Page 67 of Spears and Shadows (Defenders of the Light)
Adam nodded again, his eyes overly bright.
“But how… Why do you think it’s me?”
Adam crossed the rug and sunk to his knees in front of her. “You look the same in every life, but that wouldn’t even matter. I would know your spirit even with my eyes closed. As soon as you chased after me and yelled at me to stop in that alley, I knew it was you.”
Nora would have told him he was insane, but her spirit seemed to have opinions of its own and was whispering to her that he might be right. It was like when she had found it surprisingly easy to believe in the existence of a race of immortal sorcerer warriors, only magnified.
“So we’ve been doing this repeatedly for thousands of years?” Nora asked.
Adam flinched, still staying on his knees in front of her. “Not exactly. I haven’t done a stellar job of finding you. The world is a very big place.”
“How many times?”
“Three.”
The single syllable hit Nora like a physical blow. Two thousand years of walking the earth, and he had only managed to run into her three times.
“We’ve only spent three lives together in all that time?” Her voice trembled as she said it.
Adam shook his head. “Even when I find you, it’s not always simple. My feelings for you may be eternal but being together is not guaranteed. We have a choice.”
“Tell me,” Nora urged, needing to know.
Adam sat back on his heels but didn’t move to get up from his seat in front of her.
“The first time I found you, it was a few hundred years after your death, in Egypt. I had begun to think I had imagined the voice telling me to find you altogether, when suddenly there you were. You weren’t as you were when I’d lost you, though, but frail and failing with all your hair turned gray. I stayed near you for the short few years until the end of that life, trying to help you in whatever ways I could.”
Nora gripped the arms of the seat so hard her knuckles cracked, but she did not interrupt.
“The next time I found you was almost five hundred years later. You were young and just as I always pictured you in my dreams, but when I followed you, trying to come up with an excuse to run into you organically, I saw you were married, and you already had three beautiful children, all with your eyes and your beautiful smile.
It was in that life that I was forced to come to terms with the fact that just because I had married you in one life did not mean I had the right to derail every other life you had. If we were going to be together, you would have to choose me all over again. It was one of the hardest realizations of my life, but you and your husband ended up being some of the best friends I ever had.”
Nora was barely breathing now, but she held on.
“The last time I found you was seven hundred years ago, in France. You were in the prime of your life, a young widow. We met and had a whirlwind romance that was everything I had dreamed of. When I suggested marriage, though, you turned me down. You were managing your late husband’s estate, and you knew you would lose legal ownership of the property if you were ever to marry again. Devastated by your refusal, I took a trip to the country to clear my head. I had only just left when I heard the news that the black death was spreading. I rushed back to you, but I was too late. I ended up holding you in my arms, and I vowed that I would never assume anything about our relationship again.”
Adam reached down and plucked the piece of gold jewelry off the ground where it had fallen on the rug when he kneeled in front of her. He ran his thumb over the face of the round locket she had spied on his shelf weeks before.
“This is from that last life,” Adam explained. “I keep it with me so I never forget, well…any of it.”
He popped the locket open to reveal the picture inside, and if Nora had any doubts about Adam’s honesty, it was instantly banished as a miniscule painting of her own face smiled back at her.
Tears filled her eyes as she asked, “And now?”
“And now…now you’re here in front of me again. I saw the life you had built for yourself, and it made me admire you even more. I never wanted to take that life away from you. I wanted to give you the type of love you deserve in the life you chose, but then you got dragged into everything here at the Eteria, and I knew I could not keep this from you forever.” A tear leaked from the corner of Adam’s eye, but he didn’t move to wipe it away. “I had hoped we might fall in love first, so I could tell you this without forcing you into anything. I wanted to give you the space to make your own decisions and destiny, and not feel like you owed me anything because we had once been married.”
Adam scooted forward until he kneeled directly in front of Nora and put his hands on her knees. “And now I— I have spent thousands of years learning every language there is to know and reading the best work by the greatest writers of every age. Still, I have never found the proper words to express how I feel about you. Yet I can tell you this: I have seen your face every time I have closed by eyes for the past seven hundred years, and still, I never could have imagined the joy I would feel when I finally saw you again.”
Nora stared into Adam’s dark eyes, tears now freely streaming down his face in a mirror of her own. She knew she had a choice. She knew she could get up and walk out forever and Adam would let her do it.
Instead, she threw her arms around his neck and crushed her lips to his.
This kiss was nothing like their first. If their first kiss had been a mild summer’s day, then this one was a hurricane. She poured everything his words had made her feel into the kiss, hoping he would understand what she was trying to convey. He only froze in surprise for a moment before responding in kind. He pulled her closer to him, letting the locket fall from his hands to the carpet with a dull thud. She knelt with him as his hands wandered all over her. They trailed through her tousled hair before coming to cup her face briefly, then wandered down her back, as if they had to touch every part of her to make sure she was really there.
Nora’s hands began to explore just as much as she tilted her head to kiss him more deeply, the kiss morphing into exploring tongue and nipping teeth. He tasted like the spiciness of the chai tea he preferred mixed with the saltiness of their combined tears. Her hands began tugging at the buttons of his shirt, but he stilled them.
“I’ve thought about this reunion for the last seven hundred years,” Adam said as he looked through his lashes at her. “I won’t let this be some frantic romp on the floor. I’m going to savor every moment of this, take my time to relearn every inch of you.”
