Free The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension by H.D. Strozier Page A

you’re clinging to because you want so much for her to stay with you, that you don’t want to believe that this time Miss Samara doesn’t need your saving and never really has?” Tsubame said to Bastet. She turned her attention back to MaLeila and said, “Don’t be afraid to give into the desire that whispers into your heart every night to be the most supreme, to have everyone answer to you because they couldn’t stop you if they tried. Don’t be afraid to give into your birthright because you’re trying so hard to prove that you aren’t anything like Claude Thorne. Admittedly, he had the same drive, tried so hard to be a good upstanding human being just like you try so hard to be. Knew what he was capable of and yet resisted it. And because of that it twisted him and the perversion of the slave trade only made that corruption so much worse. Isn’t that right Devdan?”
    So mesmerized by Tsubame’s words MaLeila had been that she hadn’t seen Devdan had make his way to where they were finally. He was still holding his chest and MaLeila guessed that was the reason for his delay.
    “You’ve said enough,” Devdan replied.
    “No. I want to know what she’s talking about. I want to know the big secret,” MaLeila said turning her gaze to meet Devdan’s.
    She thought with the bind broken their relationship would be different, but she was still as acutely aware of him as she had always been, the energy and tension in the room rising as their natural link, unconfined by Claude’s forced binding flared as if trying to bring them together even though they were again facing off against each other. He felt it too. MaLeila could tell by the way he tried to magically withdraw himself from her, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it. And like always when he didn’t want to acknowledge their connection, he diverted attention away from it.
    “I don’t know what she’s—“
    “Stop lying to me,” MaLeila cut in.
    “Don’t be so hard on him,” Tsubame said with a laugh. “I don’t think he even knows. Everyone in the world, this universe and my own, held the man in such reverence when they would have been sickened if they knew the depths of his madness and perversity. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that you’ve been going about not being like him the wrong way. And though you don’t understand it now, you’ll thank me later. Don’t say I didn’t try to let you come to your own decision though. Hakim.”
    A fine mist began to form in the air, increasing the shadows around them. MaLeila braced herself for what Marcel was about to do when she felt Devdan’s arm hook around her waist and pull her to him; her face buried in his chest; the smell of him like rain and the crisp air of winter in Georgia invading her senses and taking her back to one of the first times he held her like this. They were locked in a janitor’s closet to hide from a wizard who managed to transport them to a mirror dimension of her school on a physical plane that existed almost directly on top of their own plane. It was only the fact that she’d left her homework for the next period that he’d been there in the first place to drop it off when the wizard attacked. She hadn’t been fond of him back then, was still cautious of his presence when he was around still, but all the same she felt safer with the man who seemed like he was still trying to decide if he wanted to kill her than the wizard that certainly was trying to kill her or worse.
    And after many more encounters of the same nature, MaLeila had gone back and forth between feeling protected and in danger around the man to always feeling protected but between loving and hating him. The love giving way to hate after every hurtful comment, every time he shut her out, pushed her away, and toyed with her emotions and the hate giving way to love as soon as he contradicted his words by sweeping in to protect her anyway, almost killing himself on many occasions from