Power (Soul Savers) Read Online Free Page B

with
consciousness as he awoke. And the strength of the love flowing from him diminished
into a narrow stream.
    That thought pricked at my heart. Why would his love lessen? That couldn’t be right. No, not an actual lessening. Just normal
restraint. We all do it. Of course that was it—consciousness kept his
emotions in check. Tristan was so good at controlling his emotions, but I’d
never before realized how much he kept his love hidden, even from me.
    “Good morning, ma
lykita ,” he whispered against my ear.
    I peered around the darkness of our suite.
    “It’s still night.”
    “Hmm … I’d say about 3 a.m. Technically morning.” He rolled
away from me, onto his back. I turned over and saw his eyes still closed, and
laid my head in the soft crook between his shoulder and chest.
    “Still night,” I said, closing my eyes. His mind signature
relaxed again, and his current of love strengthened. I drank it in as I drifted
to sleep.

 
    ***

 
    “I don’t want to go!” Dorian crossed his arms over his chest,
flipped his light blond hair out of his hazel eyes and scowled at me as I
leaned against the wardrobe in his room at the mansion, having delivered the
news that he and Tristan would be going home tomorrow. “I don’t want to leave
you. Why aren’t you coming with us?”
    He gave a football on the floor a kick across the room. Good
thing the wall was made of stone; plaster would have been ruined with the force.
I pressed my lips together and breathed deeply through my nose, practicing my
own emotional restraint.
    As much as I hated being separated from my two men, I needed
to stay to help Mom with Rina and with everything else. Mom couldn’t do it
all—manage the entire Amadis as acting matriarch and also nurse Rina back
to health—on her own.
      “I’ll be coming
home as soon as I can,” I promised. “As soon as Rina’s all better. And look on
the bright side—you’ll have Dad all to yourself.”
    He didn’t respond to this, but I could see in his eyes that
he liked this perk.
    I hated it. Well, for me. It would be good for Tristan and
Dorian to have some extended one-on-one time together, but I hated that they
had to leave. However, it was unavoidable and not unexpected. Dorian had
celebrated his eighth birthday a couple of months ago, and the older he became,
the more likely he’d keep memories into adulthood—memories of Amadis
secrets he’d take with him when he went to the Daemoni. If he goes to the Daemoni. IF, dammit . I refused to accept its
inevitability.
    We’d been able to keep him here this long because Tristan
and I both had reason to be on the island. With Lilith gone and Bree leaving,
though, we were out of excuses to keep Tristan here, which meant he could take
Dorian home. Especially now that Rina was awake and we all knew it wouldn’t be
long before I could leave, too.
    “I’ll miss you,” Dorian said. He looked away from me and
stared out the window. “I’ll miss this place.”
    I felt his pain. Since Dorian had discovered the village on
the other end of the island and the people within it, we began taking him there
on occasion. After all, if we couldn’t somehow break the curse that would allow
the Daemoni to claim him, it wasn’t as though the fact of a village or magical
people living here would be such a great secret for him to share. The Daemoni
already knew all that.
    He hadn’t exactly made friends here—the adults didn’t appreciate
the idea of Dorian, their future enemy, getting too close to their kids, as if
the curse might rub off on them. But at least the kids here didn’t make fun of
him as they had at the Norman schools, and they understood him better than any
Norman kids ever would. Even if he hadn’t forged a tight bond with any of them,
he obviously felt a sense of community here.
    I opened my arms to him. He ignored me for a moment, his
fists on his hips and the corners of his mouth still pulled down. But then he
rushed across the room to