I’d missed the hell out of Seattle, but the cityscape passed in a blur as I raced with preternatural speed to Tyler’s penthouse apartment. I’d gawk at the scenery later. Right now, I had to make sure he was okay.
I didn’t bother with decorum as I glided like a wraith to the top floor of the building. Waiting on a slow-as-fuck elevator would not have been conducive to my mounting impatience. When I got to Tyler’s front door, I became my corporeal self. The door was open a crack, and a sliver of light shone out into the hall. Strange. Tyler was usually so concerned with security, it didn’t feel right that his door was open.
Tentatively, I pushed it open and stepped inside. The place did smell a little like Xander’s training room after a workout-musty, sweaty-and my stomach twisted into a tight pretzel that felt like a fifty-pound weight. Tyler liked to have his place lit up like a Christmas tree, but tonight the only light came from his bedroom. I walked, silent as a shadow, my gaze drawn inexplicably to the island counter in the kitchen. The granite slab of the counter was cracked down the center, and the island slumped in on itself as if a giant had tried out his karate chop on its surface.
In fact, the whole apartment looked pretty damned trashed. Forget college dorm room; someone had partied like a rock star in Tyler’s penthouse-or thrown a king-sized shit fit. My mouth went dry, my hands shook at my sides, and I felt like dry-heaving. What was I going to find on the other side of Tyler’s bedroom door? Did I really want to see the havoc I’d wreaked?
I pushed open the door, and it didn’t even squeak to betray my presence. Bathed in light, Tyler stood at the foot of his bed, an open suitcase in front of him and a stack of clothes ready to be packed beside it.
“I felt you the second you came back,” Tyler said without turning to face to me. “It was like someone had switched a light on in my soul. And then you left again for three weeks, and snap! The light came on again.”
His voice was hollow, emotionless. Too calm. My heartbeat kicked into high gear, pounding against my rib cage, and I felt as if I needed to swallow ten times more than usual. “Tyler-”
“Do you know how that feels, Darian, to have that light flipped on and then extinguished over and over?”
“I didn’t know.” God, what a lame-ass response. “When I left, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”
“No, I suppose you didn’t.” His voice became hard. “If you had, you probably would’ve included it in your note.”
“If I told you what I was going to do, you would have tried to stop me. Or worse, come with me. I was trying to protect you.”
Tyler turned to face me, and the fist squeezing my heart constricted at the sight of him. He looked freshly showered and shaved. In fact, his hair was still a little damp, and he smelled of shampoo and body wash on top of his natural scent. His hair was a bit longer, curling at the base of his neck and over his ears. He raised his brows in question and those too disappeared into longer, curling, bronze-streaked locks. But what did me in was the look in those beautiful hazel eyes of his. His gaze was empty, dull, completely hollow, and I realized at that moment that what I’d done-leaving without a trace-had nearly killed him.
“Where did you go?” His tone was that of a demand.
“The Faerie Ring.”
“O Anel?”
I opened my mouth to speak, too astonished at his knowledge to put a coherent string of words together.
“What, Darian?” He became agitated, almost defensive. “You didn’t think I was smart enough to know what that was? I’m older than your friend Raif and twice as clever as that asshole who managed to gain your trust and lure you away. Fallon,” he scoffed. “The least he could have done was picked a better alias. It didn’t take long for me to figure out who-and what-he really was. Maybe if you’d checked one of the twenty or so voice mails I’d left you, you would have realized that I was already one step ahead of you. You knew I’d been talking to people. Investigating. You didn’t even give me enough time to confirm what I’d learned before you took off on me.” My eyes widened, and he gave me a bitter smile. “I guess you didn’t think I was strong enough to help you, so why should I be any smarter?”
“That’s not true.” Goddamn it, I needed more saliva in my mouth. It was too dry to even form words.
“That is true.” He sat down on the bed, crossing his legs at the ankle and his arms in front of him. The laid-back attitude he’d adopted put me on high alert. “You didn’t think I could hold my own with what you had going down. You lied to me, deceived me, withheld information I could have used to help you. And then, to top it all off, you left in the middle of the night with a cryptic note for explanation and fled the city with another man. A man you obviously trusted and held in higher regard than me.”
