Page 66 of Spears and Shadows (Defenders of the Light)
He didn’t continue until Nora looked up and met his eyes.
“First, last night was the second time I’ve seen Adam react to your life being in danger, and let me tell you, this was even scarier than when he charged into my ER covered in your blood. For somebody you would think has a lot of experience being cool under pressure, he was dangerously close to a blind panic. That wasn’t the type of act he would put on for my benefit.
“Second, when you asked him if he had been lying to you, Adam admitted to it immediately. Not the move you would expect from a shameless manipulator. And you didn’t get any clarification from him on what he was lying about. This could all be one big misunderstanding, like the ones you always make fun of in romantic comedies.
“And last, something Thad said the other day really stuck with me. I was at the Sanctuary when Adam was getting ready to go to your gala, and he stopped by Thad’s room to borrow some cuff links. He was practically bouncing out of his skin, he was so excited. When he left, Thad said, ‘I haven’t seen him this happy in over six-hundred years’. If you are making him that happy and he still lied to you, he must have had a damn good reason.”
Nora had decided what she was going to do before Drew got to his last point, but by the time he’d finished, her heart leaped up into her throat. She wasn’t surprised that her rage from the night before had faded. Nora was always quick to anger, but equally quick to calm down and resort to rationality.
What surprised her was how much Adam’s feelings affected her. She knew she liked him, but she hadn’t realized the extent of her own feelings until the hurt of his betrayal ripped her to shreds.
“Would you think I’m crazy if I said I want to go to the Sanctuary and talk to him now?” asked Nora.
Drew smiled. “I think you would be crazy not to.”
* * *
It was almostnoon by the time Nora stepped through the electric silk of the portal and onto the Sanctuary lawn. She had been anxious to head out right away after making up her mind, but Drew had insisted she take care of herself first. She was glad for his insistence now that her belly was full of greasy diner food and copious amounts of coffee.
Nora limped through the Sanctuary, avoiding putting too much pressure on her singed foot and hoped that she would find Adam in his room. When Nora poked her head around the door into Adam’s room, she found that he was there, but he looked as if he’d had an even worse night than she had. He wore the same clothes from the night before, but they didn’t have the distinct rumpled look of somebody who had slept in them. He was slumped in the chair in front of the fireplace, examining a small object in his hands. There was a full cup of tea sitting forgotten on the table next to him, no longer steaming.
Adam jumped to his feet as if he had been shocked when Nora cleared her throat. Seeing her, he crossed the room towards her in a few long strides before pulling up abruptly a meter from her. His body was almost vibrating with tension, and his eyes were rimmed with red.
“How are you feeling?” Adam asked, his calm voice a sharp juxtaposition to his frantic appearance.
“Tell me everything,” Nora demanded. “Now.”
“Okay.” Adam gave a jerky nod, somehow managing to look even more tense. He gestured towards the chairs by the hearth. “You better sit down.”
Nora made her way over and took a seat, but Adam remained standing. He paced in front of the fireplace, beginning to fidget with the object in his hands again. It appeared to be a small piece of jewelry, like a locket.
“I need to tell you about how my wife died,” Adam blurted out.
Nora was taken aback. This was not how she had expected this story to start, but she nodded for him to continue.
He took a shaky breath before beginning. “She was an incredibly brave Warrior. We were fighting side by side at the Defeat, and things were not looking good for the Eteria. We were making our last stand when the two of us were separated. It looked like she was about to be overwhelmed when, all of a sudden, she used the Light in a way nobody had ever seen before. It was as if she were simply a vessel for it, and she burned away every last Shadow on the battlefield.
It was incredible, but the act was too much for her body, leaving it completely broken. It wasn’t until later that we found out her destruction of the Shadow had also hindered our ability to use the Light.”
Nora felt a pang of admiration for the woman who had given her life to protect what she loved, but she tilted her head in confusion. She couldn’t follow how this was going to come back around to her.
Adam continued pacing while he talked, twisting the object in his hands unconsciously.
“When she collapsed on the battlefield, I ran to her. Seeing her dead…it left me broken. So out of my mind with grief, I tried to use my power to do the unthinkable. I tried to bring her back.”
Nora gawked. She had read enough novels to know that was not a good idea.
“To everybody’s surprise,” Adam soldiered on. “I managed to grab on to her spirit as it was slipping away. When I went to put it back in her body, though, it was too broken to hold it. The best I managed to do was give her a tether to this earth in my own soul, and she began to slip away to find another source of life. Before her spirit escaped from my grasp, my wife’s voice whispered in my head. ‘Come find me.’”
Nora furrowed her brow at Adam, who had now stopped his pacing and was looking at her intently.
“So…she was reincarnated?” puzzled Nora.
Adam nodded slowly. “And she has continued to be reincarnated, again and again to this very day.”
Adam stared at her as if he were waiting for her to combust on the spot. There was something about his story she was missing. The link that would explain why he was telling her this.
When it hit her, it was as if Zeus himself had struck her with one of his thunderbolts. She was glad that Adam had suggested she be seated for this conversation as she opened and shut her mouth several times like an oversized goldfish before stammering, “You can’t mean me?”
