Page 146 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
Shit. Think. Think. Think. Think. "Is there anyone else here at the moment?" I asked, trying to picture our surroundings.
Soleil swallowed and another star-bright tear carved down her face. "Your caretaker."
"Rick? Where?" My head flip-flopped on the stone, the back of my skull aching from the effort.
"Shhh," Soleil chastised again. "Above and behind you."
I arched against the unforgiving ropes and tilted my head back as far is it would go. What I saw broke my heart. Rick was unconscious, imprisoned in a medieval metal cage that dangled from a tree branch at least twenty feet above the ground. Dried blood was caked on the bars, and even with my impaired vision, I could see long wounds striping his skin. What happened? Why hadn't he shifted?
Rick? Rick? I tried to use our connection to wake him but got no response.
"Why doesn't he shift?" I whispered, although I didn't expect Soleil to answer me.
"He is very weak. Perhaps Naill has done something to him. Leprechaun magic is extremely powerful. "
"Is he alive?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You would know better than I."
I should know better. Normally, our connection was so tight I could sense his thoughts if I wanted. But now, looking up at him dangling there, he seemed so human. So disconnected. I tried again. Digging deep, I felt for the thread that tied us together, the trail of metaphysical breadcrumbs that always led me back to him. I thought of the day we met, the first time, how the water had felt coursing over my brown skin and the look of him exposed, shocked, staring at me with his full lips parted from the shore. A boy on the verge of becoming a man. My man. He had always been mine, from the very beginning. And I had always been his. I understood this now in a way I hadn't before. It was like being eight years old and thinking a trip out of the state was seeing the world. The older I'd gotten, the larger the world became. This love was the same. When I'd met him, everything was flat, simple, odd but explainable. Now, I realized it was ageless, endless, a love that transcended lifetimes.
Julius and Gary had posed the question, if I had the power to do so, why hadn't I made myself immortal? Why had I given Rick that particular gift? They tried to convince me that I could have had the power all along, that Rick had somehow tricked me into binding himself to me. But now I understood. I had made Rick my caretaker so that we could be together for eternity. If anything, I'd ensnared him in my trap of immortality, bound us together because I couldn't bear the thought of living without him. And he had endured this curse for lifetime after lifetime while I had the luxury of death, of a relatively normal childhood. Rick was not the monster. I was the monster.
As tears flooded down my cheeks, freezing near my jawline, I found the thing that bound us to each other. Flimsy, like a spider's web, our connection was the weakest I'd ever remembered it being. Consciously, I fought my way along it, psychically transcending the space between us, until the magic inside of me was in his head, and I was shaking him by the shoulders. How could I touch him when I was tied to an altar and he was in a cage dangling above me? I can't explain the how, only that I held him in my arms in the white, empty space of our consciousness. We'd left the world behind, temporarily.
"Mi cielo?" He woke in my arms. Damn, holding this state was almost painful.
"Rick, you've got to wake up. You've got to shift and get us out of here!"
"I can't. It's too late for that."
"What are you talking about?"
He met my eyes. "You told me you didn't want me anymore, that you couldn't forgive me after Gary. You told me you wished you had a choice."
"We had a fight. I'm doing my best to-"
"No. You were right. I could have stopped Bathory from taking Gary, but I didn't. Too many lifetimes." He shook his head. "I became impatient to love you again."
"Rick, I understand, okay? Can we talk about it later? We need to find a way out of this."
His face fell. "I lit the candle," he muttered.
"What? What candle?"
"After our argument, I left on a journey to obtain a magical object to help our situation."
"You said something about that. What was it?"
"I visited another Hecate. Tabetha, Salem's witch. She gave me a candle to break our connection. All I had to do was light the candle, and when it burned all the way down, I would be human again. I could die."
I froze. My hand gripped his face, forcing him to maintain eye contact. "Why? Why would you do that? We'd reconciled. I told you I'd stay true to you."
"I know what you said, but I did it to free you. You don't want me. I saw Logan's keys in your car. You love him. When the candle burns down, you can make him your caretaker, or grant yourself the immortality you've given to me. You will be free of me." His eyes drifted from one of my eyes to the other and the pain in his expression broke my heart. "And when I die, I will finally be free of loving you."
"Is it such a burden, Rick?" I asked, without thinking.
"Would it be a burden to you to love someone with everything inside you, only to know they would never love you back, that they thought of you as an affliction, a beast to be tolerated for the good of humanity? Yes, it is a burden, one I can bear no longer."
