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With a start, I realized our roles had somehow been reversed. Now I was the
powerful immortal and he the love-struck human. Once I had proposed a similar question and the flashback of that moment played briefly behind my eyes.

“I want to know what it is like, to be you, my love,” I said, tracing my hands along his perfectly sculpted chest. “Show me how you use your gifts.”

Seid chuckled with amusement and
then tipped my chin to look at him. “You have already seen it, Rona. You see it every day and night. I am the storm and the rain and the winds that carry it in. It happens because I exist, because I was created to make it happen.”

Cain tipped my chin then, in a gesture that sent shivers down my spine and chilled my aching heart. “I do not know if it will work,” I confessed to the man who so eerily resembled my first love.

“We won’t know till you try, right? Come on,
it’ll be fun.” Taking my hand in his, he jogged over to an empty side alleyway. After checking all possible outlets to the street with precision, he returned his focus to me. There in the shadows, his eyes seemed to shine brighter than they should have.

He released me,
then crossed his arms and smirked. “Okay, impress me.”

“I do not kno
w what you want me to do,” I answered with a sigh and scowl at my olive-toned palms.

His grin nearly split his face in two, save the
left, scarred side. “Besides staying with me forever, I can think of a few things,” he said.

I
shook my head as I clenched and relaxed my palms. I paced the short width of the alley and glanced up at the gray skies. Finally, I shut my eyes and opened myself to the gifts that had come with Seid’s punishment. Colors pulled from the shadowed world around us and flooded into my body, making me feel lighter, less substantial and distant from my gritty surroundings. I felt different this time, less like a wraith and more like I could do anything.

When I opened my eyes the skin of my arms was glowing with ever
-shifting colors. And when I dared to look at Cain, his aura shone brightly against the falling flakes of ice. I was already beginning to forget how heightened my senses became once I ignored my human side. Cain reminded me when he reached up to brush my cheek with the pad of his thumb and I relished the contact. Smiling, I called on the clouds above to fall more heavily, to rain thicker. Within seconds flurries of snow were falling between us.

Cain glanced up and pointed
. “So is this skill number two? You know, besides the tie-dye in your skin?”

“Does this not impress you?” I said, thinking of the imposs
ible feats I had done over time in the name of love. “I could call on lightning to strike you dead,” I suggested. “Or make the winds so fast they would break through glass.” Advancing towards him, until his back was against the gritty brick wall and the heat of our breath came together as one cloud, I added, “I can do anything I need to do, to rescue true love.”

Cain wrapped his arms around me, until our bodies were pressed together and my bare legs no longer felt the cold. “Why true love?”

Hearing those words while looking into the mirror image of Seid made me flinch. Cain’s fingers tightened their hold against the arch of my back, his dark brows drawing together in concern. I might have been able to avoid his question, but now I did not want to.

“Because the man who killed my husband was not a man at all.
He was something more and yet I made him less than he had been. His powers were weaker when he was with me, not as unstable as they needed to be. Seid was the storm and the winds and the sea. I was his light beacon, keeping him away from the rocks. But he thought I had betrayed him.” I choked on my words, for this was the first time I had relived the moment with remorse and without anger.

Cain lifted a hand to brush the
snow from my hair and shoulders and then caressed the line of my jaw. When he tipped my chin to meet his gray-blue eyes, I felt as if the world fell silent and there was only us.

“I think I get it
now,” he said. “He did this to you, to punish you for betraying the love you had together.”

I nodded, spooked by how even the lilt of his mouth and the knowing in his eyes
reminded me of Seid.

Brushing his lips against mine, he whispered low, “He was wrong, though, wasn’t he? What
I don’t get is how you could fall in love with anyone after what he put you through. How long have you been like this?”

I hesitated, only because I was afraid this might make
him want me less. His lifespan after all was like a blink of my eye. “I have lived in this existence for two of your millennia.” His reaction was not what I expected.

Cursing, he shook his head
. “Wow… that really makes you the grandma of all cougars, doesn’t it?”

“What
is a cougar?” I asked.

Cain
lifted me into his arms and laughed.

-amber

Chapter 16

Time Mends

Mrs. Nguyen was smoking outside her apartment with another neighbor when we arrived, snow-soaked and exhausted. Cain kept me in his arms and somehow we managed to unlock the door and then used my feet to kick it inside. I shared a secret smile with Mrs. Nguyen from over his shoulder.

Even though Cain was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open, he insisted on chasing me through his apartment. His idea of a game, he declared, was to see
if he could undo Mrs. Nguyen’s gift of a torture chamber dress. My modesty won for only so long and then I let him kiss me sweetly beneath the thick blankets, entwined.

I told myself I was truly happy, but happiness, as everyone
knew, was a fickle, fleeting thing.

“You accept me so easily,” I said with wonder.
“Any other human would not have believed me, but you do. Why?”

Cain smiled and buried his face in my unbound hair. “Because I love you, Rona. I alrea
dy told you I was the crazy one and if love makes normal people do crazy things, you can’t even begin to know what I would do for you.”

I recalled the other night, when the curse
had backfired on him and punished me for breaking the rules. Curious that nothing had happened since then.

Cain
had said he had done things he wasn’t proud of. He had blamed his crazy behavior on his PTSD. I wondered what he meant. What had caused the shadows behind his eyes and the worn lines in his face, the scar running down his neck? I wanted to know everything about him and above all, uncover why he wore Seid’s face.

