Lucan’s turquoise eyes sparked with quiet anger. “It is. The white cliffs of Empyrea have started to fade since the Stonedisappeared over a millennium ago—”
“What he means is that life ebbs from us,” Aerén explained, pulling her gaze back to him. “Children haven't been born in thousands of years. Being who we are, we don’t have many offspring, which only bonded pairs are blessed with. We need to find the missing Stone to strengthen the realm, or our race will disappear.”
“A Stone,” Eve repeated, overwhelmed by all they were telling her.
“Yes,” Aerén said, rising to his feet. “All realms contain magic, even the mortal one. Except it’s not vital to human survival. We require both, magic and light. Our magic stems from the seven mystical Stones of Light, which reside in the white cliffs of Empyrea. With one lost, the link is broken. It’s why we desperately need your aid.”
She stared blankly at him, her mind in a whirl. “How…how can something that important just disappear?”
Aerén’s jaw tightened. “With the ongoing war with the Darkreans’ fight for power, the Stones cannot exist in negative energy.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to just have a truce with your enemy, then?”
“Does it work that easily in your realm?” Lucan’s tone dropped to a lovely degree of sub-zero.
Okay, the iceberg had a point. Eve began to pace again, unable to breathe at the sheer enormity of what they were asking of her. “You can’t—you can’t just drop the burden of your dying world on me.”
“So you won’t help us?” Lucan’s expression chilled further.
“Eve.” Aerén touched her arm and stopped her marching. “We’ve searched a long time for you. You are our only hope.”
“I already told Reynner I would help…” She rubbed her cold, damp palms down her dress. “If I don’t find this Stone, if anything happens to your world, I’m not taking the blame for it,” she warned and moved away to stare out the window. God, when Reynner asked for her assistance, she had no idea it would be this immense. Scary. What if she failed?
Then something else clicked in her mind, and she spun back. “You said children haven’t been born in thousands of years…how old are you?”
A twinkle lightened Aerén’s somber gaze. “In mortal years, it’s difficult to determine. Time moves differently for us.”
“Centuries?”
He smiled.
“Millennia?”
A chuckle left him. “So curious. We are a lot older than you are.”
At Aerén’s teasing, Lucan snapped, “If you feel it’s that important to know, we are thousands of years old.”
Eve stopped breathing. These men—agh, immortals, were so old it made her feel insignificant with her few measly decades. Lucan and Reynner appeared to be in their late twenties. But who was counting a few thousand years?
At Aerén’s hint of a smirk, she scrunched her nose. No wonder he’d been amused when she’d so righteously told him that she was older. She must seem a child to him.
“We had no idea which century you’d be born in,” Lucan said, his irritation replaced once more by his glacial demeanor. “So we had to keep searching because the Stone will only respond to you.”
“Yeah, I don’t get that. If something this important belongs to your world, wouldn’t it call to your own kind to find it?”
“No,” Reynner said, striding into the room. “It won't.”
Eve turned, and her heart missed a beat. Dressed in unrelieved black, he took her breath away with that stunning face and shoulder-length sweep of pale hair. Tossing his biker jacket on the couch, his cool gaze met hers.
“It will respond only to the magic in your blood. A safety precaution against it being found by an immortal who would wield it for a purpose other than its original one.”
Bad—evil things, that’s what he meant. Eve rubbed her buzzing temples, surprised she didn’t have a raging headache.
Okay, focus, Eve.She resumed her stressed walk around the room.
How difficult could this be, finding a Stone?
Eve dropped her hand from her head and discovered all eyes on her. Didn’t that just make her want to run?
