Keir (43 page)

This could not be real. Her image here, now, was nothing but a torment created by his guilt and grief. The pain of it was acid flowing through his veins. A blade in his heart. Even burning at the stake in Adalucien would seem a mercy now.

“Forgive me,” she begged.

He put up a shaking hand to touch her face but held off, afraid. Afraid that if he did touch her, just once, the illusion would shatter. That she truly would be lost to him for all time.

Instead Quin took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. This was real. She was real.

“How?” he whispered. “What magic is this?”

“I don’t know.” She clasped her hands around his, warm fingers threading through his. “I’ve died more times than I want to remember and I’ve always come back. But this time I had to stay dead to fool the Siah-dhu or it would never have let me go.”

Bitterness, spiked and hot, rose and clutched his throat. “Why did you not you tell me? You let me believe I had killed you!”

And yet what would I have sacrificed to have her back?

He had been prepared to die for her. To die rather than live without her.

“I couldn’t tell you in case it went wrong, in case I didn’t come back.” The sorrow in her words broke his heart anew. “I didn’t want to give you false hope.”

“But I felt you die...” The memory raked through him. The pain and despair as their link had shattered, and the light fading from her mind. His world had ended in that instant, become meaningless.

He lowered his hand to the point in her chest where they had buried the blade together. Through the torn fabric of her wet sarong, he felt the raised edge of a scar, and drew in a breath that shuddered. How many times had she gone through that? Gone into that darkness, unsure of what lay beyond? Why had she never told him? “All those scars–they were death wounds? Every one?”

“Not all of them, but some.” She leaned down and brushed her lips over his forehead. Her voice shook. “Powers, Keir, if you’d died tonight…”

Her despair bled over him, her regret.
“I should have told you. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”

“Quin,” he murmured. Pulled her to him and kissed her mouth. Felt the heat of her and the steady rhythm of her heart–the life in her. Relief, gratitude for this gift purged the grief and anger. She had come back to him and now he would never let her go.
“My heart and soul.”

“My love.”
Her thoughts merged into his, warmth and light, love eternal.

“Stay with me now,”
he demanded.

“Until the end of our forever…”

1.       
   About Pippa Jay
   

http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=authors&authors_id=204
 

At its heart, Keir’s story is about exclusion–of how society rejects anyone outside the norm. Yet it offers a glimmer of hope for those exiled–that love can see beyond the surface and lift even the darkest existence back into the light.

Pippa Jay spent her teenage years immersed in works by the greats of speculative fiction, and so it is perhaps inevitable that she now spends much of her time inhabiting another dimension. By day she might appear a perfectly ordinary wife, mother and student; at night, however, she unleashes her dark genius and mires herself in her love of science fiction whilst furiously penning her prose. The self-proclaimed goddess of angst, she roams an alternate universe in search of more souls to torture, and then tells their tales.
 

Keir
is her first published novel, but look for other forthcoming titles in the future.

Pippa’s blog:

http://pippajayblogspot.com/
 

Reader email:

[email protected]
 

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