6. SETH
SETH
“Zara, please at least try and see this from my point of view,” I pleaded, wishing I could rewind time a few minutes and start this conversation over. Or not at all.
“Are you fucking kidding me? What happened to you having no intention of setting foot in the Underworld?”
“I know this isn’t what you want to hear, and it’s the last thing I want to do. But there are more lives than ours at stake here. And if I go, I’ll only agree to six months, not the year he’s asked for.”
“Oh, well, if it’s only six months. What was I thinking? It’ll be as if you just popped out to pick up a pint of milk.”
“Zara, please try to understand.” I reached out to pull her into my arms, but she flinched away from me as if she couldn’t bear for me to touch her, with a broken sounding little don’t that cut straight to my soul.
“How would you feel if it was the fae realm this was happening to?” I reasoned, hoping to appeal to her strong sense of empathy.
“Wouldn’t you want someone to try and help if they could?
If what Lucien says is true, these people are being discriminated against simply for existing.
Who knows what they may have to offer us given the chance. ”
“If it’s true. And if it’s not, who knows what trouble they may create for us.
Once they’re allowed into this realm, you and the other guardians will be the ones who have to police them.
Who’s to say they won’t be the catalyst for revealing all of our existence to the mortals?
Haven’t the guardians got enough to deal with right now with the vampire situation? ”
“That’s a valid point, and one to be taken into careful consideration before anything is agreed. But this will just be a fact finding mission.”
“Will be,” she said bitterly, and I cursed silently when I realised what I’d said. “So you’ve already made up your mind that you’re going then.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I really don’t think I have a choice. If what Gabriel said is to be believed,” I ignored the sceptical huff, “then I’m the only one of the guardians who can safely enter the Underworld. I have to do this, Zara. As much as I don’t want to.”
“Go then,” she bit out, flinging the words at me like she wished they were her fists. “It’s not like you’ve waited an eternity to be with me or anything.” I saw straight through the bravado to the pain beneath the surface, because I was feeling it too.
“It’s true that I waited an eternity for you,” I said quietly, “and now I’m asking you to wait six months for me. Is that really so very much to ask?”
“Dammit! Why do you have to be so fucking logical?” A few tears escaped and trickled down her cheeks, and I couldn’t stand to not be touching her any longer. Closing the distance between us, both physical and emotional, I ignored her protests and pulled her into my arms and just breathed her in.
“Please don’t pull away from me, my love. I don’t want to waste a single second of the time we have together before I have to leave you.” I felt the moment when the reality of my words hit her. Her arms found their way around my waist, hiccupping sobs jerking from her as she clung to me.
“I don’t think I can bear this,” she wailed between the sobs. “Not now. I don’t want to be alone again.”
When the storm had subsided, I sank down into my oversized reading chair with her in my lap.
“You won’t be alone, Zara. You’ll have my entire team to support you while I’m gone.
And Jed too. And…” I hoped I wasn’t going to regret what I was about to say, but I knew she needed this.
“You have my permission to tell Ali everything if you want to. In the strictest of confidence of course.”
She’d come to love Phoebe and Eli as much as I did, but Ali had been in her life far longer than any of us. If it would give her comfort to share what she was going through with her best friend from her life before me, I could at least give her that.
“And you also have a new job to start,” I reminded her. “I doubt Morpheus is going to be patient for much longer now that your part in the Prophecy has been fulfilled.”
She drew back a little so she could look at me. “Do you think so? I told Morpheus I’d start when the Prophecy was done with, and from where I’m standing, it’s still very much ongoing.”
“I’d say your part in it is done with though.
And as much as I didn’t like the idea of you working with him to begin with, I have to admit it will be good for you to have a new challenge to focus on while I’m not around.
You still have to research your heritage and learn more about your siren powers too.
And get to know your birth parents properly.
You’re certainly not going to be lacking in things to keep you busy while I’m away, sweetheart. ”
“Is there anything I can say that will make you change your mind?”
“You already know the answer to that. I wish I could tell Gabriel and my father to go to hell. I wish I could pretend none of this is happening and we could just get on with our life together. But I can’t.
Because if I did, I would be turning my back on everything I’ve spent my entire existence believing in and striving for, all for my own selfish desires.
And you deserve a better man than that, my love. ”