Daysider

“Never?”

His silence told her all she needed to know. She went to gather her things.

“Never, Alexia,” he said quietly.

She stopped. This was the moment of decision. She knew she should never trust him again, that just being with him would create an open wound that could never heal.

That was her problem. But what about his? What about his shadow-self? It was still a complete mystery to her. She had no idea how long it had been part of him, if his masters knew about it, when it would arise again. He didn’t seem to remember his spells, but she had seen the pain and confusion in his eyes after they were over.

Could she find some way to help him if she stayed with him? Or would she only make it worse? How could she possibly know?

Only by refusing to leave him. Accepting that he lied to her over and over again.

Lowering her arms, she felt the bulge of something under her jacket and remembered what she had hidden there.

What about your lies? she asked herself. The communicator seemed to burn like a hot coal inside her jacket, though it gave off no warmth at all. She still didn’t know why Michael hadn’t told her about it before he’d left. Why had Aegis entrusted it to him, and not her?

Signal, he’d said. Was he saying he’d received a signal, or had sent one? Did he want her to complete some task his transformation had made impossible? Had he been part of a plan to remove all the humans in the colony? Was Damon’s theory really so crazy after all?

If it was true, then she had been much more a pawn than she ever could have imagined. But she didn’t dare take the time to try to track Michael down and see if she could communicate with him again...if he was even willing to be found.

I’m sorry, Michael, she thought. So very sorry.

But she wasn’t sorry about keeping this secret from Damon until she felt she could trust him again. If that was even possible.

“What did you have in mind as the next move?” she asked.

If Damon was relieved by her reasonable tone, he didn’t let on. He bent to retrieve the sheath of his knife, flexing his wrist in a way that suggested it had nearly healed, and slid the blade in.

“The center of everything is the colony,” he said, his voice turning brisk and businesslike. “We could hunt for other Expansionist agents and attempt to learn more from them, but there is no guarantee we would find them, or be able to defeat them if we did. We cannot go to Erebus. If we are to obtain useful information, we must approach the settlement directly.”

“You’re suggesting making a move without instructions from your Council,” she said.

“Up until now, everything you’ve done could conceivably be justified as being within the parameters of your assignment, even telling me what you were really sent to do. But what you’re proposing isn’t anywhere in those orders, is it?”

She meant the question to mock him, hurt him...if he could be hurt by something as small as her words. But when he spoke, his voice was unmistakably humble.

“No,” he said. “It isn’t. Nor, as you have said, is it in yours. Perhaps it is time these pawns became knights.”

Slowly she turned to face him, caught unaware by a foolish and very dangerous undercurrent of pride. And yearning.

More than mere yearning. It was the need to be with him again, in every way. To feel him on her, inside her, just as if nothing had changed.

But if she gave in again, if she let herself be driven by passion, she would almost certainly pay a price she could never afford.

“There’s still a good chance that at least one set of gunmen was from the colony,” she said, her voice not quite steady. “Even if they didn’t steal the patch, they may still be shooting at anything that moves.”

“That is the risk, of course,” Damon said, studying her intently as if he had heard her highly inappropriate thoughts. “But I believe there is a way to obtain entrance to the colony without dying to achieve it.”

Alexia braced herself. “What is it?” she asked.

“I know the man who founded it.”

* * *

Damon experienced Alexia’s shock as if they were attached by thousands of tiny cables that conveyed every emotion directly into every nerve in his body. He had felt that shock time after time in the past few hours: Alexia’s grief, her suspicion, her hurt and sense of betrayal. Each one had destroyed a piece of his heart...the treacherous heart that could reduce a rational being to extremes of violence and tenderness all in the course of a moment.

He gazed at Alexia’s calm face, amazed all over again at her resilience. He had asked—

demanded—so much of her, and not once had she broken. She was capable of setting aside her intense feelings when indulging them became an obstacle to her mission; she could speak with complete poise and rationality even after he had repeatedly provoked and betrayed her.

In many ways she was so much stronger than he was. She could leave him without a second glance if it was necessary. But he...

Damon remembered the horror that had curdled in his belly when he’d seen Alexia with Lysander and realized his old enemy was loose in the Zone, claiming to be working for the Council. He remembered realizing that Lysander was trying to deceive both him and Alexia, an attempt ruined by the Opir’s mocking words about Eirene, and Alexia’s worth as a dhampir in Erebus.

What he didn’t remember was what had happened afterward. He had attacked Lysander, and they had tried to kill each other. But the details were like a hole in his mind filled only with blood, rage and pain.

He thought it had happened before. It seemed as if he’d woken from a bizarre nightmare—the kind only humans were supposed to have—and quickly found the details burning away in the light of the sun, as if his mind refused to accept that he had somehow lost his ability to control his every thought.

But until Alexia, with such worry in her eyes, had asked him what he remembered of the fight, he hadn’t really understood that something dark inside him had claimed his mind, a darkness he couldn’t see when he was normal. If he had ever been “normal” at all.

What the Lamia had done, interfering in the fight and killing Lysander, was far from normal. Nor was what Damon had sensed when the creature had looked into his eyes with an intelligence and purpose none of its kind had ever revealed before.

Protect, it had said in his mind. Save. And an image of Alexia had filled his head, shaded with emotion no Lamia should have been capable of feeling.

That was when he had known what the creature was. Who it was. And knew, too, that Alexia had recognized the truth before the creature had killed Lysander, and kept it from him.

He had told Alexia truths he had never meant to share, revealed his original mission, exposed inner thoughts and feelings he had once rejected with all his will. He had wounded her, turned her against him, flinched at the agony in her eyes.

Irrational impulses. Lysander had recognized that weakness in Damon far too well.

But Damon hadn’t known the Council had chosen him to work with the Aegis operatives because of that weakness. Or how well it would blunt his intellect and competence.

Lysander had taunted him about that, too.

Since Eirene died. But it wasn’t just Eirene. It was Alexia. He would have given his life gladly to spare her one more moment of pain.

But he had no right to spare her any truth that might keep her alive. Thank the First Sires that his suspicions of Michael’s involvement in the theft of the patch were no longer relevant to that purpose.

If only—

“Theron?” Alexia said, breaking his silence. “You know him?”

Damon shook himself out of his dark thoughts. “From Erebus,” he said. “He was a Bloodmaster, and one of