Chapter 36 #2
Reeve continued to visit Maeve in secret, only when Ambrose was away.
Maeve remained unaware that her father had directly commanded Reeve not to touch her.
And yet, as his fingers moved through her hair, he couldn’t find it in him to care about the order.
Especially when she wore soft sweaters and ribbons in her hair, like the way she was before him on her bed.
She leaned back against his chest as the all black kitten chased a trail of Magic she made with her fingers, rolling across the sheets in fits of clawed mania.
“What did you name him?” Reeve asked, his fingers still carding through her dark hair.
“Spinel,” she said softly. “For his eyes.”
Spinel jumped suddenly, puffing up and swiping at the ribbon-like Magic Maeve controlled with her elegant fingers. She laughed softly. The sound was euphoric.
“How’s Antony?” asked Reeve, his mind drifting to the rough few weeks her brother had been through.
“No better,” she answered.
“He’s irritable almost all the time. Quick to snap. To destroy. He tries to control the urges, but they are strong. Stronger than he is most days.”
“The shift isn’t easy for all werewolves to control.”
“Well, if he doesn’t get it under control, he won’t even be able to live a normal life. The Double O could find out at any minute, and then he’d be in true danger.”
Knowing he failed to help her brother stung. But truthfully, Reeve hadn’t had hope from the start. Antony’s transformation wasn’t like his own.
“I can’t stay for much longer, kitten.”
“Kitten?” she asked uncertainly at the new nickname as she angled her head and looked up at him.
He smiled. “You’re just so. . .feisty.” His eyes moved to Spinel. “Like your new friend here.”
When he looked back down at her, her expression had shifted.
He, too, realized their lips' close proximity.
He bargained with himself, as he had been doing for weeks now, that denying himself her taste would keep him safe.
That if he just saw her one more time, he could cut it off.
If he just brought her one more gift, he could say goodbye.
If he brushed his fingers across her cheek one final time, he could walk away with closure.
“Is it true what my father says?” she asked, breaking their silence, still looking up at him. “You can turn into a winged beast?”
He nodded, bringing his palm to her cheek.
“So right now, you could just turn?” she asked with a snap of her fingers.
“No. It takes a great deal of rage for me to transform. And right now, I feel completely content.”
A small chuckle left her throat, but her eyes still begged with innocence that made him speechless.
“Let down your walls,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
“We’re talking right now,” he said lowly.
“I want to hear you in my head.”
Reeve pulled back, leaning far enough away from her to take in her whole face, still stroking her cheek with ease. The snake was asking to sink its teeth into him, unaware it had venom. Letting down his mental shields for her, a girl with Shadow Magic buried in her blood, was idiotic.
But her eyes made him brainless.
And so he did.
She bit her lip and took a steadying breath as he opened his mind for her. He understood at once why she wanted to hear his voice in her head. Because her voice in his was heavenly. It was visceral, soaring through his insides as she said.
I want to see you in that magnificent dragon form one day.
He could smell her from across the ballroom, where she danced with Abraxas. It was so overwhelmingly sweet, he couldn’t even pinpoint it. He just knew that it was her. It was she who drove him mad. It was she who had him coming back to this damn realm.
Ambrose had joined him at his side moments ago, remaining silent as Reeve unashamedly watched his daughter.
“You know what she is,” said Ambrose finally. “You know it, and yet nothing I say keeps your gaze from her.”
Reeve didn’t answer right away, despite just how correct Ambrose was. He knew that Maeve harbored Magic that should send him running. He knew just how delicate that Magic was.
Ambrose continued. “Not even a direct command to keep away from her it it seems.”
“Do not act as though it is me who you aim to protect,” muttered Reeve.
He turned towards Ambrose, pulling his gaze from Maeve. Ambrose’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Reeve spoke casually. “It was you who came to be terrified of her mother. Not me.”
Ambrose’s Magic flared. “Don’t you dare talk about her so effortlessly.”
“Don’t you dare forget what I did for you that day, Ambrose. It is because of me she lived to birth Maeve at all.”
Reeve turned, feeling far too heated to be around so many people. Ambrose was quick on his heels, the voice of The Premier oozing from his tone.
“The relevance of that day is nonexistent,” said Ambrose.
A few heads turned their way as they continued their argument out of the ballroom. Reeve ignored them all. A tall, rounded door slammed open in the corridor, inviting him in. Ambrose joined him in a flash.
