“No.” He practically growled. “Don’t leave again.” His eyes bore down into hers, the weight of all of his emotions heavy in his gaze. “Beautiful, Cyn, do you not feel how right this is between us?” Thalion caressed her cheek, and she instinctively turned her face into his hand. “See how you respond to my touch? You come alive for me. Please do not walk away.”
“I need your answer,” she said after several minutes of silence. The mask was back in place, her emotions tucked neatly away behind the wall she kept between herself and the rest of the world. She had a duty, and Thalion was not a part of that plan.
His jaw clenched as his eyes hardened into cold stones of ice. He stepped back, and the loss of his closeness sent a chill through her. Thalion’s hands balled into fists at his sides as he pulled his shoulders back and rose to his full height. “My answer stands the same. I will assume yours does as well.” He turned his back to her and began walking. He was walking away from her.
Cyn fought the urge to call out to him. It took everything in her, but the separation needed to happen. Whatever attachment they’d formed, it needed to be broken. As she flashed from the palace, she felt the tears pool in her eyes and cursed each one as they began a trail down her face.
“Stop the train.” Perizada’s voice penetrated the memories of Cyn’s past that had surrounded her. “He walked away?” She glared at Cyn as if she’d been the one slighted. “Who the crap does that?”
“Walk away?” Alina asked. “Everyone does that.”
Peri snapped her finger at the Alpha female. “Don’t justify his behavior because everyone else does it.”
“Really?” Alina cocked an eyebrow at the high fae.
Cyn jumped in before Peri could do something she’d regret. She knew how emotional Peri could get, even if others didn’t realize it. She was extremely loyal to those she claimed and didn’t like for them to be hurt. “Peri, he was frustrated,” Cyn reasoned. “I thought he was giving up too. I thought that was what I wanted.”
“You weren’t relieved?” Alina asked.
Cyn shook her head. “A part of me that I didn’t want to admit existed hoped that he would never give up. I thought we couldn’t be together, but it killed me to think of him with someone else.” She turned to Peri. “When you told me I had to go to him, I experienced nausea for the first time in my life. The thought of seeing him smitten with someone else was almost too much. I nearly disobeyed an order.”
Peri’s mouth dropped open and closed. “You never disobey orders.” She shook her head. “You were gone over him even then.”
Cyn couldn’t deny it.
“And yet, after that encounter, when did you see him next?” Alina asked.
Cyn smirked. “The next time was only two and a half decades later, but by then I was done crying. I had moved on to being angry.”
Peri chuckled. “This ought to be good.”
Cyn laughed. “It was the time you sent me to get weapons and training from him.”
“Did you actually stab him this time?” Alina asked.
Cyn’s eyes danced as a small smile curved on her lips. “I wouldn’t really call it a stab. More like a gentle thrust.”
Peri’s cackle rang out through the quiet night. “Where is Jen when I need her?Gentle thrust. Oh man, that is good, and only topped by the fact that you, serious Cyn, are the one who said it.” Her laughter died but she continued to shake her head. “Gentle thrust. Classic.”
Chapter 10
“In my long existence, I have come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing sexier than the woman I love holding a dagger against my neck while denying her desire for me.” ~ Thalion
“You just walked away?” Reeve asked. His brow rose just a bit over his dark eyes. The life that had once been prevalent in them was all but gone, and what stared back at Thalion was a loneliness that no man wanted to ever face.
Thalion nodded, his face tight with the emotions he’d felt on that day. After having not seen her for fifty years, their reunion had been hot and brief like a flash of lightning. He’d tried to coax her to stay, but he knew that if he ever wanted to capture Cyn’s heart, she’d have to give it willingly. Walking away from her, not knowing when he’d see her again, had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“She wasn’t ready,” Thalion finally said. “Her body responded to me, and even her heart and soul, but all Cyn listened to was her mind. Duty before love. She’s a warrior. It’s how she’d been raised to think. I was frustrated, and I knew that if I stayed any longer I would just become angrier. So I backed off.”
“How much time passed that time, before you saw her again?”
Thalion sighed. “Twenty-five very long years. They almost felt longer than the five decades had.”
Reeve chuckled. “You knew that she belonged with you. In your mind she was already yours. Not being with her didn’t make sense to your heart.”
“You’re right. I couldn’t reconcile why the woman I loved wasn’t waking up in my arms every morning or kissing me every night.”
“I think I remember this time period.” Reeve scratched his head. “You were very volatile. No one wanted to spar with you.”
