Now…
He didn’t know what to think. About any of this.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
She laughed in his arms. “Some things you just have to take on faith.”
He scoffed at that word that he despised more than any other. “You ask a man for faith when all he’s known is betrayal. It’s impossible.”
“The fact that I’m with you in this realm should be impossible. Yet here we are.”
Aye.
Closing his eyes, he kept looking for a hole in her story. Something he could use to argue against her reason. But sadly, it all made too much sense.
“I won’t let Belial harm you, Ariel.”
She leaned back to look up at him. “I’m not the one you should fear for. If you believe nothing else from me, Valteri, believe this. Should you fall into their hands, all you have suffered in the past will seem like a dream to what is to come. They will do things to you that are beyond comprehension. And not even you will be able to fight them. But more than that, they will use your powers and strength to harm this world, and that, neither of us can allow.”
“I have no powers.”
She gently unlaced his tunic to show an old scar on his chest where he’d been branded. One she’d touched so many times, and now that she had her memories restored, she knew exactly what it was.
Why and how it’d been given to him.
The only question was who had branded him and when.
“Nay, love. Your powers were bound by this seal. But one day… something will unlock them. God help us all when that day comes.”
CHAPTER18
Valteri shook his head in denial. “That’s not a seal.”
Ariel let out a bitter laugh. “Aye, love. It is.”
He staggered back as he stared down at it.
“Do you remember when it was given to you?”
He shook his head as he tried to remember. “Nay. It’s always been there.” His head spun at what she was telling him. “Does this mean that my twin would have shared my powers?”
“Aye.”
“Then how did he die?”
“I know not. ’Tis possible the binding spell was done before you were born or upon your arrival in this world and that could have killed him.”
Valteri sat down as he tried to come to terms with the story she told.
If he dared to believe it.
The things she spoke of…
They were unnatural.
Yet they made sense.
Running his hand through his hair, he grappled with her disclosure.