“You think it matters what you did for the woman I loved? As my best friend?”
Reeve turned on him. Black and deadly Magic flared at his back in the shape of a deadly beast.
“It matters because I allowed her to live! I allowed her to live, and I allowed Maeve to be born, despite the horrifying Shadow Magic that pulses through her veins.”
“As if I would have allowed you to kill my daughter.”
“You wouldn’t have had a say, Ambrose,” snarled Reeve.
“No one alive, not the Double O, not the Order in Aterna, not Queen Lithandrian herself would have given one second of a thought to it. She would have been dead on the floor in a blink, and Maeve would have died inside her. Maeve would be dead right now if anyone outside of the two of us knew what she is.”
Ambrose’s Magic whipped out, rattling the windows and giving way to the floor beneath them.
“That may infuriate you, and it should,” continued Reeve. “This is a cruel world. But I alone am the one who permitted the perpetuation of Shadow Magic to exist, when I swore an oath to do just the opposite after the Shadow War.”
“And because of that, I am to look aside as you desire my daughter in ways I cannot allow you to have her?”
Reeve shook his head. “Do you think I want to be so consumed by her? When her eyes lock on mine, I am reminded of all that she is capable of. All that she could destroy and deceive, and manipulate in a blink. I am terrified of her.”
Ambrose took a long inhale, and his hands ran across his face. “Fear is the absence of Magic.”
“I do not wish to fight you, Ambrose. You are one of my closest allies and one of my longest living friends. I am sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” asked Ambrose with a huff, crossing the small smoking lounge and taking up in one of the chairs. “Throwing her life in my face or the fact that you have no intention of obeying my wishes?”
Reeve sat opposite him in a large tufted chair. “I came here to help Antony. I have not been able to do so. All I have done is driven another wedge between you and I.”
Ambrose was silent for a long moment.
Just one more touch, he thought.
No.
“I will leave tonight,” said Reeve, the words pouring from him before he could talk himself out of them, “and I will not return.”
“Your word,” said Ambrose at once.
“No,” replied Reeve, even quicker. “I will not swear upon such unbreakable Magic without knowing what the future holds.”
Ambrose nodded in acceptance and sighed. “Thank you, my friend.”
Reeve stood. The walk to the foyer dragged. Sounds from the party where he knew she laughed and danced, stuck in his skin like needles. He didn’t need to use the exit. He could Obscure right there, overriding all of Ambrose’s far weaker Magical enchantments.
But he dared fate to let him see her one last time.
He skipped the last few stairs and was nearly to the door when her presence slammed into him from behind. She stepped into the moonlight, the winding stairs above shadowing half of her.
Her hands slid behind her back innocently, the action driving something through him. Something he was certain he’d never felt. Maybe something close once, with Leandra.
But not like this.
Not like her. Never anything like Maeve.
“You’re leaving?” she asked.
He turned back towards the door, grasping desperately at his resolve, and replied, “Yes.”
“Does that have anything to do with whatever you and my father were arguing about?”
He stopped. He didn’t answer. She crossed the darkened entryway towards him, running her fingers along the marble side of the stairs.
“There are no secrets in this estate,” she elaborated.
Reeve turned towards her, pushing down and down and down on the way her Magic called to him.
She leaned against the large pillar at the foot of the stairs and looked up at him. “Could it be me you were arguing over?” she asked with a wicked grin.
Reeve groaned at her position. How inviting and carefree it was. His heightened senses caught the slight smell of sweet green apples, which lingered on her lips. “Don’t do this to me, please.”
“A high lord of Aterna, using such begging words.”
“The High Lord,” he corrected her.
“High Lords have Ladys,” she said boldly at last.
Reeve laughed. “Not human ones.”
She pouted at once. He smiled in satisfaction. Their dance of dominance was addictive.
“I’m not a human,” she said.
“Well, you aren’t Immortal.”
Her arrogance faltered, and the courage she’d come before him with withered.
“You’ll be back for Antony?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “I won’t be back here for quite some time, I imagine.”
The playful way she’d approached him was long gone. They stood at the foot of the stairs as distant music filled the painful silence between them.
“Why?” she asked softly.
Reeve looked at her and spoke without hesitation. “Because I cannot help Antony. And this is not my war. Not my home.”
Her brows raised, expecting him to say something more, something real. Something with courage. About her.