J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

I love you, she thought, falling, floating, feeling the swirling black water rise up her chest, her neck, rushing over her chin and her cheeks and her nose, blocking out the sky and the moon and all the twinkling stars.

Leander, I love you.

She hoped he understood.

Then she closed her eyes and sank down into that dark river that had been waiting to claim her all along, hearing it echo over and over like a refrain, like a reverie, those three little words she just couldn’t find the strength to say.

I love you.

Jenna didn’t die.

Neither did she recover, not exactly. She lingered for over a week in a state of restless slumber, tossing in her bed. Only the occasional low moan broke her ominous, pallid silence.

Leander—who watched her day and night from the chair by the door or the settee at the end of the four-poster bed or pacing back and forth through the confines of her room—was in a matching state of arrested development. He couldn’t grieve, he couldn’t rejoice. She was here but she was not, and the doctor couldn’t tell him much of anything useful.

“She’s strong, Leander. But she’s had a bad time of it. Her mind and body both need time to heal. Luckily she has no infection from her wounds. When she’s ready, she’ll awake.”

Luck. He didn’t believe in it. He put no stock in the word.

Courage. Valor. Stubborn, pigheaded bravery. These were words he valued, these were words that described this woman lying so still and deathly pale on the bed, her long flaxen hair lying in silken waves over the pillows.

His sister was still alive—barely—because Jenna had been brave enough to try to save her. She’d put herself in harm’s way for someone she hardly knew and had, in all likelihood, saved Daria simply by diverting their attention. He owed her a debt beyond measure, but his gratitude was far eclipsed by the sheer, raw, aching love he felt for her, a passion and respect that had increased with the passing of every day since they’d met, yet remained lodged within his throat like a fist.

She was his heart and his fire, and he loved her with every fiber of his being, but he couldn’t fathom how he would tell her. Not after what he put her through.

Naturally he blamed himself for everything. For every mistake and misstep and missed opportunity that had led her to this point, he crucified himself every single day. And he couldn’t stop the memories. They haunted both his sleep and waking hours.

He’d pulled her from that ghastly torture chamber first, then retrieved his sister, wrapping both of their battered bodies in rough blankets, cursing like a demon, wearing a pair of blood-soaked pants stripped from a dead man’s body. He drove like a madman back to Sommerley in a car he’d purloined from the Expurgari.

From the dead Expurgari. May they burn for all eternity in the fires of hell.

But there were more, he knew, many more than those few he’d killed in London. This was only the beginning. He’d spent days making battle plans to secure his colony, preparing himself and those he relied upon to dig in for a long and ugly fight. The Assembly had been convened every day; the machine of war had lumbered into gear.

And every day he was distracted and on edge and nearly overwhelmed by the terrifying possibility that Jenna would never rise from her troubled sleep.

He watched her in the mornings as dawn came and went, lavender and pink and silver crawling silently over the duvet through the slit in the drawn curtains. He touched his finger to the pulse at her wrist as the longcase clock chimed the noon hour. He sat with her during long, moonless nights, brushing his lips against her forehead, silently begging her to wake.

Eventually she did.

It was eight days before she opened her eyes, another ten before she was strong enough to get out of bed. But she remained silent and pale and took halting, slow steps around the mansion on his arm, or on Christian’s.

Leander had let him out of the holding cell, asked his forgiveness for putting him there in the first place. He’d gone mad when Jenna left, had needed to lash out at anything, anyone. But now he couldn’t bear any more discord among his family, he couldn’t prepare for war when every-one he loved, the very glue that held him together, was broken to pieces at his feet.

Impossibly, Christian forgave him, said he completely understood.

Leander didn’t know if he would be so forgiving in his place.

“You don’t deserve her, you know.”

They sat in the empty East Library after breakfast one warm morning, watching Jenna through the tall windows. She stood motionless in the rose garden, her face turned up to the clear summer sky.

Leander only nodded at Christian’s offhand comment, wordlessly agreeing. He watched her bend and pluck a rose from the stem, an azure silk shawl snug around her shoulders, the hem of her skirt fluttering in a breeze. She straightened and winced—he saw it even from this distance, the way she sucked in a quick breath, the way she favored one side as she moved—then slowly exhaled and lifted the blossom to her nose. She closed her eyes.

Her shoulders relaxed and so did his own. He realized he’d jerked forward in his chair when he’d seen the fleeting pain cross her face. He let out a long, measured breath and sank back into the chair, his vision blinded by cold fury.

They would pay for what they’d done to her. All of them. Every . Last. One.

Seeing his reaction, Christian smiled sideways at him. “Well, you mostly don’t deserve her.”

Leander shook his head slowly back and forth, watching her still. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” he said, almost to himself. “She’d never have me. Not after all I’ve put her through. Once she’s healed...she’ll leave. There’s nothing keeping her here.”

Christian smiled his sideways smile and lifted a teacup to his lips. The dainty porcelain cup with its tiny yellow painted flowers seemed in imminent danger of being crushed to dust between his fingers. “You’re not nearly as smart as you think, big brother,” he murmured.

He took a long draught from the cup, held it stiffly away from his body with a frown as if it had somehow offended him, then set it aside on the marble-topped table with a sharp tink !

“Just out of curiosity,” Christian added, his voice very calm, very modulated, his fingers now white-knuckled and clenched together in his lap, “have you told her of the Assembly’s resolution yet?”

Leander sent him a small, sour smile. “Don’t forget who we’re talking about. She doesn’t give a damn what the Assembly has to say. She’ll never live by their rules.” He shrugged, a weary motion of his shoulders. “And I don’t blame her.”

Jenna turned and looked directly at Leander through the window, as if she felt the weight of his stare. Her face was very pale and shadowed within the shining golden mass of her hair, spilling down in waves that lifted and fluttered in glinting locks around her shoulders.

Only her eyes were clearly visible, wide and unblinking, her gaze a level, cool green.

For a moment their eyes clung together. He wanted to leap from the chair and run to her, gather her in his arms, rain kisses over her hair and cheeks and lips—but then she dropped her lashes and turned away. She pulled the silk shawl closer and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear in a gesture that seemed at once dismissive, indifferent, and entirely vulnerable in its simple, girlish elegance. The rosebud fell in a streak of painted silence to the gravel beneath her feet.

“Well.” Christian rose from the chair. He shot one last glance at Jenna before turning his gaze to Leander. “You never know. It might make a difference. You should tell her.”