“Tyler, that’s not what happened at all. I was deceived. It was a trap.”
He pushed himself off the bed and walked toward me. I had to fight the urge not to cringe away from him, his expression was so dark. I’d seen fury boiling under the surface like that before, but never from Tyler. That terrified me.
“I thought I could prove myself to you,” he said, almost murmuring. “I thought if I gave you space and let you think I wasn’t just another user trying to control you, you’d learn to trust me. I bound myself to you out of love, and I prayed the gods would let you love me too.” He traced his fingers along my jawline, and I felt the tears welling in my eyes spill over onto my cheeks. I couldn’t bring myself to speak; the tenderness was killing me. “I should have known better,” he whispered. “I should have known you’d never let your guard down. Not for me, not for anyone.”
“Tyler,” I said as I fought to talk through the dryness in my throat, “I’m so, so sorry.”
A slight, sad smile curved his lips. “I know you are. But sorry isn’t good enough.”
“What do you want me to do?” At this point, I’d have done whatever he asked me to. “Just tell me what I have to do to fix things between us.”
“You were gone, Darian. I told you how it was for me, but you didn’t listen. It was like part of my soul had gone dark. After you left here, I could still feel you. You wouldn’t answer your phone, the PNT was looking for you, and I knew you were running. But at least I knew you were alive. Your wish made me damned near powerless. I couldn’t come for you even when I sensed you were in trouble. But then-” He paused, and his voice seemed to catch somewhere between his chest and his mouth. “You just disappeared. The light went off. Nothing. It was as if you’d never existed.”
My throat closed up; I felt as though I were suffocating. There wasn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs. “I did what I thought was best for you. I would have died if anything had happened to you and you were already in danger-”
“You don’t get it, Darian.” He locked his gaze with mine, and I bit back a sob. “I knew you weren’t dead. After all, we’re bound. My life force is tied to yours. But at least with death there’s some sort of finality! There’s nothing worse than not knowing. And I had no idea where you’d gone, what had happened to you. Once…” He brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “Once I could’ve sworn I felt you reaching out for me. Right here.” He pounded a fist against his chest over his heart. “And it felt so real. But there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it! I couldn’t go to you. I couldn’t help you. No, I knew you weren’t dead, but I mourned you just the same.”
I couldn’t hold back the flood any longer. His calm voice, the way his gaze bored right through me, the pain in every syllable he spoke; it was just too much. My entire body seemed to compress against the emotion I was trying not to let bust out of me like a broken dam. “I love you.”
“But you don’t trust me. You don’t consider me your equal. You don’t think I’m strong enough to protect you.”
“No!” Was that my voice that had erupted into a high, keening cry? “Tyler, no.”
“I wish it weren’t true.” He dragged his hand through his still-damp hair, and my knees threatened to give out beneath me. “I wish to hell that weren’t true. But this will happen again. And again. You draw danger like a magnet, Darian. No matter how much I want to be your protector, you’ll continue to push me away.”
I shook my head. The words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t get my mouth to work properly.
“I think you need some time-”
“No!” The word exploded from my lips. “Damn it, Tyler, don’t do this! Get mad, yell at me, throw something! Set the fucking bed on fire and take a baseball bat to every lamp in the house. But do not say what you’re about to say.”
“I’m sorry, love.” He laid his lips to my forehead and stayed that way for a few moments before pulling away. “I think you need to decide what you really want. I won’t tag along after you anymore. I won’t sit at home and wait while you risk your life.”
“But the bond…” It was my ace in the hole. He couldn’t leave me. He’d bound himself to me.
“Is intact,” he said. “I told you, only you have the power to break it. I will protect you with my dying breath. If you need me, you know what to do.” He turned away, left me leaning against the doorjamb for support, and returned to his suitcase. He didn’t take the time to fold his clothes, instead shoving them in the case before stuffing the lid down and zipping it closed.
I was frantic to keep him where he was. He couldn’t leave me. He couldn’t. “Ty, please don’t go. Please, Ty. Don’t-God, please-don’t leave me.”
