Free Stay by Jennifer Silverwood Page B

been the risk I couldn’t hide my true nature from them.
    It was easier to wait until the last moment to unveil myself. It was easier for them to brush aside a fleeting memory of an angel than a living ghost.
    My body began to tremble harder then and I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried to stamp out the emotions that had triggered the curse.
    Be gone!
    But when I opened my eyes, the angel remained. And I could no longer deny the fact I was losing control.
    “You don’t sound fine,” Cain said with more than a hint of concern. “ Are you decent?” He waited for my reply but his words had already fallen on deaf ears. I was gasping because of the chills, because my innermost fears were becoming manifest before my eyes.
    Do not lose control!
    I had left the shower on. How did I turn it off again? With my skin so sensitive at the moment, even the floor felt hard and unnatural. Water had escaped past the curtain and made the way slick, but I saw it too late. My feet slid and I braced my hands out to catch my fall as I slipped. Had I not been so lost to the sensation of falling, I might have caught myself, rather than crashed back into the spray with a heavy thud.
    “Rona?” Cain burst through the door.
    I cried out in surprise at the pain in my backside and in my wrists. I stared at them and watched the curse begin to instantly heal the cuts and fill me with numbness once again.
    Somehow he managed to turn off the shower and lift me into his arms in the blink of an eye. My throat welled up as our connection flashed back into being with the weight of his emotions. They surrounded me, coupled with my own fear of being seen.
    Strangely, he made no comment about the glow of my eyes, or that the colors trapped in my skin began to leak out onto him. His face was clouded by dissipating steam, though his dark blue eyes burned brightly into mine. I scarcely registered the subtle shift of his steps, the brush of the towel he had grabbed and wrapped like a shield around my body. After setting me on his bed, he flipped on the bedside lamp and I lifted my hands to inspect them.
    They’ve already healed.
    “Are you hurt?”
    I shook my head and sighed when he moved onto the bed and wrapped me in his arms again. On impulse I reached up and wrapped my arms around him, no matter that my towel was slipping, or that he did not belong to me. In this moment he was mine, my savior.
    “Rona,” h e began as he grasped my back and clutched me closer to him.
    I relished being so close, so warm again. Had I spent a thousand years cold?
    His voice deepened as he continued, “You know, you’re making it really hard for me not to touch you right now.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said as I pulled away.
    “Don’t be.” He was quick to answer. With surprising gentleness, he set my towel back in place and then left me to clean up the mess I had made.
     
    Energy was running low in this part of the city. Ice raced to snap power lines and freeze up pipes. While the people did what they could, only I knew the storm was about to cease and the weak sun reclaim their world. I might have used my gift a bit to help it along.
    What else could I do?
    Clearly it was no longer safe for me to remain trapped with Cain. I needed to learn more of the connection between him and Lissa. Otherwise I would have never been brought here. I was inexorably drawn to true love, fly to sap. And now I had broken the most important of all rules by getting involved.
    Every time I thought of Lissa, I saw the blood in her hands and the hopelessness in her eyes and felt like I was dying all over again. This was why Cain’s gentleness affected me so, why I was the worst of people for savoring it while I could.
    Cain did his best to joke and ease the awkward tension between us. His favorite and most annoying method was the endless sea of questions whose answers he plucked from me.
    “Are you sick, Rona?” he asked me over breakfast.
    I told him the truth, not imagining how confusing my