Fateful Magic (The Star-Crossed Series Book 8) (2 page)

“Why?”

As anxious as his attention made me, his next words
quieted every single thing inside me.

“Because I shall never forget your face, not for as
long as I live. And I would like to remember the name that goes with such a
memory.”

I shook my head again, intending to disagree with him
or argue with him or something,
anything
,
but I had lost the ability to speak, or even think.

“Lilly, with the reddest hair and the prettiest green
eyes I have ever seen, I want to know you more.”

I melted. Right there in midstride, I pooled into a
sticky pile of goo and ceased to exist as the same person anymore.
Talbott’s
words changed me.

Irrevocably.

I had been ignored and neglected for the better part
of my sixteen years and now this boy had come into my life and told me things
that no other living being had said to me before. Even my parents! And I knew
they had the greatest intentions for my wellbeing.

Talbott wasn’t just the first person to willingly seek
me out, he was the first person to ever make me feel worthy... and interesting…
and
beautiful
.

The rational side of my brain told me that he probably
spoke this way to all girls. He would have access to an unlimited number of
females trying to vie for
Kiran’s
attention. And the
poor Prince couldn’t attend to all of their needs.

Talbott would be in the perfect position to help him
out with crowd control.

But the other side of my brain just didn’t care. I had
never felt like this before. And I didn’t know if I would ever feel like this
again. But I wanted to. I wanted to keep feeling like this.

I also didn’t know if
Talbott
would ever look at me or speak to me again, but two things became crystal clear
at that moment. One, I wanted to know him more too. Womanizer or not, racist or
not, I wanted to know him. And I wanted to hear more of that delicious Romanian
accent.

And two, he could never, ever,
ever
find out my secret.

There was no doubt in my mind that he would never look
at me like this again if he knew the truth about who I was.

I didn’t think I would be able to live through his judgment.
Talbott Angelo had done something to me in five minutes that nobody else had
been able to do my entire life.

He made me feel special.

He made me feel important.

My life would never be the same again.

Chapter One

Now

I felt like I was floating.
Or more
accurately, drowning.
I felt too much pain, but then strangely, I didn’t
feel anything. I seemed to be numb all over, as if my entire body had been
injected with something.

Although, a still-rational part of my brain knew I
hadn’t been. This feeling was something more like self-preservation.

I couldn’t tell up from down at this point, or in from
out. I was so confused. I was so confused that I didn’t have actual thoughts in
my head. My consciousness just flashed with a bright, neon sign that read:
Confusion.
Confusion.
Confusion.

“Lilly?”

That voice… I didn’t know… I couldn’t understand…

“Lilly?” the voice asked more desperately.

I tried to focus. My head still spun a thousand
different directions and my body ached in ways that I didn’t understand. But
that voice seemed to anchor me somehow.

“Lilly? Please open your eyes. Can you hear me?”

Were my eyes closed?

“I miss you, Lilly,” the voice cried and then I felt
like crying. Why did he sound so heartbroken? Why did his pain hurt me worse
than anything else I’d ever experienced?

Pain seemed to be the one thing I could remember
clearly. I hated the very idea of it. I hated that this voice had managed to
rip me apart and shred my insides with just the tone of his voice.

“Lilly,
iubita
mea
, please come back to me.”

I knew those funny words. I mean, not at the moment,
but they called to something inside me. Something I wanted to remember.

Much like the pain in his voice, those words pulled
feelings out of me I didn’t understand. His tone gutted me. But that strange
phrase pieced me back together.

I knew it. I knew it intimately.

But how?

“I love you,” the voice whispered hoarsely. “
I need you
. Please open your eyes.”

And then, as if they suddenly remembered how, my eyes
opened.

Reality came crashing back to me with the same violent
way light assaulted my eyes. I opened them but then had to shut them just as
quickly. I heard that voice move around the room and something
click
off but I was too busy racing to catch up to the
things my brain had just realized.

“It’s alright,” the voice soothed. “I turned the light
off. Please try it again. Please, my beloved.”

Iubita
mea
.
I remembered.
Iubita
mea
meant
my beloved
in Romanian. That was the Romanian endearment he always
called me in private.

Talbott.

My Talbott.

I opened my eyes again.
This time
for him.

I couldn’t wait to see him again. I needed him as much
as he needed me. I needed to see that he was real.
And alive.
And truly here with me.

It was dark, like he said it would be, but he hovered
just over my face and my weak eyes adjusted over time.

Slowly he came into focus.

Slowly, Talbott became a real thing in front of me.

Just as soon as I could make out his handsome,
achingly-familiar face in front of me it blurred. It took my slow brain a
moment to figure out that it was because I had started to cry.

Hot tears streamed down my cheeks and my chest
shuddered with the strength of my emotion.

Talbott was here.
With me
.

I never thought I would see him again, but somehow, by
some miracle we were together again.

My heart swelled in my chest until it hurt, until I
was convinced it would burst inside me and rip through the cage of bones and
flesh.

I started trembling, rough sobs shaking my body. I had
no words. He asked me questions, but I couldn’t answer him. It was too much to
have him with me. I didn’t know how my fallible body would contain the
intensity of my emotions.

I felt too much and at the same time couldn’t feel
enough to justify the greatness of being reunited with the man I loved more
than myself.

Relief.
Elation.
Pure bliss.
Joy.
Gratefulness.
A lifting of the bone-deep weariness that seemed to stretch for eternity inside
me.

Talbott was with me again.

“Lilly,” he murmured and then simply pulled me to him.
I couldn’t move my limbs easily yet and so I let him cradle me against his
chest.

