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

the effort. The binding had changed nothing it seemed, neither for better nor for worse. And it was because nothing had changed that MaLeila came to decision.
    “We can’t keep doing this,” MaLeila whispered, knowing he’d hear it even with all the noise around them.
    “I keep telling myself that,” he admitted.
    “Then let me go. It’s time to stop protecting me, Devdan.” Before he could respond MaLeila continued, “But I know you can’t help it. So I’ll make it easy for us.”
    She felt the man tense slightly around her as she pressed the cool metal of his own gun to his back.
    “Let me go, Devdan.”
    “You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you killed me,” Devdan said knowingly.
    “I wouldn’t have to. At this range, the bullet would kill us both.”
    His grip around her relaxed as the realization dawned on him. He kept his arms around her for a little while longer before he finally let her go completely and MaLeila stepped back from him, far enough that he couldn’t easily grab her again, but close enough for her to be able to hand him back his gun.
    “Before you decide to hate me and close your heart up even more so that the next girl has an even worse time trying to melt that steel, keep in mind that you broke my heart first, okay?” MaLeila said as he grabbed the gun from her.
    MaLeila let the gun go and turned her back to him before walking over to Tsubame.
    “I’m ready now,” she said.
    “It’s a shame. I was hoping Devdan and Bastet would be coming with you,” Tsubame stated as the mist began to collect even thicker obscuring the compound, Devdan, Bastet, everything from MaLeila’s sight.

7
    Tsubame had taken them to some reclusive temple in the mountains to serve as their temporary sanctuary. Nika dropped MaLeila off in a room with large open windows and a sublime view of the mountain before leaving MaLeila to her own devices.
    The room was fully furnished with a bed and drawers filled with clothing and attached to the room was a bathroom with black stone floors and walls that matched the rest of the temple but MaLeila still recognized as a recent addition. At some point either Tsubame, Nika, or Marcel had been here to prepare this place for them. It may have been what Tsubame had sent Marcel away to do after their date in the city right before it was ravished by the rebel’s attack.
    That evening, only a day ago yet still seeming so long because so much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, brought a smile to her face. Though he was hesitant sometimes, Marcel held nothing back from her as he told her about how their Civil War had gone; from how while never being involved in the abolitionist movement, he had given a helping hand to runaways who crossed paths with him, even once guiding a group all the way to Canada; how initially he had been a neutral party in the war because while slavery had been the focal issue it certainly hadn’t been a war between two sides of the country with different morals regarding the people they held captive even though the abolitionists took advantage of the war to get slavery abolished; how he had gotten involved for all the wrong reasons when a pyromaniac sorcerer from the confederate army who infiltrated the union army set his house in Atlanta on fire and in the ensuing fight between the two, burned down the entire city Marcel called home in effort to incite more anger and drive for the confederates to beat the union army.
    “I still wasn’t on the union’s side. I still didn’t think by the north winning they would end slavery for good, but I had a vendetta to settle.”
    And it was as he was regaling her with stories about his involvement in the Civil War, always being mostly truthful even if he became hesitant when he didn’t think she’d like what he told her, that MaLeila realized that her attraction to him wasn’t because he reminded her of Devdan but because where it counted, Marcel didn’t. That thought in mind,