Tempted

from me to sit on a bench under an orange tree. He didn’t say anything. He just sat there looking out at the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean.

I followed, but didn’t sit beside him. Instead, I stood in front of him, studying him as if I could really judge truth with my eyes.

“Why did she kick you out? What was it that you did?”

His eyes met mine. “I loved her too much.” His voice was so emotionless he sounded like a ghost.

“How can you love your Goddess too much?” I asked automatically, even as the obvious answer came to me. There were different types of love—I was über-aware of that. Kalona’s love for Nyx was obviously the wrong type.

“I was jealous. I even hated Erebus.”

I blinked in shock. Erebus was Nyx’s consort, her eternal lover.

“My love for her made me break my oath. I was so obsessed with her, I couldn’t protect her anymore. I failed as her Warrior.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, thinking of Stark. He’d only been sworn to me for days, and already I knew it would be like ripping away a part of his soul if he failed to protect me. And how long had Kalona been Nyx’s Warrior? Centuries? How long was a piece of eternity?

Incredulous, I realized I was feeling sorry for Kalona. I couldn’t be feeling sorry for him! Sure, he’d had his heart broken and fell from the Goddess’s realm, but then he’d turned into a bad guy. He’d become the evil he used to fight.

He nodded his head and, as if he could hear my thoughts, said, “I did terrible things. I’ve continued to do them. Falling changed me. Then, for so long I was numb inside. I searched and searched, century after century, trying to find something, someone to fill the bloody wound Nyx had left within my soul, within my heart. When I found her, I didn’t know she wasn’t real, that she was just an illusion created to entrap me. I went willingly into her arms. Did you know that when she began to shift her form back to the clay from which she’d been made, she wept?”

My body jerked. I knew what he was talking about. I’d experienced it with her.

“Yes.” My voice was a rough whisper. “I remember.”

His eyes widened in shock. “You remember? You have A-ya’s memories?”

I didn’t want to admit the extent of the A-ya memory, but I knew I couldn’t lie. So I fashioned a small piece of the truth and gave it to him in short, tight words. “Only one. I just remember dissolving. And I remember A-ya crying.”

“I am glad you don’t remember anything else, because her spirit stayed with me, trapped there in the darkness, for a long time. I couldn’t touch her, but I could sense her presence. I think it was the only thing that kept me sane.” A shiver rippled through his body and I saw his hands begin to lift, as if he would literally try to push away the memory. He was silent for a long time. I thought he might be done with his retelling of the past, and I was trying to sift through the shock and disbelief in my mind to find a question to ask him when he began to speak again. “Then A-ya was gone. That is when I began calling. I whispered my need to be free to the world, and the world finally heard me.”

“Don’t you mean Neferet heard you?”

“It is true that she heard me, but it wasn’t only the Tsi Sgili who answered my call.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t call me to the House of Night. Nyx Marked me. That’s why I’m there.”

“Is it? I must speak only the truth or our dream disappears, so I will not try to persuade you by pretending I know more than I do. I will only say what I believe, and I do believe you heard me, too. Or at least the part of you that was once A-ya heard and recognized my voice.” He hesitated, and then added, “Perhaps Nyx’s hand was guiding your reincarnation. Perhaps the Goddess sent you to—”

“No!” I couldn’t listen to any more. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would burst from my chest. “Nyx didn’t send me to you, just like I’m not really A-ya. It doesn’t matter that I have some random memory that’s hers. In this lifetime I’m a real girl, with free will and a mind of my own.”

His expression changed again. His eyes soft ened as he smiled at me tenderly. “I know, Zoey, and that is why I have had such a struggle with my feelings for you. I woke from the earth wanting the maiden who had imprisoned me, to find a girl with free will fighting against me.”

“Why are you doing this? Why do you sound like this? You’re not really this guy!” I shouted at him, trying to yell down the terrible, wonderful way his words were making me feel.

“It happened when you fell. I saw myself falling again, and in that vision I also saw my heart breaking again. I couldn’t bear it. I swore to myself that if I could draw you to me one more time I would show you the truth.”

“If this is really true, then you have to know that you’ve become the evil you used to fight.”

He looked away from me, but not before I saw shame in his eyes. “Yes. I know.”

“I’ve chosen a different path. I can’t love evil. And that is the truth,” I said.

His eyes came instantly back to me. “And if I choose to reject evil? What then?”

His questions threw me totally off guard, so I blurted the first thing that came to my mind. “You can’t reject evil, not while you’re with Neferet.”

“What if I’m only evil with Neferet? What if the truth is that if I were with you, I could choose good?”

“Impossible.” I was shaking my head back and forth, back and forth.

“Why do you call it impossible? It has happened before. You know because you caused the choice for good. The warrior who is bound to you is proof of it.”

“No. This version of you isn’t real. You’re not Stark. You’re a fallen immortal, Neferet’s lover. You’ve raped women—made people your slaves—killed people. Your sons almost killed my grandma. One of them did kill Professor Anastasia!” I grabbed on to all the negatives I could and hurled them at him. “The fledglings and professors at the House of Night started to question Nyx because of you. They’re still acting wrong. Whether it’s their choice or not, they’re filled with fear and hate and jealousy, just like you were with Nyx!”

He acted like I wasn’t standing there shrieking at him. He simply said, “You saved Stark. Can’t you save me, too?”

“No!” I screamed.

And sat straight up in bed.

“Zo, it’s okay. I got ya.” Heath was there, wiping sleep from his eyes with one hand and rubbing my back with the other.

“Oh, Goddess,” I said, blowing out a long, trembling breath.

“What’s wrong? Bad dream?”

“Yeah, yeah. Weird, bad dream.” I glanced at the bed across the room. Stevie Rae hadn’t moved. Nala was curled by her shoulder. My cat sneezed at me. “Traitor,” I told her, trying to force myself to sound normal again.

“Well, then, go back to sleep. This switching up days and nights is finally working for me and I want to stay in practice,” Heath said, holding his arms open for me to slide back into.

“Okay, yeah, sorry.” I lay back, curling into a ball that was frighteningly similar to a fetal position.

“Go back to sleep,” Heath repeated around a huge yawn. “Everything’s okay.”

I lay awake for a long time wishing desperately that it was true.

CHAPTER 31

Zoey

When we woke up near dusk I couldn’t bear to think about Kalona and the dream, so I pounced on Heath. “Okay, time to call your mom and dad so they can tell you to come home.”

“Are you okay, Z?” Stevie Rae asked while she towel-dried her hair. She and I had stuffed things in my book bag while Heath showered, then we’d taken turns getting ready. Her question made me realize that in all that time I hadn’t done much more than mumble monosyllabic responses to anything she or Heath said.

“Yep. I’m okay. I’m just going to miss Heath, that’s all,” I lied. Okay, well, it wasn’t actually a lie, because I would miss Heath while we were in Italy, but that’s not why I hadn’t felt like talking.