Me and my father.
Shaken by the vivid image, I pause and drop my bag and shoes. I scrape my windblown hair back from my face and glance eastward, searching for that memory, like I might see a father and daughter playing on the beach.
Instead, I see the Collector sitting a few yards away, elbows at rest on his bent knees, watching me with those emerald-bright eyes. I thought I was safe from seeing him. Thought he’d be at the lighthouse with my sister.
He gets up and brushes the sand from his linen trousers. The wind whips his light-colored pants and tunic against his muscled form. I can’t recall seeing him dressed like this before. In truth, I keep seeing images of him on Mannus’s back, cloaked in black, that heavy hood shrouding his head as he rode into our valley like some dark knight. Worse, I see images of him from his past. Un Drallag. Alexi of Ghent. A killer for King Gherahn. Images that only exist because of the bond and our shared dreams and nightmares.
With every cold flash of dreamlike memory, I wonder more and more how I could’ve let myself care for such a man so deeply, as though my mind is trying to remind me who he really is at his core, and that I should hate him. He’s destroyed so many lives in his three hundred and twenty something years. More than he has saved.
But then he walks toward me. He’s barefoot, his hands buried in his pockets, his jet-black hair windswept, his jawline darkly shadowed with a new beard. And I’m reminded that I know what he looks like beneath those clothes. What he feels like. What he tastes like. And I know there is goodness in him, even if I don’t want to see it.
My heart pounds, and my blood heats, mixing with so many other emotions that I don’t know what to do but stand there, frozen, staring at anything but him.
Swallowing hard, I fold my arms beneath my breasts as he stops at my side. He’s facing the main house, almost arm to shoulder with me. Thanks to the wind off the sea, his scent is everywhere, man and musk and something like oud. I can’t stop my chest from rising and falling at his nearness, like I just sprinted to the shore.
“I would ask if you’re all right,” he says, his voice washing over me like a touch, “but I know you aren’t. I feel how torn you are.”
I grit my teeth and ball my hands into fists. He can still feel me because I can’t close the bond anymore. It feels strange when I even think about it, like our connection was only ever a delusion. But then I close my eyes and see it, and I know it was real, though there’s hardly anything on my end remaining. I might as well be trying to shield an open window from a hurricane with a piece of tattered silk.
“Odd that I cannot feel you,” I sign stiffly, drawing my shoulders back. I remember feeling him. Hearing him. Knowing his thoughts. Sharing his magick.
“I’m not allowing it. I thought to spare you.” A question glimmers in his eyes. “Why? Do you want to feel me?”
I turn my gaze straight ahead and stare at the softly rolling sea. “No. I just want you to go.”
He nods, but he doesn’t move. “I’ll leave you alone. But I need you to know something before I do.”
I take a deep breath and turn toward the house, not even gathering my bag and slippers. His voice is still rough from last night, and it’s shadowed with hurt. I don’t want to hear it.
“I meant what I said,” he calls, his words lifting over the wind roaring in my ears. “I do love you. More than you can fathom.”
My feet pause in the sand, my chest caving around my heart. Walk on, Raina. But I can’t.
I begin to force a step, but the Collector’s heat suddenly burns at my back, and his hand slips around my waist. I grab his wrist as if to stop him.
His fingers scrape the silk beneath my navel, gripping the fabric of my robe in his fist. Goosebumps race across my skin at the contact, and I dig my fingers into his flesh, my hand so small compared to his.
I don’t fight him. I want to hate his touch, rough and firm, and a part of me does. But another part craves that touch and wants it everywhere. The part that notices the elegant and strong shape of his hands and the feel of his sun-warmed skin. The part that makes my nipples harden, and my thigh muscles clench.
“A month ago, I was prepared to let you go if I had to.” His deep voice is at my ear, caressing the skin of my neck. “That’s the hero in me you like to talk about,” he says, flexing and relaxing his fingers against my abdomen. “The part of me that time gentled.”
He tugs me around. Hard. The hand gripping my robe slides to the small of my back, dipping dangerously low, while the other grazes my jaw and tips my chin.
I jerk from his touch, but he draws me closer, my heaving breasts pressed to his broad chest as he takes my face in his hand, forcing me to look at him, to feel him.
“But when it comes to saving you, to saving us, I can no longer be that man.” He glances at my mouth with all the hunger of a starved lion. “If Joran succeeds tonight, and you decide to continue to the Summerlands, I want you to understand what awaits. I’ve felt him rousing for weeks now, but these last hours have finished awakening the side of me I’ve kept buried for a very long time, and he’s a greedy, determined bastard. Now, all I think when I imagine losing you or giving you up is that you are fucking mine, and nothing and no one is going to take you from me. Not the prince. Not a destroyed bond. Not Finn. Not even your stubbornness. If you want to walk away from me and all that has grown between us, I won’t let it happen easily.”
He lets go of my face, and I push free from his hold. “And if I do not go with you?” I sign, my movements sharp, my blood rushing like a hot torrent in my veins. “If I stay with Finn? If I refuse you?”
If I go to the City of Ruin, I must leave Finn in Zahira and Yaz’s care, not knowing if he’ll even be alive when this is over. If I stay with him, I relinquish any power I have in helping to right Tiressia’s future, and I send my sister and friends on a difficult journey without a Seer.
Either way, I’m walking away from those who need me. And like it or not, no matter how much desire I might feel for the infuriating man standing before me, it’s an illusory thing, where Finn is tangible, a part of my life that has always been.
The Collector slips his hands back into his pockets, and like he said, determination shines in his hardened stare. “If you stay, then I’ll find you when this is over, no matter where you are, and I’ll do what I must to remind you of what we’ve shared. Because that boy—” he stabs a finger toward the main house “—could try with all his might for all his life to love you like you deserve, and he still wouldn’t set your soul on fire the way I just did with a single touch.” He dips his head, holding my gaze. “I know I make you happy, Raina. I’ve felt your joy. Your passion. Your love. Even if you never spoke the word to me, I felt it blooming. And I will feel it again.”
“You sound so sure,” I sign, twisting my face into a scowl. “As though it will be so simple to woo me. I doubt you can make me forget how much I hate you.”
“I’ve done it before.” He arches a dark, mischievous brow as a smirk crawls across his mouth. “I can do it again.”
