Velvet Haven

strands of damp, black hair.
    “After all this?” he murmured. “After everything we’ve done, you would betray me now?”
    Her body jolted and Mairi came awake with a scream. With frightened eyes she looked around her dark bedroom. Shadows played on walls, and her curtain blew in and out with the rhythm of the wind. At the foot of the bed, Clancy was sound asleep.
    Just a dream, she reminded herself, even as her hands shook uncontrollably. But this time there had been a dagger, which she had taken a strange fixation with.
    He had looked at her as though she would destroy him. She, a person who wouldn’t hurt any creature. A person who picked up roadkill and tried to fix it.
    Sliding to the edge of the bed, she hung her head in her hands and tried to stop shaking. In front of her, a shadow shifted and a man perched like a bird on her dresser jumped to the ground, his heavy combat boots making a loud thud on the hardwood floor.
    “Good evening, Mairi.”
    Suriel. She scooted up her bed until her back met the headboard. “What do you want?”
    “For you not to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you, Mairi. But I think you know that.” His leather-clad knee was on the edge of her mattress. “You had a dream.”
    She shivered, still trying to back away from him. “That’s none of your business.”
    He sat down beside her, crowding her with his body. She was breathing heavily, ready to pass out from hyperventilating. “Are you going to kill me?”
    “Of course not. I’ve worked too hard to save you.”
    Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
    He moved closer to her, and she kicked at him, but he reached for her ankle and grasped it, holding her still. “I was there the day of your birth, when you were lying on the warmer, unable to breathe. You were blue, nearly beyond the veil. You would have passed through if I had not been your first breath. My air is in your lungs, my spirit in your veins. Me .”
    She struggled against him, but his fingers smoothed against her skin, calming her. “I have been the voice whispering to you as a child. And then when you were sixteen. I was there. Not with you, but with the other one . She was going to die. I was ready to take her, but then I saw you. You were bearing His seal.”
    Mairi shook her head, denying everything he was telling her. “What do you want?”
    “You have a purpose in this life, and now our purposes are entwined.”
    “You’re not real. You’re not real,” she chanted over and over again.
    “I am,” he whispered. “Have faith. Trust.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you’re going to need it for what lies ahead. Things will happen, but know that this is the path you are supposed to take. When the time is right, and when I am summoned, I will come to you. Do not fear me when I do.”
    “What the hell are you?”
    Black wings suddenly unfurled from his back, and Mairi gripped the sheet to her chin. Holy shit!
    “I won’t hurt you, Mairi. Believe that.”
    He waved his hand before her face, and she slumped down. The last thing she was aware of was a pair of hands gently placing her on the bed before she fell back to sleep without any further dreams to plague her.

    The shop bells tinkled as Sayer swung the door wide open and led Bran and Keir into the cramped little shop like he owned the place. He always was a cocky bastard, Bran thought.
    The bells chimed again as the door closed behind Bran. As a precaution, he locked the door. The last thing they needed was an interruption.
    “Sorry, I’m closed.” Rowan looked up from the cardboard box she was filling. “Oh, hi. Sorry, I didn’t know it was you guys.”
    Rowan looked well, her cheeks pink, the gray cast of her illness gone from beneath her eyes. She was lovely, seated in the middle of her store with her turquoise-colored skirt spread out like a fan around her. Her blond hair was cut short and choppy, making the plump apples of her cheeks more prominent. Her green eyes sparkled in the soft glow of the lamplight. Anyone casting a lascivious eye over her full figure would not believe she was dying.
    But dying she was. Bran had tasted death on her skin not more than thirty-six hours before. So long, he thought, since he’d been there in the apartment with Rowan and Mairi.
    Such had been the last day for him. Thinking of her. Dreaming of her. Wanting her . Not even the gruesome discovery of the murdered woman was enough to prevent him from thinking of Mairi. It might even have made him think