Tempted

“I am not inside your head. You have never called me into your dreams. I draw your essence to me. The invasion was mine, not through any invitation of yours.”

“That’s not what you said before.”

“I lied to you before. I am speaking the truth to you now.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I was able to draw you here through your sleep even though you are in the arms of another. This time—for the first time—my motives are pure. I am not attempting to manipulate you. I am not attempting to seduce you. And I will speak only truth to you.”

“How can you expect me to believe that?”

“Whether you believe it or not does not change the nature of truth. You are here, Zoey, when you should not be. Is that not proof enough for you?”

I chewed my lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know the rules here.”

“You do know about the power of truth, though. You showed me that during your last visit. Can you not draw on that power to judge the veracity of what I’m saying?”

Thanks to Damien, I knew veracity meant truth, so I wasn’t standing there chewing my lip with a big question mark on my face because I didn’t get what he meant. I question marked because I didn’t know how to respond to him. Kalona was completely baffling me. Finally I opened my mouth to tell him that, no, I couldn’t count on the power of truth when I didn’t have a clue what he might be lying about, but he held up one hand and stopped my words.

“You asked me once before if I have always been as I am now, and I only gave you evasions and lies. Today I’d like to give you the truth. Will you let me, Zoey?”

Again, he called me Zoey! He hadn’t once called me A-ya, as he liked to do. And he wasn’t touching me. At all.

“I–I don’t know,” I stuttered like a moron and took a half step back, expecting the good-guy act to fade and the seductive immortal to reappear. “What are you going to do to show me?”

His beautiful amber eyes darkened with sadness. He shook his head. “No, Zoey. You need not fear that I’ll try to make love to you. Should I attempt to shift from truth to seduction, this dream would shatter and you would find yourself waking in another man’s arms. For me to show you what you need to see, you need only take my hand.” He held it out to me, strong and normal-looking.

I hesitated.

“I give you my oath that my skin will not burn you with the cold power of the lust I have for you. I know you have no reason to trust me, so I ask only that you trust in truth. Touch me, and you will see that I am not lying to you.”

It’s just a dream. I reminded myself. No matter what he says about the Otherworld, a dream is a dream. This isn’t real. But truth was real, whether in dreams or the waking world, and the sad truth was that I wanted to take his hand. I wanted to see what it was he needed to show me.

So I lifted my hand and pressed my palm to his.

He’d been telling the truth. For the first time, his skin didn’t freeze me with a passion and power that I couldn’t accept, even when I couldn’t make myself completely reject it.

“I want to show you my past.” The hand not holding mine swept in front of us like he was wiping an invisible window once, twice, three times. Then the air wavered and with an awful ripping sound something opened before us, like he’d torn a piece of the dream realm open. “Now behold the truth!”

At his command the rip in the sky shivered and then, like a big flat-screen TV had suddenly been turned on, I began watching pieces of Kalona’s past.

The first scene I saw had me breathless at its beauty. Kalona was there, half naked as always, but this time he held one long, dangerous-looking sword while another one was in a scabbard strapped across his back, and his wings were pure white! He was standing outside a magnificent door to a marble temple. He looked dangerous and noble—every bit a true Warrior. As I watched, his stern expression changed to something softer, and as the woman walked up the stairs of the temple, he smiled at her with obvious adoration.

Merry meet, Kalona, my Warrior.

Her voice echoed eerily from the past and I gasped. I didn’t need to see the woman’s face. I instantly recognized her voice. “Nyx!” I cried.

“Indeed,” Kalona said. “I was Nyx’s Oath-sworn Warrior.”

The Kalona in the vision followed his Goddess into her temple. The scene changed, and suddenly Kalona was using both his swords to battle something I couldn’t quite focus on. The thing was black and kept changing shape. One instant it would be a huge serpent, in another it was an open mouth filled with glistening teeth, in yet another it appeared to be a hideous spiderlike creature with claws and fangs.

“What is that?”

“Just an aspect of evil.” Kalona spoke slowly, as if the words were hard for him to say.

“But weren’t you in Nyx’s realm? How could evil get there?”

“Evil is everywhere, just as good is everywhere. It’s the way the world and the Otherworld were made. There must be balance, even in Nyx’s realm.”

“That’s why she needed a warrior?” I asked, watching the scene shift again to show Kalona, white wings blazing, walking behind Nyx as she strolled through a lush meadow. His eyes were never still, but constantly scanned the area around and behind the Goddess. One sword was drawn and in his hand. The other was ready in its scabbard.

“Yes, that is why she needs a warrior,” he said.

“Needs.” I tested the word, and then managed to look from the scenes of Kalona’s past to the Kalona of the present. “If she still needs a warrior, then why are you here instead of there?”

His jaw tightened and his eyes filled with pain. His voice was broken when he answered me. “Look there, and you shall see the truth.”

I focused my gaze back on the changing scenes to see Nyx standing before Kalona. He was on his knees in front of her, and just as he had been when I stepped into this dream, he was weeping. This incarnation of Nyx looked so much like the statue of Mary at the Benedictine nuns’ grotto that I felt a little jolt of shock. But as I kept watching, I saw that something was off about Nyx. Unlike the serene beauty of the nuns’ Mary, Nyx’s expression was hard and appeared weirdly more stonelike than the statue.

Please do not do this, my Goddess. Kalona’s voice lifted to us. It sounded as if he were begging.

I do nothing, Kalona. You have a choice in this. I give even my Warriors free will, though I don’t require them to use it wisely. I was shocked by how cold Nyx sounded. For a second she actually reminded me of how Aphrodite used to be.

I cannot help myself. I was created to feel this. It is not free will. It is preordination.

Yet as your Goddess I tell you what you are is not preordained. Your will has fashioned you.

I cannot help how I feel! I cannot help what I am!

You, my Warrior, are mistaken; therefore, you must pay the consequences of your mistake.

Nyx raised one perfect arm and flicked her fingers at Kalona. The Warrior was lifted from his knees and hurled backward, tumbling end over end.

Kalona fell.

I watched it.

I watched him scream and writhe in agony as he fell and fell and fell. When he finally landed, crumpled, broken, and bloody, in a lush field that reminded me of the Tall Grass Prairie, his wings had turned from white to the raven black they are today.

With a cry filled with pain, Kalona lifted his hand and wiped away the vision of the past. As the air before us shimmered and then became the rooft op garden of the castle again, he let loose of my hand and stepped away