Sunny - Mona Lisa Eclipsing

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “Who are you?”

Again, I got the distinct impression that my softly worded apology had eviscerated the big man.

My hand was gently, carefully released as we fell into acknowledged stranger status. “I am Amber,” he said, introducing himself. “I serve as your Warrior Lord.”

The blond sun god introduced himself as well, his smile woefully strained. “And I am Dontaine, your master at arms.”

What the heck was with the titles? “Do I have an army?” I asked, my question meant to be more flippant than serious.

“Not an army, milady,” Dontaine replied, his smile dropping away, “just guards—over a hundred trained warriors.”

Right. As if things were not surreal enough without trying to confuse me more with that incredibly lame joke.

Deciding to ignore the trivial stuff, I concentrated instead on what I had sensed, the strong emotions I had felt emanating from these two, prodding me to ask with shy hesitance, “Are we close friends? Or more newfound relatives, perhaps?”

“They are your lovers,” Dante said behind me.

Pin-dropping silence followed his words.

“Don’t joke like that,” I said, my face flushing, pained embarrassment making my voice sharp and brittle. “It’s not funny at all!” Close friends? Possible. But sex with these guys? No way! Last I knew, I had been more frigid than a Popsicle. Dante was more than I ever dared hoped for, dreamed of. But imagining myself breaking out of my sexual Siberia with these two striking and intimidating men . . . no way. I knew what I looked like.

A blanket of uneasy dismay fell over everyone, as if no one knew what to say to my strong reaction.

“Let’s all go inside,” Halcyon suggested into the sudden silence. The guy didn’t speak much, but when he did, people listened.

We trekked into the house, and if the outside was overwhelming, the inside was even more so. Everything was done with taste and class and lots and lots of money. The gold-leaf wallpaper, in fact, smelled like the real deal, metallic gold. And over my head was one of the hugest chandeliers I’d ever laid eyes on.

I wondered if I had wiped my feet. Probably not, didn’t remember doing so. I stopped and kicked off my shoes, not wanting to dirty the pristine black-and-white marble floor.

“Oh, that’s not ne—” Rosemary bit off the rest of her words as Dante removed his shoes also. “I’m sorry,” she said, flustered. “We don’t have any slippers on hand, milady. I’ll be sure to get some tomorrow.”

“No need. Just didn’t want to get your clean floor dirty. I’m fine walking around in my socks, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, no, not at all. Whatever you wish, milady.”

She was clearly uncomfortable, and my own uneasiness was starting to rub off on the others.

I looked like someone they knew but didn’t act like that person. And their not-knowing-what-to-do was cranking up my own anxiety in a vicious circle.

A pile of shoes collected at the front entrance as the others all silently removed their shoes, plainly not something they were accustomed to doing.

I cursed my self-consciousness. It was only magnifying the growing awkwardness between us. This whole meet-and-greet felt like one of those horrible blind dates that spiraled calamitously downhill the moment you introduce yourselves, shattering the buildup of pleasantly hopeful anticipation.

How wonderful. The idea of myself as someone’s nightmarish date from hell.

I felt my pulse quicken, my breath coming a bit too fast as I glanced around, my eyes unnaturally wide. “Are you sure you guys have the right person?” I asked with a small, nervous laugh, more serious than not. “This . . . everything—” The mansion that was supposed to belong to me, all these people who seemed to care about me when I had been so bitterly alone all my life . . . “It’s just not me.”

So, so not me.

I didn’t know what to believe. Whether I should believe anything they told me because the life I knew, the person I knew myself to be, was completely different from what they seemed to be expecting.

“Maybe it’s just a horrible case of mistaken identity,” I found myself babbling. “Or maybe I’m just dreaming or in a coma or locked up in some mental institution and this is all just an elaborate fantasy I’m making up in my mind: dream lovers, friends and family, this mansion, all this talk about being a queen, about demons and princes, reincarnation, curses, and being reborn . . .” I paused, gulped for breath, and finished feebly, “That doesn’t happen in real life.”

By everyone’s shocked expression, I could tell they thought I was in the middle of a breakdown. It made me laugh, because if I hadn’t been in the midst of one, I sure was having one now.

“It’s real,” Dante said into the fraught silence. “You’re not dreaming, not making all this up in your mind.”

The hand he laid on my shoulder certainly felt real.

“This is all just too much,” I whispered, flinging out my hand to wordlessly encompass everything, including the two spectacular men who were supposed to be my lovers, the Demon Prince who claimed to be my mate, even Dante himself . . .

“Too much . . . too good to be true,” I muttered as tears welled up and start to overflow their fragile tension. “It can’t be real.”

“Hush,” Dante soothed. His eyes captured mine, and I watched with dazed bewilderment as those pale blue eyes turned a mesmerizing silver and started to glow.

“Can’t be real,” I said, shaking my head.

“Close your eyes, my love,” he murmured, “and sleep.”

And all my panic, doubt, and sadness drifted away as I succumbed to another’s greater will.

IWOKE ALONE in bed. At first I thought I was back home in my Manhattan apartment and that everything had been a bizarre dream.

It was the smell, the different scents that flashed my eyes open. That’s right, scents as in plural, not singular. My own scent was strongest, mixed with the fainter smell of—what were their names? I thought for a moment and recalled them: Dontaine and Amber. The smell of them both, here on the bed, on the red silk sheets. In one of the largest bedrooms I’d ever seen.

Oh . . . shit.

I looked around. Everything strange. The only thing familiar being that everything was not familiar. I pinched myself on the arm and felt a painful sting, but no altering of reality.

Sitting up, I noted that I was still fully dressed. How long had I slept or, more accurately, been knocked out? I rubbed my eyes and blinked. Had Dante’s eyes really turned silver and started glowing?

I got up and wandered around, inspecting the room. The hairbrush on the dresser had strands of hair that matched my own new color. Old, familiar T-shirts were mixed in with newer ones I’d never seen before, likewise with my pants, underwear, and socks; unsettling, the mingling of the comfortable old with the new and unremembered. The walk-in closet was the same, containing an array of my old stuff mixed with expensively styled new clothing and shoes.

I walked through an open archway into the large connected bathroom and gazed at my reflected image in the long stretch of paneled mirrors ribboning one entire wall.

Who had I become? Had I lost the new me with this large gap in my memory?

It was probably what everyone else was wondering.

I took a shower and felt much better afterward dressing in my old, comfortable clothing—T-shirt and jeans, a battered pair of sneakers, with my hair up in a ponytail.

Self-armored, I left the room and came to a door halfway down the corridor—two doors, actually, directly across from each other. Both rooms were empty, no heartbeat. I turned the brass-handle doorknob and found myself looking into a bedroom: Amber’s room by the scent, large and roomy and tall-ceilinged like the rest of the house. My perusal paused a moment on a standing mirror, a tingle traveling down my back as the sight of it touched a strand of a memory that seemed almost tangible but wasn’t quite—something to do with that mirror. I waited but nothing more came.