Richelle Mead - The Immortal Crown

“For your victory dinner tonight? No, thanks. I had a message from Lucian inviting me, but the last thing I want to do is sit around and expound on our trip to Arcadia. I figured I could at least catch you before you went out.” She gestured toward his coat and tie, hanging on a chair. “Go ahead. Don’t let me stop you. I just wanted to talk a minute.”

Justin continued getting ready, feeling self-conscious with her eyes on him. “I figured you’d have a group of little ones trailing you everywhere—or at least one in particular.”

A bit of Mae’s good humor faded. “I did. On both counts. We were stuck at the base I crossed over to for a couple of days, and then the Citizens’ Ministry got involved and began contacting parents and relatives—of those that wanted a claim to their children, at least. Per policy, they had to contact my sister and Ava’s father too.”

“Ava?”

“My niece.” Mae’s expression softened as she spoke about the girl. “Imagine my surprise to find out Claudia’s plebeian fling was an upstanding young man who went on to become a chemical engineer and marry a primary school teacher. I guess he was just on the Nordic land grant that summer for a temporary job. Even more surprising was finding out he wanted custody of Ava. It defaulted to him technically anyway, but the social worker from the Ministry told me I’d have a good case if I chose to petition for custody myself.” Mae dropped her eyes and sighed. “I didn’t.”

Justin abandoned his grooming and sat beside her on the bed. He had a million questions about the details of her escape, but for now, her emotional well-being took precedence. “And how are you feeling about that?”

“Shitty,” she said. “But not about her. It was the right thing for Ava, I know it was. They’re a stable couple—and believe me, I did every background check I could on them, legal or otherwise—with a house and lots of land for her to play on . . . unfortunately it’s in San Francisco. Not convenient for me, but how could I hoard her for my own selfish reasons? And what life would I give her? I travel so much, she’d be with a babysitter half the time. Amata—her new stepmother— is going to take a leave of absence from her job to work on socializing Ava so she can go to school. I never would’ve thought about anything like that. I figured we’d get back here, Ava would jump into school, and life would be perfect.” Mae sighed again. “Letting her go with them was the right call. She liked them, even though she was still a little nervous about all the newness. She’ll be happy, and I can visit her. I just wish I could shake this feeling of . . . I don’t know. Failure. I worked for years trying to get her back.”

Justin slipped his arm around her. “And you did. You got her out of that nightmare existence, back to where she belongs. Her—and the others, I might add. She’s in a good place. What you’ve done is the last thing from failure.” He hesitated before asking his next question. “I, uh, don’t suppose there’s any chance your sister will petition for custody?”

Mae scoffed. “My sister’s too busy with lawyers. Her and my mother too, I imagine. It wasn’t very hard for the Citizens’ Ministry to figure out which girls were taken by force and which were thrown away.”

The enormity of what Mae had done, both for her niece and to the rest of her family as a result, struck him, and he drew her into his arms. She sank readily into him, resting her head on his chest. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve had to go through. I don’t think I slept the whole time you were lost out there.”

She tightened her hold on him. “You had no faith in me?”

“I had the utmost faith,” he countered. “But I still worried.”

“It was awful sometimes,” she admitted. “I saw some terrible things . . . but I saw some incredible things too. I know you’ve been saying getting involved with the gods is trouble, but after what I’ve seen, I don’t know if I could’ve done it without help. Some goddess got me through. Her . . .” Mae lifted her head and met his eyes. “. . . and thinking about you.”

She kissed him before he could protest, not that he wanted to protest. Not when he’d dreamed about this for the long days of her absence, not when the kiss was an echo of that parting one in Arcadia. It was filled with that same phantom sweetness he’d had so much trouble understanding . . . but craved nonetheless. In their tangle of complicated interactions over the last few months, he’d often found himself pining for how it had been in Panama, but now he realized that was wrong. That encounter between them had been hot and exciting, yes, but those feelings had only been the warm-up for what he felt now, something richer and deeper that resonated within each of them.

Mae eased back on the bed, bringing him down with her. “See?” she said, as though she could read his thoughts. “You aren’t just my easy outlet for implant-driven lust.” A mischievous smile played over her face. “Though I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some of that going on too. Still, you’re going to have to find another excuse this time. What’ll it be?” She paused to trail her lips down his neck. “You don’t do second dates? I hold no appeal anymore? I was an idiot to believe those things before, and I won’t this time either. You’re going to have to come up with something really convincing if you want to get out of this.”

“I don’t want to,” he said, voice ragged. And it was the truth. Her body was pressed to his, her eyes an endless sea of blue and green. He wanted to give into this power that kept bringing them back together. He wanted to feel her bare flesh against his, to lose himself in her, her and a world where there were no other political and godly complications. Unfortunately, no matter how much he pretended, he wasn’t sure such a world existed.

“I don’t want to,” he repeated. “But—”

“Then no buts,” she said. Despite the obvious passion burning through her, there was something canny in her eyes that made him think she’d been bracing for this conversation. “I’m done with games. I know how I feel about you, and nothing’s going to change that, no matter how infuriating you are. Blow off dinner tonight and stay here with me. Or if you don’t want to do it here, we’ll go to my place. We’ll stay in bed all night and make love and talk and you can finally get out from under all those secrets that burden you and tell me why you kept pushing me away. And then we’ll make love some more.”

She kissed him again, momentarily throwing off the response he’d been starting to formulate. He felt like his whole life was balancing on a razor’s edge, and the easy thing, the thing he wanted most, was to jump off with her. But no matter how much he tried to ignore it, no matter how much he wanted to forget, the memory of those words spoken in that fateful dream came back to haunt him, as they so always did: You’ll know her by a crown of stars and flowers, and then when you take her to your bed and claim her, you will swear your loyalty to me.

The old panic seized him, and later, he would wonder if he would’ve felt differently if Hansen hadn’t called just before she arrived. Maybe if he hadn’t had that reminder fresh in his mind, the consequences of swearing loyalty to a god wouldn’t have mattered. But Hansen had called, and through Justin’s haze of desire, an image came to him of a lifetime of service to Odin, leading around a congregation of other Hansens, forced to bring others to the fold and jump at the god’s whims.

Mae saw that fear in him when Justin broke away, and she tried to pull him back. “No,” she said. “No more lies.”

“I’m not going to tell you any lies,” he said, struggling to sit up. “I’ll tell you the truth—as much as I can, at least.”