Page 46 of Night Fall
He shook himself of the thought. “Of course. I’ll go upstairs. If you need to clean up, walk this way and make a right,” he said, gesturing down the tunnel. “It leads to the river. It’s fast moving here, so be careful.”
“I will be.”
He grabbed the largest shirt he owned and a pair of pants, then he motioned to the door. “If you need help, just call for me.”
She gave him a small smile and he left to dress himself upstairs. He had managed to find something that fit his new, healthy form: a black top—a wifebeater, as humans called it, although why they chose that name he would never understand—and a pair of gray sweatpants. He caught a reflection of himself and winced. After cleaning himself up, Erik took a pair of sheers to his hair, evening out the length, changed, and then he waited for Mya.
Eventually the door opened, and Mya stood shyly in front of him. For a moment he just stared at her. She took his breath away every time he looked at her, and his heart beat a little faster as need funneled through his veins.
A small smile graced her lips. Then she drew back, as if snapping out of a trance, and broke the connection between them with a shake of her head. “Do you need to grab anything before we go?”
He knew the plan. They were supposed to come here, get whatever he might need or that might be important to him, then destroy the church and go to Mya’s house. From there he would meet Johanna and her partner, Luke––someone Erik apparently knew but could not remember––and restore his memories. It was a good plan, a solid plan, one that would work, but one look at Mya’s face told him he couldn’t take another second of not trying to broach this distance, to fix what had happened between them. Even if they had a million more important things to do, this was what mattered most—her comfort and nurturing their relationship, whatever she may allow it to be.
Erik tipped his head at the pew in front of him. “I need you to stop and tell me what I did. Tell me how I broke your heart.”
Mya shook her head. “We don’t have time—”
“Then we will make time. Sit down and talk to me, Mya. I know I’ll get my memories back, but right now, I need to hear what happened from you. I need to know what you’ve gone through all these years.”
He took a deep breath and stared into her sad eyes. “No more distance. No more protecting my feelings or biding time. If you need to lash out at me, do it. If you need to fight me, do it. If you need to kill me, do it. But let me in, love. Let me ease your soul in whatever way I can.”
There was so much, too much, when it came to them and their history.
Mya knew what would happen when she gave him her blood. She knew it would trigger the mate bond, and she did not regret a moment of their time in that cave, but once everything had ended and the sweat on her skin began to cool, reality hit her. He was there. Erik was back. Every time she opened her eyes, he was in front of her. It wasn’t a dream, or a memory, or a nightmare where he would suddenly disappear into the darkness again. No matter how many times she blinked or breathed, his form never changed. He was flesh and bone, and actually real for the first time in three hundred years. The emotions it made her feel were too heavy for her to carry, especially now when she was trying to get him to safety.
For years, all she had ever wanted was to see him, to be with him again, and now that her wish had come true, she felt scared. Her anger had risen to the surface. Questions flooded her mind about where he’d been, why he’d left her, how could he have done this to them, and why couldn’t he have believed in her that fateful day?
Mya knew it wasn’t fair of her to think those things. He’d been held captive, and she had no idea for how long nor what he had endured. She wasn’t even sure what he remembered and what he didn’t. She knew she shouldn’t blame him, and yet a small part of her still did.
Another part of her blamed the circumstances, that they had let fate constantly get in the way of their relationship. She refused to take that out on Erik. He didn’t deserve it, and it was clear that even if he didn’t remember the time they’d spent together, he did, at least, feel something for her. But how could she open her heart to him? How could she let down her guard and tell him everything that had happened both before and after he left? And how could she say it in a way that wouldn’t hurt him?
Mya sat on the pew in front of him, clenching his ring. It had been a constant symbol of remembrance, a vow she’d taken to never forget him or what they’d shared, and just as it had always done in moments of uncertainty, holding the small trinket made her feel brave.
She licked her dry lips. “Do you remember your last name?”
He shook his head.
“Your name is Erik Haraldsen, and my name is Mya Novak-Haraldsen.”
His eyes grew wide in shock. “We’re married?”
She smiled sadly as she fiddled with his ring. “No, but we would have been. You saved me, my brother, Gregori, and my cousin, Lucas, from the Black Plague. Then you became our guardian. You taught us, trained us, and eventually you and I fell in love with one another.”
She swallowed through the torrent of emotions threatening to break open her heart. “We were together in secret. You went by the name of Lord Erik Devereux in England, and that made you a target. You were concerned that if you made any enemies and they knew we were together, they would come after me—whether they were human or immortal—and because I was a young vampire, my safety would be at risk. Unfortunately, you were right.”
Erik squeezed the wood of pew in his fist. His jaw clenched, but he said nothing.
“We came to America to escape the attacks on immortals in Europe, but they happened here too. We thought the blood witches were behind it, but we didn’t know who they were, so you and my brother decided to form The Council to safeguard us all.”
She licked her lips again and squeezed the ring so hard she had to remind herself to release it before it broke. “The day all the members agreed to form The Council, I had a horrible feeling. I told you about it that morning, but you promised it would all be okay. You reminded me why we were doing this and said that if we could just cement the idea then we would have no reason to keep our relationship a secret. You told me you wanted to marry me, that you would come back home to me.”
Mya furiously wiped away a tear and took a shaky breath to try and calm her anger. “But you didn’t. I saw you with a woman. You were fucking her,” she spat, and had to force her rage down once again. “At first, I thought it was you, but the scent was all wrong, and I soon realized it was an imposter. I killed them and ran to where they told me you were, but I got there too late. You had been tricked in the same way I had been, but you hadn’t seen through it. You thought I’d rejected you and wrote me a goodbye letter—”
Her voice cracked. Erik stood, but she raised her hand, needing to say this now, to get it out.
“You said you were going to kill yourself and you left me everything you owned. I followed your scent to the cliffs and thought you’d jumped over. Then the blood witches set your house on fire.” She scraped the tears from her cheeks. “I followed them, and I killed all of them and burned their house just as they had burned yours.”
She stood and stepped in between his legs. When he reached for her, she flinched, and he dropped his hands to his sides. She wanted to apologize, but she didn’t know how to form the right words when she was eviscerated by emotion and vulnerable even to the sight of him, so she did the only thing she could. She continued her story.
