She ignored his absolution. It didn’t change what had happened. And she didn’t deserve it. “Papa banished all pets from Vera Sola after that. Every dog and cat and small animal in the city was taken away. I wasn’t allowed in the stables again, and they made sure, when I rode, I never had the same horse twice. So I couldn’t get attached. I wasn’t allowed to play with other children until I proved I could control myself. Mama worked with me every day.”
Summer remembered the feel of Mama’s hands holding her small face. She remembered the way Mama’s eyes fixed on hers and never wavered, cooling the fire that raged in Summer’s soul.
“There is great power in you. So you must—Gabriella, youmust—learn to control it. Do you understand, darling? You must control your emotions, or you could hurt someone again. And I know you would never want that.”
So Gabriella had learned how to control her anger and push the bad, hot, violent feelings away. For Mama. Because Mama was Summer’s anchor in the storm, just like she was Papa’s. Gentle, steadfast, unwavering.
“It was very difficult for me after Mama died,” Summer told Dilys. “But I saw how Papa despised Storm—even as a baby—for not being able to control her gifts, and the thought of him ever hating me the way he did her was more than I could bear.” She shrugged. “So I learned to stay away from things that made me feel too much. I learned how to avoid extreme emotion, how to make the people around me happy so I could stay happy too.”
“And then I came along.”
“And then you came along.”
“What do I make you feel, Gabriella?”
She looked up at him. Traced the strong, beautiful lines of his face with her eyes.
“Too much,” she admitted. “Far, far too much.”
Emotion broke across his soul like sunlight breaking through the clouds after a fierce storm at sea. It suffused him with the same relief and satisfaction and sense of a fight well won, the same profound sense of awe that left him marveling at the beauty and the challenge of this wondrous world. Of this woman who had somehow, in so short a time, become his world, and no less wondrous than the one whose seas he’d sailed most of his life.
“And if I could promise you need never fear your power again,moa kiri? Would you let yourself love me then?”
The fingers splayed across Dilys’s chest trembled. Or maybe that was him doing the trembling. He couldn’t be sure.
“You can’t promise that,” she said.
“But if I could? If I could promise you’d never hurt anyone by accident ever again, would you still refuse me?”
Her eyes were so wide, so deeply blue. Her soft mouth trembled. She looked so uncertain. Fear and hope teetering uncertainly on a delicately balanced fulcrum. He’d never wanted to kiss her more.
He didn’t. She had to come to him. She had to make the choice.
“No.” She spoke in a whisper so low he had to strain to hear her. “No, I wouldn’t refuse you.”
“And would you let yourself love me? Could you? Love me?”
Her lashes fluttered down. Her head bowed, leaving him looking down at the neat part and glossy black curls of her artfully arranged hair. As silky and dark as anyimlanifemales. “If it wasn’t a danger to everyone around me? Could I love you then? I suppose so.” She tugged at the hands he held pressed to his chest, pulling with enough force that he had to let her go. “But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can’t change what I am.”
He half expected her to walk away. To put as much distance between them as she could. She was a turtle without her shell, vulnerable, and she was an expert at running from people and situations that made her that way. But she didn’t run, and his heart nearly burst with pride and soaring hope and love so strong it made tears sting his eyes.
“There is no part of you I would ever want to change, Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate,” he told her huskily. “You are perfect, just as you are.”
Her gaze shot up, startled, and he had to smile at her surprise.
“Think about it,moa kiri,you just spoke to me of the most painful experience in your life. A memory so terrible you have spent your life cutting yourself off from even the possibility of love. You just relived every horrible moment of that experience in your mind—even the bits you didn’t tell me about—and yet the power you fear so much did not overwhelm you.”
Her jaw dropped. She turned over her right hand, staring in shock at the red Rose-shaped birthmark on her inner wrist. She touched it with shaking fingers, then pressed a hand to her chest.
“How?”
He reached for her hand slowly. Unfurled the slender, delicate fingers. Laid her trembling palm over his own heart.
“You gave your pain to me. You let me take it from you and give you my love back in return.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You weren’t born to stand alone,Sirena.You were born to love and to be loved. To share what’s inside you. And whether you want to admit it or not, your heart knows you can share it with me.”
