He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and turned away.
They dressed in silence and headed for the stone slab that covered the cave entrance, their boots squishing in the shallow, muddy river that was all that was left of the flash flood. Even though she knew it was the nature of the magic and the chamber, the difference between before and after made it feel like days had passed, rather than just a few hours.
They paused side by side at the entrance, where the stone suddenly seemed very solid, very heavy. Pressing her palm to it and finding it cool and faintly slimy, she glanced over at him. “You can open it, right?”
He copied her move so their hands were side by side, his bigger and more tanned, hers narrow and fine boned, with one thumbnail bitten down. “Yeah,” he said. “I can open it.”
She didn’t ask how he could be sure, or why his magic would work now when it hadn’t before. Instead, new nerves kindled as her mind skipped ahead to what they might find on the other side. What had Zane and Lora done after leaving the cave? She didn’t think they would have hurt any of the winikin—not when they meant to lead them instead—and she didn’t think they could hurt the magi. But that was about the only thing she thought Zane incapable of at this point.
Letting out a slow, steadying breath, she nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s do this. Open sesame.”
He hesitated, though, and the pause drew out long enough that she glanced over. His face was drawn, his eyes fixed on the stone slab like he was X-raying his way through it and not liking what he saw.
Tension coiled within her. “Is there a problem out there?”
“There’s a problem, but it’s not out there. It’s in here.… With us.” He brought his other hand up, so he was pressing both palms on the stone slab, as if to shove it out of the way. Instead, he let his head rest for a moment between his outstretched arms.
Us… The word tugged at her, as did the strain in his big, lean body, which let her know that as an honorable man—and he was that, in his own way—he was having trouble with the idea of her as a one-cave stand. “Don’t do this,” she said softly. “There’s no ‘us.’ I’m taking the mark out with me, but the rest of it stays here. It has to.”
He raised his head and pinned her with stormy eyes that held a yearning heat that set off warning bells even as part of her leaped with excitement. “What if I don’t want it to stay here?” he asked softly.
Her heart stutter-stepped and the breath went thin in her lungs. She told herself to shut him down, walk away, do something—anything—to keep him from making this more complicated than it already was. Instead, knowing she was teetering on the verge of a huge mistake, she said, “What do you want?”
There was a pause, and the moment hung in the balance. He won’t say it, she told herself. He means it another way. Because there was no way in hell he was going to say—
“You, Cara.” His expression was stark, his hands braced against the stone as if it were the only thing holding him in place. “I want you. I want to know that what we just had wasn’t just a onetime thing. I want to be with you for real… and I have for a very long time.”
She tried to find a rational, logical response. All she could come up with was: “Bullshit.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “It started that last summer, even before we kissed. It wasn’t so bad when I stayed on the move, but when we wound up stuck here together at Skywatch, I couldn’t outrun it anymore. I had to send you away. And then when you came back… Shit. It hit me like a godsdamned sledgehammer seeing you get out of that Hummer, all slick and dangerous, like a badass version of the girl I used to know. But at the same time you’re still you—you’re tough, brave, resourceful, and you’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. I want that. I want you, Cara.” He kept his hands jammed against the stone slab as if afraid that if he moved he would reach for her, and he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.
She wasn’t sure either. What was she supposed to think? To say? She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t string two words together, couldn’t do anything but stare at him. “Then why…” she began, then faltered. But although the question went unfinished, it vibrated in the air between them, just as sex magic had an hour before. Why didn’t you say something? Why weren’t you ever around?
“Your father warned me off.”
“My…” She couldn’t keep going. The oxygen had suddenly been sucked from her lungs, and not because she didn’t believe him, but because she did. She could practically see it, could all but write the script.
Carlos never would’ve allowed anything to happen between her and Sven—a winikin and a mage. And not just because of tradition, but because she’d never measured up.
Sven lowered his arms and turned to lean against the stone. He let his head fall back against the solid slab and looked up, though she didn’t know if he was seeing the animals or memories. “That was why I was all hell- bent on riding out without talking to you or your mom that day. He said he’d seen the direction I was looking, and told me to stay the hell away, that you were just a teenager and it was up to me to be the grown-up.”
And that too had the ring of truth, though she suspected there had been more to it than that. The breath whistled in her lungs as she tried to wrap her brain around this new information, tried to slot it into what she knew, or thought she’d known. Not about her father—she’d long ago stopped trying to fix things there—but about Sven. She’d spent big chunks of the past few years telling herself not to dwell on ancient history, but now it was there in her head, replaying that summer in such detail that she knew she hadn’t forgotten the past, after all. Now, though, the memories shifted and shivered, trying to realign themselves.
“That’s why you didn’t come back to visit after that summer?” she asked in a voice that didn’t sound much like her own.
He hesitated. “I wish I could say that was the only reason.”
Disappointment kicked, warning her that a small, stupid spark of hope had kindled inside her. Don’t go there, she chided, even though it was already too late. But at the same time it was ridiculous to think even for a second that she’d been the reason for his wandering. She might have been a catalyst, but ranging free was bred into him, bone and soul.
“I haven’t been a teenager for a long time.” It came out sounding far more choked up than she wanted to admit to being. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Carlos is still your father. Even before I knew that he’d saved my life the night of the massacre, I knew I owed him for keeping me and raising me like he did. He’d never really asked me for anything before that day, so I did my damnedest to give it to him all those years, not realizing that it wasn’t just about you being his daughter; it was about me being a mage.”
“And me a winikin.” But it was more a question than a statement, because that had never seemed to bother Sven. If anything, he’d been the first one to ignore the traditions when it came to class and status at Skywatch.
He shook his head. “No, never. When we first got here, I kept things to myself because I was trying to cope with the what-the-fuck shock of becoming a Nightkeeper and dealing with the magic and everything that comes with it.” He paused. “And let’s face it… you hated it here.”
“I… Yeah.” Even now, her chest tightened when she thought back to those months. She had bitterly resented being indentured without permission, and to the one person who could pull strong emotions out of her without even trying—or seeming to notice. Except he had noticed… and he’d sent her away.
“Then, when you came back, there was no way in hell I could say anything. Jox was right when he chose you to lead the winikin, and I knew I couldn’t fuck with that.” He shifted, looked at her with eyes that reached inside her and kindled sparks of desire amid the confusion. His voice roughened as he said, “I wanted to, though. Seeing you, being around you… Gods. So I took off. But I couldn’t get you out of my head. And when I got back here and saw you again… everything was suddenly right in the world, because I could talk to you, tell you some of what I had figured out. I couldn’t tell you how I really felt, though, because things were still so unsettled with the winikin.”
“But—” She had to break off and swallow past the huge lump in her throat. “None of that has changed. If anything, it’s going to get worse.”
The corners of his mouth turned up in rueful acknowledgment, though his eyes stayed very serious. “You’re not kidding.”
“Then why…” In the end, she could only get out, “Why now?” She was floundering in emotional waters that were way over her head.
His expression softened, going almost sad. “It’s because of what you said about regrets… and what you did about it.”