“I won’t be gone long,” he said, throwing my own words back in my face. I wished like hell I’d never written that damned note, that I could turn back time and undo it all. “I tried too hard.” He grabbed the suitcase and crossed the room toward me. “I tried to force you before you were ready. Maybe without me here, you’ll find the closure you need to let me in. I hope that when I come back, you’ll be ready to trust me, to believe in me.”
“You don’t have to leave for that to happen, Tyler.” My world was crumbling around me, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Stay. Please.”
“I love you,” he said as he leaned in to kiss me one last time. “Good-bye, Darian.”
His lips on mine caused a ripple of energy to flow over my body, and the room swam in a dizzy blur. I closed my eyes to steady my careening world, and when I opened them again, he was gone.
I don’t know how I got back to my apartment. I was worse than a fucking zombie, more brainless than the walking dead without even hunger to motivate my shuffling steps. I got out of the elevator and stared at my surroundings as if I’d never seen the place before. Someone had come in and turned up the heat. At least, I thought someone had. The vents were blowing warm air, stirring my hair and drying my wide, unblinking eyes.
I’d been back in Seattle for only a few hours. But somehow it felt like years. As if I’d been watching from a distance, the scene with Tyler played over and over in my mind, and I searched for the right word, the perfect phrase I hadn’t said, that might have convinced him to stay. God, I’d fucked up. Pushed him too far. Expected too much and at the same time, not enough. I loved him the way I’d been taught to love-through control and manipulation. I’d failed him-miserably. I didn’t know how to share my life with someone. Tyler deserved someone so much better than I. And though I knew he should have gone out and found that better someone, I prayed to whatever gods that listened that he wouldn’t.
“I love you.”
He’d said those words to me.
“Good-bye, Darian.”
Right before he left me.
What was I going to do without him? He’d been a constant presence in my life for so long. I took for granted the knowledge that he’d always be there for me, no matter what. I took three shuffling steps toward my kitchen when a long black scabbard caught my eye. Sitting atop my dining room table were a note, a stack of mail, and-my katana.
My chest loosened a little when I looked at the sword I thought I’d lost back in Spokane when Faolán had taken control of me. I loved that goddamned piece of metal, and seeing it there on my dining room table brought a fresh wave of tears to my eyes. I picked up the note, staring at the words that seemed nothing more than incoherent scribbles until my eyes finally made sense of them all and recognized Raif’s swirling script.
You left this in Spokane. It was my pleasure to retrieve it for you. Checked your mail while you were gone as well. This is not the dark hour you think it is, Darian. Have Faith.
– R
I caressed the scabbard, thinking of the shining blade encased within it as I crumpled Raif’s note and threw it somewhere toward my kitchen. He’d known Tyler was leaving. Shit, he’d more than likely talked to him before flying to England to meet me. I felt so lost. Directionless. Immobile. I didn’t know if I could even function without Tyler. I didn’t want to be alone. My hand brushed over the stack of mail Raif had left, the shiny surface of a postcard waking me from my stupor. I picked it up, the modern-day depiction of San Francisco covered with bright red curling letters of the city’s name. I tried to take a deep breath, my pulse racing out of control as I turned the card over to find a cheerful message from an anonymous sender, though the handwriting was unmistakable: Wish You Were Here.
Jesus Christ. Lorik. He should have been long dead, but there was no way in hell that postcard was from anyone other than the Armenian gangster’s son Azriel had helped to hide decades ago. A renewed sense of fear peppered my skin like flecks of ice, and I shivered. “Azriel,” I whispered, “what the hell have you gotten me into this time?”
Turning the postcard over in my hand, I looked for some clue as to what this was all about. I couldn’t explain the dark foreboding that cast its shadow on me as I stood staring at the simple laminated cardstock, but I knew trouble was headed my way.
“I will protect you with my dying breath. If you need me, you know what to do.” Tyler’s affirmation reverberated in my mind, heart, and soul. I hoped that sentiment held true, no matter where in the world he’d gone, because I had no doubt I was going to need Tyler’s protection in the very near future.
“Come back to me, Ty.” I said, loud enough for the sound of my voice to bounce off the brick walls of my studio. “Soon.”