Page 69

“Then I am yours as well.”

She smiles.

“All six feet seven inches of you?”

“Every inch.”

Her eyes widen.

Then she laughs.

“You’re impossible.”

“And yet you love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

I kiss the tip of her nose.

“A terrible burden.”

She settles against my chest, her fingers tracing idle patterns along my arm.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

The candle burns low.

Music drifts across Saint Street.

And I hold the woman who has somehow accomplished what three thousand years of imprisonment could not.

She has taught the God of Wrath that there are things worth living for beyond vengeance.

Then something chirps inside the apartment.

Wren stiffens.

I feel it immediately.

The change in her breathing.

The tension returning to her shoulders.

“Your telephone,” I say.

She doesn’t move.

It chirps again.

“I should check it.”

I loosen my arms.

She rises from my lap and walks inside.

I follow at a distance.

She picks up the device from the kitchen counter.