.

“Guess we can’t really sit here all day,” I said.

“Guess not.”

“Michael, I—” I looked away. Down the street to the gas station at the next corner. At the auto parts store beside it. At the coffee shop across the street. 

Michael said nothing, but he pulled his arm from around my shoulder and took my left hand in his. He didn’t ask where my markings had gone, how I managed to conceal them. Didn’t ask how my hand was whole.

“We can’t go back to Asgard,” he finally said and oh I loved him for saving me from saying it.

“Desi.”

I still didn’t breathe. “Yeah?”

Suddenly Michael stood and, with my hand in his, pulled me behind the abandoned store we’d been sitting in front of. When we reached the shadows of the building, he took me by the shoulders so I faced him.

“I want you to do something.”

My mind flew a mile a minute trying to guess what he’d ask me. Trying to figure out what he had planned. “Okay.”

“Close your eyes.”

So I did.

He pulled me closer, so close he’d pressed his body against mine. Our arms wrapped around each other and I pressed my cheek to his chest.

“I want you to think of home. Of the place you were the safest, the happiest. Of the place where you felt the most like you.”

Asgard
, I thought. I pictured the place, pictured our garden nestled in a stand of golden-leaved trees. But then another image took its place. 

“Take us there,” Michael whispered against my hair.

I took us to the one place in all the worlds I knew I belonged. 

I took us to Lucy’s.

“I wish Cornelius was here.” I lay in the crook of Michael’s arm, snuggled as close as we could get on Lucy’s white couch. As the sun set, pink hues softened the light in the room, warming it and making it seem like a romantic escape. Which, I guess, it was.

“So do I,” Michael said. “But what are you thinking?”

I smiled against his chest. “Because then we could get married.”

His chest stopped rising with his breath, but his heart beat out a loud staccato against my cheek. “You’re kinda young for that, aren’t you?” His words were strangled, like he was trying to speak without breathing, without disturbing the air around him with his words.

“Well, that’s why I wish Cornelius was here—he’d know we are both a lot older than we seem. Plus, it would have made him happy.”

“Our marriage.”

“Yeah. Don’t you think so?”

He chuckled, then let out his breath. The rise and fall of his chest resumed its natural rhythm. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“But now we’ll have to wait.”

He squeezed me. “I would wait a million years for you. Married or not, I will never leave your side again.” He spoke with such fervor, such intensity that tears sprang to my eyes and I didn’t say anything.

What could I say? After so long I finally had what I wanted and the reality was at least a thousand times better than my dreams.

I must have drifted off, but was jerked awake by a strange rattling sound.

“What’s that?” I bolted upward, my head turning this way and that, my sword in my hand before I’d found my feet. 

The sound came again and my head whipped around, seeking the source.

Michael kept his arm firmly around me, probably so I wouldn’t leap up and start stabbing at shadows. “It’s okay, love.”

“Did you hear it?”

He laughed, a warm sleepy sound that filled the space between us like spun sugar. “It’s a cell phone.”

A cell phone. “Oh!” Michael shifted and I jumped to my feet and looked around—finally spotting the small black device on the kitchen counter. It had jiggled its way into the space between the coffee maker and the backsplash. I picked it up and swiped the front—discovering a picture of Miri and James, their faces squished together and their tongues sticking out.

Michael wrapped his arms around me. “So who was calling?”

The screen had gone dark so I swiped it again. Three missed calls, it said. I clicked through to the Recent Calls list and saw three messages, all from the same unknown number.

I pushed play on the last message, left one minute ago. 

“I know you’re a princess, savior of the world and all that—but do you think Her Majesty could manage to get off her high horse and come and pick me and Miri up? I’d call Taige, but after all you’ve put me through, I think it’s only right that you come get us. I managed to convince the doc that he should let me go—you’ve gotta spring me before he changes his mind.”

The line went dead and Michael chuckled. He stood behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist. His laughter resonated through my body and I closed my eyes and just lived in the moment.

“Well, you heard the guy. You’ve been summoned.” He leaned down and kissed my neck, then my collarbone. I leaned into him. “Except I think you’d better change.”

Change?

“I don’t think Asgardian attire is the height of fashion here.” He flicked my skirt as he backed up, easily ducking the fist I swung back at him. He lunged after me and I dove away and skittered down the hall, laughing all the while.