“You mentioned
you had done terrible things,” I said. “What is it you did that haunts you so?”

For a long breadth of silence,
he seemed to gauge how much he could tell me. His face went blank as it filled with memories. Without meeting my eyes, he said, “After the government shipped me up here, to my uncle and aunt’s, I got mixed up in the wrong crowd, some pretty tough circles. But this neighborhood never was Park Avenue, no matter how they spiffed up the place. My aunt was so afraid I’d end up with a bullet in my head one day that she practically begged me to join the army, like it was a better alternative. Which was cool and all, I thought. My dad had been in the Marines and Gramps fought in World War Two. So it just seemed natural, like it was time for me to pay my dues, you know?”

I laced our fingers t
ogether when he paused and traced the various nicks and scars. His knuckles were large, no telling from how many punches.

“When I joined up I was just like every other
dick in the squad. I freaking loved everything about my job until the war.” He shut his eyes, mouth working past the flux of bad memories. “I got slashed in the face by a pissed-off hodgie and almost lost a foot thanks to the last tour. When I came back I was different… just couldn’t cope with what I’d done and how different things are here. It was too easy to fall back in with my old crowd. They were older and I came back… well, for a while, I became the guy who made others make good on their promises, if you know what I mean. If they didn’t pay up, I left them reminders as to why they should.”

Wrapping my h
ands around his clenched fists, I interrupted, “But you changed your path again.” His eyes studied me intently for a long moment before his lips tilted up at the corner and he continued.

“It was my aunt’s doing. She died of lung cancer about a year ago and I made a promise to her to try again. I never made it to college, but my uncle pulled some strings with a buddy of his, old union carp
enter. Guy taught me the ropes and I bought some tools and there you go. She made me promise I’d start playing again before she died, but I just haven’t had the heart to pick up my bass again. Maybe someday…” He trailed off, looking at me with a contented smile.

His look pierced me, reminded me that this smile should have never been for me.
In those hours I had spent with Lissa I had almost convinced myself Cain didn’t love me. How could he after only three days knowing me? It was best not to feel and give in to a love doomed to failure. Seid certainly proved not even an all-consuming passion could weather the storm. Surely Cain would tire of me.

Perhaps it was better for me to forget altogether, to give in at last to what I had known all along. I had spent lifetimes saving the souls of others, praying they wouldn’t know the same fate. But was any of it worth it? For two millennia I had been paying my dues, hoping
it would finally be enough.

Cain had seen through the guise Seid made to disguise me. Perhaps t
he curse was breaking. But if I were able to be human again, where did I belong and where could I go? My home had sank into the sea with an earthquake ages ago. Even if I could find my distant relatives, to see pieces of the faces I had known would only make me homesick for the ones I had lost. And when I left here, Cain’s memory of me would evaporate like sun-drenched dew.

Finally,
I lifted my head to reply. His eyes were shut and a faint smile ghosted over his lips. The rise and fall of his chest took me with it and I sighed. Tomorrow I needed to tell Cain the whole truth and hold nothing back. I would confront him about Lissa and insist that, if nothing else, he needed to forgive her.

He turned in his sleep, shifting so his arm brushed my side. Clenching my eyelids shut
, I fought the thrill racing through my skin. My gasp quickly turned into a choked sob. After shifting so my back was to him, I brushed the traitorous tears away.

I trembled when I saw the look in my husband’s violent eyes. I dug my nails into my palms to push my fears back. His fingers pressed so deeply into my shoulders I thought he would never cease until they had pierced my flesh. His breath was hot and foul as he spoke. “Did you think me a fool, Orona? Your father learned of it first. But I was too taken in by your beauty to believe him.”

“I—” My words were stunted by the impact of his hand against my face and cold fire tingled beneath my cheek.

“Do not speak. Do not breathe another word of your treachery, witch.” His laugh was warm and too rich, too pleasant to belong to such a monster.

“Husband
,” I began, hoping to plead to that spark I once saw in his eye, repulsive as it might have been to me.

“Did you think I would not follow you?
After everything I did to acquire you, the money I gave your father just to shut him up, did you not think I would care? That I would not see the
creature
my wife was cavorting with?”

I cried out in pain when he rip
ped my dress from my body, but he did not stop. His touches were more brutal, forcing me to remember whom I belonged to now. Tears fell in steady streams down my cheeks, but I refused to cry out again. So it became his mission to see, to make me scream.

“S
eid!” I begged for my love, not to come for me but to step no further.

Seid
had come at last and at the worst possible moment.

I wanted to cover my face in shame. I had promised I wouldn’t
betray him to keep my family’s honor, to save those who had sold me to this man. I had promised I would run away to Seid and never look back. He had vowed to look after my family from afar, even claimed they would want for nothing.

I
had broken my promise.

Appearing from the air itself, carried in by the
wind through our door, his flesh was so dark a blue it was like the eye of a storm. Thunder crackled when he spoke, and lightning flashed in patterns just beneath the layer of his skin.

My husband was ripped from me by Seid’s powerful hand. I cried from relief as he held the monster aloft and drowned him slowly from the inside out. I couldn’t discern his words through the crack and rumble bringing the rains overhead. I welcomed them, wanted to wash them away.

After he was finished, Seid looked at me and I was terrified by what I saw in those cold, hard orbs.