Magic Rises

gullible and naive, and he thinks he can run circles around me. And you, you did the exact same thing. I trusted you and you used it against me. You led me around like I was blind. We’re not okay.”
    “What are you saying?” He was looking up at me. I saw something odd in his gray eyes and realized it was desperation.
    “I’m really mad at you, Curran. This isn’t one of those fights where we both lose our temper, spar, talk, and we’re okay. This is my line in the sand. I don’t know if I can roll with this punch.”
    “So this is it?”
    “I’m trying to decide.”
    I trusted him and he broke that trust, and while I could think around it, I couldn’t feel my way past it. It felt like he came up to give me a hug and slid a knife between my ribs.
    Curran unlocked his teeth. “I did the only thing I could do. Everything I’ve done and everything I’ve said was to keep you alive. I’m sorry I made you go through it, but if I had to do it over, I would do it again. Even if that means you’ll leave with Hugh tomorrow. You being safe is more important to me than having you. I love you.”
    I loved him, too. Inside me a small voice told me that in his place I would’ve done the same thing, no matter the fallout I had to endure at the end. Having him alive and mad at me was infinitely better than having him dead. But loving someone and being with him were two different things.
    “If your father walked out of the darkness right now and said, ‘Come with me, or everyone here will die,’ you would go with him,” Curran said. “Knowing that I would fight for you with everything I’ve got, you would walk away. You would leave me a note that said I shouldn’t look for you, because you would want to protect me.”
    There was no point in lying. “Yes.”
    “That’s my line in the sand,” he said. “Would you still walk away?”
    “Yes.” If his life were on the line, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
    “Even if I leave you because of it?”
    “Yes.”
    He spread his arms.
    “I can’t change who I am,” I told him. “Neither can you. I get it.”
    “I love you and you love me, and we’re both too fucked up for anyone else. Who else would have us?”
    I sighed. “Well, clearly we’re both crazy and this relationship is doomed.”
    “I love you so much,” he said. “Please don’t leave me.”
    He leaned forward. I knew he would kiss me a moment before he did, and I realized I wanted it. I remembered him holding me. I remembered him risking himself against impossible odds for me. I made him laugh, I told him things that would make most normal men run screaming, things I spent all my life keeping secret, and I drove him to the point of near-blinding rage. In my darkest moments, when everything was crashing down around me, he told me everything would be okay. The taste of him, the feel of his lips as his mouth covered mine, the way he made the world fade, as if kissing me were the only thing that existed in his life, pulled me right back through time, before the castle, before Hugh, and before Lorelei. Curran was mine. If my life were on the line, he would do it again, and I would be mad at him again. And if the reverse ever happened, he would rage and roar, and I would tell him that I loved him and that I would fight to the death to keep him breathing.
    He was right. We loved each other and nobody else would put up with us.
    “I’m still mad at you,” I whispered, and put my arms around him.
    “I’m an ass,” he told me, pulling me closer. “I’m sorry. You should make my life hell for the next hundred years.”
    “Do we need to give you some privacy for the makeup sex?” Astamur asked.

CHAPTER 17

    An hour or so before sunrise, Curran and I decided that we did need some privacy. We borrowed a couple of blankets and climbed the mountainside to a small ledge. We made love on the blankets and now we were lying quietly.
    “Still mad at me?” Curran asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Are you going to stay?”
    I shifted my head on his biceps and looked at his face. “Yes. I’m stuck.”
    “How?”
    “I love you too much to walk away.”
    He kissed my hair.
    “I’m used to watching for people with swords,” I told him. “I never saw the knife. You were too close.”
    “Kate, I didn’t stab you.”
    “Are you sure? Because it still hurts.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “I’m sorry, too. Did you really think I would leave you?”
    “I thought I would lose you either way. I’ve known