Dreams of a Dark Warrior

But what else was Regin supposed to do? A year ago, she and Lucia had undertaken a badass mission to discover a way to defeat the unkillable Cruach forever. Instead of merely imprisoning him. They’d traveled all over the world together, risking their lives.
    In other words, good times. But then Prince Garreth MacRieve, Lucia’s werewolf admirer, had startedfollowing her everywhere, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Regin’s solution? Euthanasia.
    Lucia’s solution to Regin’s solution? Leave her behind when she was nursing a hangover.
    Abandoned me like last year’s wardrobe.
Regin’s claws dug into the steering wheel. After a millennium of never leaving each other’s side.
But last year’s wardrobe is determined to make a comeback.
    “Nïx, you promised you’d tell me where Luce is if I did everything you asked me. I cleaned your room. I took your Bentley to the shop after you went off-roading again. And I put in hours at the Lore foundling house with those little punks.” Regin had begun to call it the Lorphanage and predicted it’d stick. “I
need
to keep moving anyway. You know he’s returning soon.”
    Aidan. With his heart-stopping smile and big, possessive hands. Though she longed to see her Viking in any reincarnation, she’d decided that he might actually live a full life if he never found her.
    Nïx sighed. “Have you truly given up all hope of finding a way to be with him?”
    Regin glanced over at her, trying not to feel even a sliver of hope. “Any reason not to give up?”
    “I believe my advice to you was ‘Go find and bang your berserker.’”
    “Huh. Well, see, I tried that, and it didn’t quite work out for me.”
The last four times!
“I just can’t … I’m not doing it again.” The guilt got worse with each reincarnation. She was his doom, might as well deal the deathblow herself.
    Aidan had been sword-struck in his first life, poisonedin his second, crushed during a shipwreck in his third. In his fourth, he’d been shot. All directly after she and his reincarnation had made love for the first time.
    “Unless you can tell me things might be different this time?” Regin added. Damn, could she sound more desperate? But Nïx helped other immortals with things like this.
Why not me?
    “What would you do to be with him, hmm? What would you sacrifice?”
    “To break this curse, I would do just about any-thing.”
    “Just about?” After long, tense moments, Nïx said, “I have no resolution to tell you.” She couldn’t foresee everything, wasn’t
all
-knowing. Instead, she’d been dubbed the Ever-Knowing, because her visions had appeared without fail for three millennia.
    “No resolution?” She hadn’t expected Nïx to pony up the answer to a thousand-year-old curse before Regin ran her next red light, but a crumb of hope would’ve been nice.
    “No matter,” Nïx said. “You must find something to occupy yourself. There’s more to life than destroying vampires.”
    “Right. Like destroying evil cannibal gods with Lucia,” Regin said, proud of her segue.
    “Always back to Lucia. You’re exceedingly loyal to all your friends—even to your own detriment.”
    “Whatever. Loyalty’s not a bad thing.”
    “It is when you leave heaven for it. It is when you have nothing to show for it. For instance, your some-some meter is reading empty. What about that niceleopard-shifter pack that wanted to date you? The benefits of a variety pack of males cannot be overstated.”
    If the rest of her sisters—or, gods forbid, her witch buddies—found out Regin hadn’t been laid in nearly two hundred years, she’d never live it down. But like some stupid, sappy tool, she stayed faithful to Aidan and his reincarnates.
    “Are you happy, Regin?”
    She gave Nïx the look her question deserved. “I’m the prankster, remember? The happy-go-lucky one. Ask anyone—they’ll tell you I’m the cheeriest Valkyrie.” She studied Nïx’s expression, this time noticing the shadows under her sister’s eyes. “Why? Are you happy? You seem tired all the time.” She didn’t mention Nïx’s shrieking fits or disappearances, the bizarre eccentricities that only grew worse.
    “I’m actively involved in steering the lives of thousands of beings. Which directly affects hundreds of thousands, which indirectly affects millions, with a ripple effect reaching billions. If someone said, ‘It ain’t easy being Nïxie,’ I wouldn’t call him a liar.”
    Regin never