I stopped coming up with adjectives when I felt his
warm chest pressed against mine and his strong, familiar arms wrapped around
me. I didn’t have enough sanity to be creative, but mostly, there weren’t words
adequate enough to describe this feeling.

Out of all the times Talbott and I had been separated,
this last one had been the worst. I had truly given up hope of ever seeing him
again. I really believed that I would die at the hands of that monster and
Talbott would be forced to go on living without me.

But I was here now.

And I never wanted to leave.

“I missed you,” I whispered brokenly.

I felt his chest tremble like the force of a mountain under
siege, or the tallest skyscraper as an earthquake rumbled beneath it. My man,
my Titan, was just as moved by our reunion as I was.

His hot tears hit my cheek and prompted more sobbing
from me. Talbott didn’t cry. I had never seen him break down the entire time
I’d known him.

And good grief, we’d been through a lot before.

“I missed you too.”
But there was so
much more there, so much more depth to those simple words.

We stayed like that for the rest of eternity.

Or that was at least how it felt. He never made a move
to leave my side and I didn’t lift my head from the sanctuary of his body for a
very long time.

When I finally grew curious enough to want to look
around, I was sure that hours had gone by. A niggling conviction to do
something about
Terletov
and stop the horrific engine
of destruction he drove bothered me, but most of my spirit felt calmed just
being in
Talbott’s
presence.

I knew we needed to do something. I knew we wouldn’t
be able to stay here for long wrapped up in our little cocoon of isolation.
Eventually, our sense of duty and concern for the Kingdom would force us to
act. But I also knew how precious these moments were, how rare and special it
was to feel safe and content.

“Where are we?” I asked after another long while.

“Your parent’s house.”
He
shifted on the bed so I could see more of the room. “Do you remember anything?”

I shook my head. “No.” That wasn’t true. I remembered
a lot. I remembered too much. I remembered pain and agony like I’d never felt
before. I remembered the feeling of suffocating and then the feeling that my
Magic was leaving me. I remembered wanting to die and wanting to live just to
see Talbott one more time. I remembered suffering so severely that I’d sworn
I’d gone blind and that my limbs had been ripped from my body. I remembered way
too many details of my time with
Terletov
.
Just nothing that would tell me how I got here.
      

“Lilly, you must tell me what happened. I must know.”
His words rolled over me, searing my skin with their dangerous attention.

“Not today,” I pleaded. “Please.”

“Lilly…” His tone was a growl. I loved how he said my
name, even when he wanted to murder someone. I had always loved how it fell out
of his lips with his exotic accent.

And ever since I’d known him, he had loved to say my
name. Over and over, he would murmur sweet promises to me, always worshipping
my name as he whispered the heart-stopping promises of our future together.

In the prisons of Romania, when he
knew what I was but could not be with me.
Both times.
When he would find me in a corridor at the Citadel and corner me with all his
gruff seduction. In every intimate encounter we’d shared since we were sixteen
years old, my name had been a constant in his vocabulary.

God, this man could undo me with just my name whispered
on his lips.

And he knew it.

I tilted my face to him and cupped his jaw with my
clammy hand. I had to look atrocious. I could feel my wild hair frizzy and
untamed and plastered to my face and shoulders. My skin felt clean but not
clean at the same time and I didn’t even want to guess at what I was wearing.

Still, he looked down at me like I was something so
beautiful and precious he had a hard time comprehending that I could be real.

Adoration shone in his eyes. Reverence lit his
handsome face from the inside out. His Magic radiated with pride and joy and
spread to every corner of the room. It wrapped around mine completely, pulling
me into him so that we could never be separated again.

“Tell me what happened? How did I come to be with you
again? I didn’t think… I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

A whoosh of breath punched out of his chest and
something dark and deadly flashed across his face. “I would never let that
happen. I would never let you go.”

My hand caressed his jaw and he seemed to lose some of
that tightened edge. Talbott was more than a Titan, he was the strongest Titan.
His muscles were deadly weapons and his Magic had been refined into a skillful
instrument of destruction. He could kill, he could hurt, he could annihilate.

It had taken me a while to get used to that.
Especially when I’d been so afraid he would use all that scary talent on me.

But then again, with me, he’d always been different.
His granite muscles didn’t promise harm, they held me with an achingly-beautiful
tenderness and devotion. His Magic didn’t rip mine to shreds and tear through
me as he brought me to my death. It caressed mine and held it adoringly. His
Magic sought mine above all others and fortified me until I felt like I could
be just as capable and destructive as him.

He didn’t hurt me, he loved me.

And that made me the luckiest woman in the entire
world.

“I know you wouldn’t. I knew you’d come after me. But
what he did to me… the things he-”

A ferocious snarl thundered out of his mouth and his eyes
darkened until they seemed black with anguish. “I should never have let him
take you. This is my fault. What happened to you is
my
fault.”

“No,” I gasped. With
a strength
I didn’t know I had, I scrambled to my knees and took his face with both hands.
I faced him bravely, even as tears streamed down my face and my body swayed
with wooziness. “This was
not
your
fault. Don’t
ever
blame yourself.
Talbott, what that man does is his alone. We were both victims. I know that you
did everything to stop him. I know that you would have fought to find me until
your last breath.
None of this
is
your fault, and I will not tolerate you believing otherwise.”

He looked away from me. “My entire purpose is to keep
those I am charged with safe. And yet, I have never been able to protect you. I
have never been able to keep you apart from the evil things in this world.”