“I did some research into your family.”
Her heart nearly stopped beating and by the look on his face, she knew she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
“You were adopted—”
“No!”She tore herself away from him, yanking the chain out of his hand.The fragile links broke and the key slithered through the severed chain to land on the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Christien said softly, knowing he was tearing her world apart, breaking her down piece by piece.
“You’re lying.”
Her pain was his pain and he wished to God he didn’t have to do this to her, but she had to understand running from him wasn’t the answer.She was as much a part of this as he was.“Ah, Madelaine.I would never lie to you.”
She swallowed, her eyes bright with unshed tears.And still he had more to tell her, more that would destroy her and shatter everything she knew about herself and her family.He hated himself for what he was doing even if it was necessary.
“Your birth mother and father were killed in a car crash while you were still inside her womb.The doctors were able to save the baby.”He touched her cheek.“You, Madelaine.You were adopted by the Alexanders when you were but days old.”
She shook her head, loosening the tears clinging tenaciously to her lashes.He thought of her father in the nursing home, of her need to take care of the man who raised her as his own.Her face was twisted into disbelief and a sliver of fear raced through him.Would she ever forgive him for destroying her world?
He wished he had the ability to snatch the words out of the air, to not have to tell her the truth of her lineage.His only hope was that one day she would forgive him and understand the necessity.In the meantime he would die a thousand deaths knowing how much he hurt her.
“Your family lineage goes back a long way.A very long way.To biblical times.”He’d been shocked and awed to discover her ancestry and immediately knew he had to protect it at all cost.
“No,” she whispered, but this denial wasn’t as forceful as the others.
“The key isn’t a piece of silver,” he said.“The key is you.Your bloodline.”
She pressed a fist to her mouth and slowly sank to the ground as if her legs couldn’t hold her anymore.
He crouched before her, brushing her hair from her face.She cringed from him, breaking his heart all over again.He was destroying everything they built together and he wasn’t finished yet.
“There is more.”
She shook her head, her eyes wide and pleading for him to stop.
“There is another like you, Madelaine.You were a twin.”
A strangled gasp made its way around the fist still pressed to her mouth.
“I haven’t been able to locate her but I’m trying, using every resource at my disposal.We will find her, I promise.”He had to find her and protect her as much as he had to protect Madelaine.
Her eyes were dull, as if her mind was shutting down with too much information too fast.Christien tried to put on a brave face when inside he felt anything but brave.He was scared to death he’d crushed the best thing that had happened to him in over seven hundred years.
“So you see, Madelaine.You cannot leave me.You can’t run from me.You are needed because you are the key.I am as devoted to protecting you as I am to the treasure.”
Chapter Twenty
Lainie wandered through the cavernous house like a ghost flitting through the shadows.Insubstantial.Grounded one minute, floating the next.
Everything she’d known, everything she’d been, was wiped out.Gone.She wasn’t Lainie Alexander anymore.She didn’t know who she was.
She avoided Christien simply because she didn’t know what to say to him and didn’t know how to ease the desperation in his eyes when she was barely able to handle her own.
She didn’t blame him for telling her about her past—he did what he had to—but she had moments when she desperately wished he kept the information to himself.
“Madelaine?”
She turned from the library window where she’d been staring blindly out.Christien stood in the doorway, questions she didn’t want to answer swirling in the steel depths of his eyes.He wanted to know where they went from here, but how did she answer that when she had no idea where she was coming from?How could she give of herself when she didn’t know who she was anymore?How was she supposed to act now that she knew they weren’t two people loving each other but two people who could possibly start the Apocalypse?
