The band had descended into a slower song, one with a sultry beat topped by syrupy, indolent strings. On the dance floor, a male Windrider with multi-colored wings pressed up against another male. In the low, smoky light, Cassandra couldn’t tell if the second male was mortal or Fae.
She was overcome with an overwhelming urge to talk to Tristan. To stop being a coward and justtalkto him. Find out how he was feeling. They’d never had an issue talking through things when her chastity vow had so clearly defined the boundaries of their relationship. Nowshehad the power to define those boundaries. And she ached to know where his own lay.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
Hella gathered Cassandra into a rib-crunching hug and hooted with joy. “Yes, tiny human! Get your male!”
Cassandra attempted a laugh, strangled by Hella’s vise-tight arms. “After we finish our work tonight,” she told the two Fae, then polished off the rest of her drink.
“Just keep a few more of these on hand, Reena. In case I lose my nerve.”
* * *
Tristan seemedto be making up for avoiding Cassandra upstairs, his amber gaze anchored to her as she bathed the obliviates with her restorative magic.
Theirrestorative magic, she supposed.
That thought, combined with the wonder and longing in his stare, dripped a languid, radiant heat throughout her limbs.
She tried to concentrate as she grasped the papery hand of the sixth, and final, obliviate for the evening: an older gentleman with rheumy, unfocused blue eyes and wisps of silvery hair clinging to a shiny, peeling red pate.
Cassandra reached for the man’s wife, whose hand shook as she regarded Cassandra through filmy glasses.
“Savior Sister,” the woman whispered with hushed adulation.
Cassandra shrugged off the title. “Yourmemories will restore him. I’m merely the conduit. Do you have one ready?”
A peaceful smile bent the old woman’s wrinkled lips. “Ever since Mother Superior told me that I’d have to pick a memory to restore my Shefton, I’ve been thinking back on our life. It’s not the big events that I remember the most clearly. Not the day we met, nor the day we were married. Or even the day our son was born. It’s the in-between moments. The quiet times. Sitting in front of a fire together at the end of the day, me reading a book and Shef working on his carvings.”
The backs of Cassandra’s eyes stung. The life the woman described sounded so different from the tumultuous, dangerous one she’d been living.
And seemed so unattainable.
Though she couldn’t deny that she yearned for such a peaceful existence with someone.
Maybe even the black-winged male drinking her in from across the room.
“You’ll have him back,” Cassandra vowed. “I promise. Hold the memory in your mind.”
The old woman closed her eyes, her trembling fingers closing around Cassandra’s, and a surge of sparkling heat blazed through Cassandra’s veins.
The crackle and pop of a fire.
A sweet, honeyed scent of baked apples tucked behind the smoke.
The cool, pebbled leather of a book spine and the smooth swish of a turned page.
The snick of a knife carving into a small wooden sculpture, shavings showering the floor.
The old man’s grip crushed Cassandra’s fingers, stronger than she’d anticipated, and he looked over at his wife. “Mona,” he breathed. “My sweet Mona.”
Cassandra wrapped the couples’ hands together, then stepped away to give them privacy.
Shefton swept his wife into his arms, running a hand over her hair as they held each other, shaking with grateful sobs.
Cassandra sidled up to Borea, who’d nearly fallen asleep against a chair. Reena and Hella had gone back upstairs to keep watch. “Why were there so few obliviates tonight?”
“It’s the strangest thing,” Borea yawned, rubbing at the corners of her eyes. “Several of the obliviates that you’ve restored have returned to the Temple for extractions, but they don’t forget anything.”
