Sunny - Mona Lisa Eclipsing

“That’s right, I did.” A bright, optimistic thought—especially what it implied. That I might be stable, at status quo now, and wouldn’t start changing and evolving back again into that frightening living demon thing I had been becoming before.

The sound of people, the feel of them, told us that we were no longer alone. Turning, I saw a crowd of faces gathered at the doorway.

“You remember us now, milady?” Rosemary asked.

“Oh,” I gasped as I not just saw them but recognized them. Knew them. “I can’t believe I forgot you guys.”

It was Happy Reunion, Take 2. This time without any awkwardness or freaky meltdown to spoil things. I hugged Tersa, rumpled Jamie’s carrottop head, squeezed Rosemary’s ample waist, and exclaimed to a grinning Thaddeus, “My God, you’re as tall as I am now. When did you suddenly shoot up?”

“He’s been growing like a weed the last several months,” Chami said, grinning. “You just didn’t notice, seeing him every day.”

“Where’s Tomas?” I asked, naming one of my other guards.

“He’s over in Amber’s territory, helping run things while Amber was here,” Aquila informed me.

“Amber didn’t leave . . . he didn’t go back yet, did he?”

“No, I am still here,” Amber said, his voice coming from behind the others. Dontaine was beside him, I saw as the rest of them made room, allowing them to come to me.

They were still both striking men but no longer intimidating, no longer overwhelming. I saw them now through eyes filtered by love and shared experience. Amber, rugged giant that he was—indeed, one of the most physically imposing men I’d ever come upon—had been frighteningly vulnerable when I first met him, literally crawling in the dirt before his former Queen, begging for mercy she had not shown him. And Dontaine—beautiful, stunning Dontaine. I still remembered him with his throat torn, bloody and helpless while I washed the gore from his body and cared for him. They had earned my love, and even more important, I had earned theirs.

“Oh, Amber.” I flew into his big arms and careful embrace.

“How did you remember? When?” Amber asked in a deep rumble.

“After I woke up. I wandered into your room and Dontaine’s upstairs and had one of those flashbacks. I remembered Gryphon—he was the key. Everything came flooding back once I remembered Gryphon and how it all started.”

The loss of my first love was a gentle sorrow I shared in my glance with Amber, who had known him best of all those here. But it was a gentle loss because Gryphon was not truly gone, just existing in a different realm now as demon dead.

I released my big giant and turned to my other lover. “Dontaine.” I didn’t make him come to me as I had done so often in the past. I walked to him, to where he stood in cautious wait.

I went to him, held him, exhaling softly against his chest. “Oh, Dontaine, I’m so sorry . . . so sorry I forgot you. You pack one heck of a second first impression.”

The stiff wariness I had taught him melted away and his arms came around to embrace me also. “As long as you’re not rejecting me,” Dontaine said against the top of my head.

“No,” I murmured.

He pressed a kiss to my crown and I pulled back to smile up at him, but I wasn’t done yet. There was one last important man in my life. One last lover I had yet to look upon with eyes filled with memories, to ask questions of.

I ended up driving. Such a simple, normal thing to do—drive a car. And for only a short distance. The Morells lived in a small house just down the road, within the vast property of the estate. Close enough, and more important, safe enough for the others to let me travel to by myself. After this latest scare, I had a feeling they were going to keep a really close eye on me, and I was going to happily let them. I had almost lost everything, not through another’s fault or treachery, but through betrayal of my own mind.

Dante came out of the house as I pulled into the driveway. The rest of the family was still inside, giving us token privacy. He had that grim look on his face once again. “I apologize for using compulsion on you—” he began.

“I remember,” I said, cutting across his words.

His body didn’t stiffen, but his focus sharpened on me, stiletto sharp. Then he blew out a breath, releasing the tension, his eyes growing unreadable. “Come walk with me,” he suggested quietly. He didn’t hold out his hand, nor did I take his. We walked, as he had requested.

Soft moonlight trickled down through the trees as we went deeper into the forest until we came to a wide clearing. Here was where we gathered every month, each full moon, to Bask. Here, also, was where my men came to train and practice each evening, just before dawn—the place where Dante had first revealed the twisted past between him and me, our cursed enmity, and stood there waiting to be killed.

“What do you remember?” Dante asked, as we stood with the thrum of old power faint and soft in the soil beneath our feet.

“Everything.” Every last wretched, painful thing. “Oh, Dante . . . our child. I lost our baby.”

Tears—both his and mine—bridged the distance as no words could have, and I found myself suddenly held by Dante, sobbing softly into his neck, feeling his shared grief in the wet drops that moistened my temple.

The loss was mingled with remembered guilt, and the double loss of Dante immediately after like a one-two blow. But it was old grief that twinged anew, not fresh grief. Eventually my tears lessened, subsiding into an occasional hiccup, the quick ebbing of it hastened by the man who held and comforted me now.

One loss irrevocable, the other not so. Or so I hoped.

I said now what I had wanted but had not the chance to say before. “I’m sorry, Dante.” And the added plea. “Don’t leave me again. Stay, please stay.”

He smoothed back my hair, searching my face. “Do you remember that time before, when I took your life and you cursed me?”

I took a deep, ragged breath. “Yes.”

“Then how can you want me to stay?”

“Our present life eclipses our past,” I said, gripping his arms. “We’re in the middle of our second chance, and second chances are rare and precious. I happen to be freshly reminded of that.” More gently, “Say you’ll stay.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them. “Yes,” he said simply.

My heart leaped in joy. “Mona Sierra,” I said, pressing while I yet had the advantage, “you won’t go back to South America to punish her?”

Diamond blue eyes darkened. “I promised her my vengeance—”

“Which you will have,” I hastened to point out. “She’ll be fearful and uneasy for the rest of her life, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for you to strike.” Waiting for you to slaughter her and all her people —which I didn’t say out loud. “That waiting, always being on edge . . . let that be vengeance enough,” I begged. “Please.”

A light shudder ran through him. He bowed his head. “As my lady wills . . .”

“Thank you.”

“. . . as long as she bothers us not.”

“Roberto, too.”

He swallowed tightly. “Agreed.”

“Agreed,” I said in soft echo.

We sealed the deal with a kiss.

AMBER LEFT THE next day, returning to his territory; Halcyon departed the day after to his realm, both leaving with the promise to return soon. Things settled once more into routine, with a few changes. Dante and Quentin joined my daily fencing lessons with Edmond, under Nolan’s tutelage. Needless to say, the Morell twins were in the advanced class; Edmond and I were, if not quite novices, then more along the lines of being orange belts to their black belt status. Most of the time, we worked in our evenly matched original pairings, but occasionally Nolan had us change partners, allowing Edmond and me to test ourselves against more superior opponents.