Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

Gage nodded. “That jibes with Linz.”

“Isn’t that handy? Doesn’t that just tie it up in a bow?”

For a moment, as Gage and Cybil watched each other, no one spoke. Then Quinn made an ahem sound. “Okay, question.” Quinn held up a finger. “If the bloodstone and a sacrifice does the job, why didn’t Dent kill it?”

Still watching Cybil, Gage answered. “First, it came as Twisse, not in its true form.”

“I think there’s more,” Cal said. “I’ve been thinking about this since Gage ran it by us. Dent had broken the rules, and intended to break more. He couldn’t destroy it. It couldn’t be done by his hand. So he paved the way for us. He weakened it, made certain it couldn’t become, as Linz says. Not fully corporeal, not in full power. He bought time, and passed all he could down to his ancestors-to us-to finish it.”

“I’ll go with that. But I don’t think it’s the whole story.” Quinn glanced at Cybil, and her eyes held sorrow and apology. “Destroying the demon was-is-Dent’s mission. His reason to exist. His sacrifice-his life-wouldn’t be enough. True sacrifice involves choice. We all have choices in this. Dent isn’t wholly human. Despite our heritages, all of us are. This is the price, the choice to sacrifice life for the whole. Cyb-”

Cybil held up a hand. “There’s always a price.” She spoke steadily. “Historically, gods demand payment. Or in more pedestrian terms, nothing’s free. That doesn’t mean we have to accept the price is death. Not without trying to find another way to pay the freight.”

“I’m all for coming up with an alternate payment plan. But,” Gage added, “we all have to agree, right here and now so we get this behind us, that if we can’t, I take point on this. Agree or not, that’s how it’s going to be. It’d be easier for me if we agreed.”

No one spoke, and everyone understood Cybil had to be the first.

“We’re a team,” she began. “None of us would question just how completely we’ve become one. Within that team we’ve formed various units. The three men, the three women, the couples. All of those units play into the dynamics of the team. But within those units we’re all individual. We’re all who we are, and that’s the core of what makes us what and who we are together. None of us can make a choice for another. If this is yours, I won’t be responsible for making it harder, for adding to the stress, for possibly distracting you, or any of us so we make a mistake. I’ll agree, believing we’ll find a way where all of us walk away whole. But I’ll agree, more importantly, because I believe in you. I believe in you, Gage.

“That’s all I have to say. I’m tired. I’m going up.”

HE GAVE HER SOME TIME. HE WANTED SOME HIMSELF. When he walked to the door of the bedroom they shared, Gage thought he knew exactly what he needed to say, and how he intended to say it.

Then he opened the door, saw her, and it all slipped away from him.

She stood at the window in a short white robe, with her hair loose, her feet bare. She’d turned the lights off, lighted candles instead. Their glow, the shifting shadows they created suited her perfectly. The look of her, what he felt for her, were twin arrows in the heart.

He closed the door quietly at his back; she didn’t turn. “I was wrong not to pass along the research I found.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“I can make excuses, I can tell you I felt I needed to dig deeper, gather more data, analyze it, verify, and so on. It’s not a lie, but it’s not altogether true.”

“You know this is the way. You know it in your gut, Cybil, the same as I do. If I don’t do this thing, and do it right, it takes us all-and the Hollow with us.”

She said nothing for a moment, but only stood in the candlelight, looking out at the distant hills. “There’s still a smear of sunlight at the very tips of the mountains,” she said. “Just a hint of what’s dying. It’s beautiful. I was standing here, looking out and thinking we’re like that. We still have that little bit of light, the beauty of it. A few more days of that. So it’s important to pay attention to it, to value it.”

“I paid attention to what you said downstairs. I value that.”

“Then you might as well hear what I didn’t say. If you end up being the hero and dying out there in those woods, it’s going to take me a long time to stop being angry with you. I will, eventually, but it’s going to take a good, long time. And after I stop being angry with you-after that…” She drew a long breath. “It’s going to take me even longer to get over you.”

“Would you look at me?”

She sighed. “It’s gone now,” she murmured as that smear of light faded into the dark. Then she turned. Her eyes were clear, and so deep he thought they might hold worlds inside them.

“I have things I need to say to you,” he began.

“I’m sure. But there’s something I need to tell you. I’ve been asking myself if it would be better for you if I didn’t tell you, but-”

“You can decide after I say what I have to say. I got an answer on this earlier today from someone whose opinion I respect. So…” He slipped his hands into his pockets. If a man had the guts to die, Gage thought, he ought to have the guts to tell a woman what he felt for her.

“I’m not telling you-or not just telling you-because I may not come through this. That’s kind of the springboard for saying it now. But I’d’ve landed here sooner or later. No getting around it.”

“Getting around what?”

“A deal’s a deal for me. But… the hell with that.” Annoyance ran over his face, heated his eyes to a burning green. “All bets are off. I like my life. It works for me. What’s the point of changing what works? That’s one thing.”

Intrigued, she angled her head. “I suppose it is.”

“Don’t interrupt.”

Her eyebrows winged up. “Pardon me. I assumed this was a conversation, not a monologue. Should I sit down?”

“Just shut up for two damn minutes.” Frustration only kicked up the annoyance factor. “I’ve got this push-pull thing with the whole destiny deal. No denying it pulls me in, or I’d be a few thousand miles away from here right now. But I’m damned if it pushes me where I don’t want to go.”

“Except you’re here, and not wherever else. Sorry.” She waved a hand when his eyes narrowed in warning. “Sorry.”

“I make up my own mind, and I expect other people to do the same. That’s what I’m saying.” And all at once, he knew exactly what he was saying.

“I’m not here with you because of some grand design dictated before either of us were born. I don’t feel what I feel for you because somebody, or something, decided it would be for the greater good for me to feel it. What’s inside me is mine, Cybil, and it’s in there because of the way you are, the way you sound, the way you smell, you look, you think. It wasn’t what I was after, it’s not what I was looking for, but there it is.”

She stood very still while the candlelight played gold over the dark velvet of her eyes. “Are you trying to tell me you’re in love with me?”

“Would you just be quiet and let me manage this on my own?”

She walked to him. “Let me put it this way. Why don’t you lay your cards on the table?”

He’d had worse hands, he supposed, and walked away a winner. “I’m in love with you, and I’m almost through being annoyed about it.”

Her smile bloomed, beautifully. “That’s interesting. I’m in love with you, and I’m almost through being surprised by it.”

“That is interesting.” He took her face in his hands, said her name once. His lips brushed hers, softly at first, like a wish. Then the kiss deepened. And as her arms hooked around him, there was the warmth, and the rightness of her. Of them. Home, he thought, wasn’t always a place. Sometimes, home was a woman.