Maybe they were dreams. A hallucination of some kind.
Aye, maybe I just ate bad clams.
She knew better.
“Vala, what has caused you such distress?”
Why couldn’t she tell him? It should be easy, and yet nothing would come out.
How could she tell him that if he stayed with her they would both be damned to that future?
“You will think me mad.”
He brushed her hair away from her shoulder. “I will never think that of you.”
She shook her head, refusing his reassurance. She must maintain distance between them to avoid her nightmare.
Nibo gently took her chin. “Tell me,mon ange.”
Valynda bit her lip. She owed him an explanation for her hysterics. In his eyes she saw his fear that she had rejected him, and his earlier anger no longer seemed important to her. Pain coiled inside her and she knew she couldn’t allow him to believe that she had spurned him when he was her very life.
Before she could think, the truth tumbled from her lips. “I see a future where you die.”
Nibo laughed. “I can’t die, Vala. I’m already dead.”
She sighed and reached for him, but her hand stopped just inches from his cheek. She lowered her arm to her side and cast her gaze to the beach around them. “I know you don’t believe me, but I swear ’tis the truth. You are hell bound.”
Nibo looked away as he heard her words, his heart strangely blank. It was as if his body didn’t know how to react and so decided to feel nothing.
She was right. He did think her insane. There was no other explanation for that.
Of all the women alive, he had finally found one who warmed his life, one who filled the emptiness of his heart, and one who was obviously deranged.
“I am not mad!” She glared at him. “I know you don’t believe me, but you must! I saw it, Nibo. I did.”
He just stared at her. Not even the urge to curse came to him. He had no rational response for this, as it was a totally new experience for him, which, given the wide range of things that had happened to him over the centuries, said a lot.
“It’ll be all right, Vala.”
Yet it hadn’t been. It had been so far from all right as to be ludicrous.
Most had the gift of foresight at birth and lost it with their virginity. Leave it to her to get her powers in reverse. Somehow, Nibo had bestowed them on her inadvertently when he first slept with her.
If only she’d known how to channel them. Or if those powers had been better tuned so that she could have seen more clearly what they entailed. But by the time she realized what it was that she’d seen and how to use those powers, it’d been too late.
She’d been dead.
And damned—just as she’d predicted.
Because she’d fought against who and what she was, too ashamed and too embarrassed by herself to embrace it, she’d let the mores of others dictate her life for her. She’d been so focused on trying to be like others that she’d let it ruin her life, and what had it gotten her?
Her friends still hadn’t accepted her into their elite social circles. Not fully. She was their friend only when others weren’t around or available. When it was convenient for them and when it wouldn’t embarrass them.
Her parents she’d spent her life trying to please had betrayed her and sold her out. And in the end, what had it gotten them? Her mother had killed herself and her father was ruined.
She’d died alone at the hands of a selfish bastard who hated her. Given all that, Valynda should have been true to herself and stayed with Nibo. The world be damned. She would have been better off.
At least she wouldn’t have been any worse off. Dead was dead.
