Edge of Twilight. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ onto the bed beside the woman, sliding the soft robe easily onto her. Sarafina didn’t fight. She wept, her entire body jerking as the flood of emotion battered her like a storm.

      “It’s all right, ‘Fina. It’s going to be all right.” She pulled the robe together in front, letting the bottom half drape over Sarafina’s long legs, loosely tying the sash, then leaning close to brush black curls from tear-wet cheeks. “It’s okay to cry,” she whispered. “You’re not made of stone.” She blinked back her own tears, but fighting them was nearly impossible.

      ‘Fina’s face pulled into a painfully twisted mask. “H-h-he can’t … I can’t do this. I can’t—”

      “I know. I know.” Amber embraced her quaking shoulders, pulled her gently close and found it surreal to be comforting one of the two toughest, strongest women she had ever known. The other one was in the bathroom, and if Amber’s senses were on target, she was weeping, as well.

      “It’s too cruel,” Sarafina whispered. “It’s too cruel. How can he be taken from me? How?”

      “I don’t know.”

      Sarafina shivered, pulling free of Amber’s arms to lie down, curled on one side in the fetal position, her back to Amber. “I knew I should never have let myself love him.”

      “You know you don’t mean that.” Amber closed her eyes and told herself this was exactly why she would never lose herself to a man this way. Never.

      “Everyone I love leaves me. My mother died giving me birth. My sister hated me for that, all my life. My first love, Andre, plotted against me and turned the entire clan against me. Bartrone, my sire, walked into the sunlight one dawn.”

      Her shoulders stilled from their trembling. “For the first time, I understand what drove him to that.”

      “Don’t talk that way, ‘Fina. You have to be strong.”

      “I’m tired of being strong. I’m so.so very tired.” She sniffed. “If Willem must die—”

      “Willem isn’t dead yet, woman.” It was Rhiannon’s voice, stern and harsh. She’d apparently finished with her work and now stood in the bedroom. “If it is his fate to go, then you’ll have time enough for hysterics when it’s over. In the meantime, don’t be so quick to give up on him.”

      Sarafina rolled onto her back, glaring at Rhiannon. “The doctors say there’s no hope.”

      “Mortal doctors. Humans. Fools. What do they know about us? About our kind? We can do things they’ve never dreamed, Sarafina. We’re gods compared to them.”

      “Will’s not a god. He’s not one of us. He’s just a man.”

      “He’s far from that, and you know it.” Rhiannon came closer, pulling something from the deep pocket of her silk skirt, a glass vial with a cork in the top. “Drink this.”

      “What is it?”

      Rhiannon pulled the cork free. “A modified version of that delightful tranquilizer DPI invented to use on us. Eric’s been toying with it. It has many uses for our kind. Helps with pain. It’ll make you sleep.”

      “I don’t want to sleep. I want to be with Willem when he gets back.”

      “He’ll be hours yet. You’ll be awake by then, I promise.”

      Rhiannon pushed the vial to Sarafina’s lips, and she swallowed the contents and made a face. She licked her lips and met Amber’s eyes. “It’s good to see you.”

      “It’s good to be here.”

      “I’m sorry about—all of that.”

      “Don’t be. I’d have torn the house apart in your place by now.”

      She blinked slowly. “It’s not as if I didn’t know the risks. Risk—that’s not even right. When an immortal falls in love with a mortal, the outcome is certain.” She looked at Rhiannon. “It’s not as if I wasn’t warned.”

      “It’s not over yet, Sarafina,” Rhiannon said. “Sleep now. Give me time to do what I do best.”

      ‘Fina lifted her brows. “What’s that? Terrorize people?”

      “Play goddess, of course.” She slid a look at Amber, and Amber knew exactly what she was thinking.

      The two of them stayed there until Sarafina slid into a deep, still slumber. Then Rhiannon touched Amber’s shoulder, tipped her head toward the door and led the way back down the stairs.

      Edge sat outside the house, in the darkness, keeping his presence to himself. He’d heard the scream right after he’d left Alby’s side, heard the crashing, breaking glass, and he’d immediately thrown his senses wide-open, even as he raced back to the house on the seashore.

      He didn’t go inside. He didn’t need to. He could see what was going on just as easily from outside, just by probing and prying. It was bad form among his kind to eavesdrop this way, but he didn’t really give a damn about the protocol and etiquette of being undead. Never had. Normally this kind of snooping wouldn’t go undetected, but the women inside were far too distracted to pay him any mind.

      The woman they called ‘Fina was grieving over a dying mortal. Willem. She was his lover, Edge deduced. He felt her pain and had to shut it out because it was too intense to bear. Nearly paralyzing.

      He wasn’t sure whether the Child of Promise and her “aunt” Rhiannon were aware of it or not, but it was clear to him the Gypsy Sarafina would not go on once Willem was dead. It was coming through his senses as clearly as the images of her dancing around a fire amid a village of painted wagons and reading palms in exchange for silver in some long-ago time.

      It was, of course, nothing to him. He had a feeling she’d known once what he knew now. How foolish it was to care for anyone other than herself. How utterly stupid and self-destructive it was to put anything or anyone above your own well-being.

      Stupid. She’d known it once. She’d put it aside. And now she was paying the price. She would die. There was no question. Within a few days—maybe hours—of her mortal lover’s death, she would be gone.

      He felt a little twist in his gut when he thought how much that was going to hurt Alby. Then he reminded himself that it was nothing to him. She was nothing to him.

      He focused again. The one called Rhiannon—with her he got a feeling of age and extreme power, and he saw flashes of desert sands and pyramids, Egyptian temples and pharoahs—had drawn Alby into a lower level room, and the two were sitting now. He opened his senses, witnessed it all in his mind.

      Rhiannon, seated in a thronelike chair, looked at Alby and said, “We are not going to let this happen.”

      “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to stop it.”

      “Nonsense. There’s one thing. And you know it as well as I do.”

      “Rhiannon, I don’t know—”

      Rhiannon flung up a hand, and Amber fell silent. “You saw it. I saw it. Five years ago, Willem СКАЧАТЬ