“I almost never had her at all, did you know?”
Corin’s eyes snapped up. His grandfather was staring into the distance—lost in memories. “Grandmother?”
“Yes. My enchanting Fiona. I thought I had all the time in the world. Who wouldn’t wait for the next leader of the Blackburns? I let myself be distracted—by clan politics, treasure-hunting, company nonsense.” He waved a hand, dismissing all the worries that had snared their claws around Corin’s heart for the last year. “She stalked me to ground in the end, and I loved her for it, but she shouldn’t have had to. I was hers, and I should have let her know far earlier.” He pinned Corin with his too-incisive gaze. “So. It’s the Flores girl, isn’t it? Not, I might add, currently hanging off your arm like the prize she is. What’s your excuse?”
Corin gaped at him. “You know that Maya—that Miss Flores is my mate?”
He snorted. “You greenscales! I knew the moment you stepped into the room at that send-off they gave me. It wasn’t the job that stunned you. It was the girl.” Heharrumphedand sipped his whisky. “There she was, young, beautiful, anxious about learning her new boss’s ways after years looking after the same crusty old bastard—and there you were, paralyzed by love. I thought I was leaving her in good hands. What happened?”
Corin slumped in his chair and the old man nodded.
“Ah. Clan politics, treasure-hunting, the weight of command … A sudden attack of morality about being her boss? Tsk, tsk. Well,it’s been enough time, hasn’t it? And she no longer works for you. What’s the hold-up? Doesn’t she want to stand beside you as head of our clan?”
If only it was that simple. He could not imagine Maya being intimidated by the requirements of the job.
More likely she would be better at it than he was.
“I cannot control my magic around her.”
The old man stared at him. His eyebrows, raised quizzically to smirk at his own joke, slowly straightened. “Ah.”
“I can be around her. I can touch her. I can give her everything she deserves except the one thing she deserves above all.” He hissed in an uncomfortable breath. “She is my mate. I will not allow anyone to say otherwise, or to disrespect her. But when I think about claiming her—”
Darkness burned from his shoulders, grief and loneliness edged with eerie green. The smell of old smoke filled the air.
“Hrmph.” His grandfather put down his drink. “So that is why you never claimed her.”
“How—” Corin forced out the words. “How can I make her mine, when my magic will harm her?”
The old man sucked on his teeth, and Corin’s heart sank.
“You don’t know.”
“I certainly wish you’d come to me with another problem, my boy. I’d hoped everything else going on would help, but if this is what’s standing in your way…”
“It must have happened before. Our magic is a purely destructive force. AndI will not hurt her.” He clenched his fists, warding off a fear that he already knew what his grandfather would say. “When Grandmother finally tracked you down—”
“Ah.” The old man’s gaze went foggy. “She shot me out of the sky. Wind magic, you know. Nothing I could do. We clashed in a storm of lust and magic and power, her strength against mine, until she had me exactly where she—”
Corin made a strangled noise, and he broke off with a fiendish smile. “She had her hoard all laid out already, the little minx. But that doesn’t help with your question.”
“I think it does.” A weight settled in Corin’s chest. “The duskfire obeyed you. It never tried to hurt her.”
“It wasn’t a question of obedience, boy. The duskfire is not a part of the ritual. Our hoards and our mates are things of joy, and our magic is a thing of duty. That is the way it has always been.”
But not for me.
His grandfather cleared his throat. “Your father never told you this before he passed?”
Corin’s father had died when he was a teen, not long after Corin himself first began to shift. He let out a bitter laugh. “No. I imagine he thought he would have more time.”
“We all did.” He looked solemn. “And you grew up quickly after that, didn’t you? I wonder…”
“What?”
“The duskfire eats grief, lad,” his grandfather said gently. “And spits it out for us to deal with. How long have you flown in it lately? Perhaps—”
“You sound like my mother.”
