Free Lost Paradise by Tara Fox Hall Page B

near him.
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    His cherry wood colored eyes were determined.
“I read the letter from Leri.”
    It took you this long? I’d have read
it that same night with a bottle of wine handy. “Where are you
headed?”
    “Leri didn’t know much about Keriam,” Terian
said sadly. “Except that his real name was Matt Mairek. That’s why
she called him Keriam; it was an anagram of his last name. She
liked that it was similar in sound to her name, too.”
    “Do you want to talk?” I said, sitting down
and hoping he didn’t.
    Terian sat down in a nearby chair. I shifted,
uncomfortable. This little alcove he kept for reading in his lab
was comfortable enough for one, but close quarters for two.
    “Leri knew she was going to deliver soon. She
teleported to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and went to a community
campus in one of the surrounding towns, searching for someone to
entrust with my care. She wanted to find a smart young man. She was
worried about leaving me with a woman, that a female wouldn’t be
strong enough to handle the kind of baby I’d be. She finally found
a medical student. He had just gotten off the night shift at the
local hospital, and was walking home to his fiancée.” He swallowed
hard. “She told him she was scared, that she was going to deliver
soon. He could see both of those things were true.
    “He took her back to the hospital. She went
into labor before he could do more than secret her into an unused
room. She put a compulsion spell on him when he tried to leave to
get help—”
    I grasped and squeezed Terian’s hand.
    “She used her magic to help speed up the
birth. She was able to heal herself, though she lost a lot of
blood. He cleaned me up. While he was occupied, she performed
another spell, a very complex one she’d worked on for months,
taking a bit of his hair and blood. She told him his name was
Keriam, that he was her son, and I was his brother. She told him to
take care of me, then gave him a few hundred thousand dollars.
Teleporting him to Texas, she got him settled in a hotel there.
Then she left.
    “The potion she gave him made him forget who
he had been, though it didn’t change the kind of man he was, or his
hopes and dreams. Leri made him forget everything he’d been before
they had met. He lost his fiancé, his entire life, everything he’d
wanted! It was all my fault!”
    Terian was crying now openly. I hugged him,
though his tears were almost boiling in their heat.
    “It wasn’t your fault,” I soothed. “It was
hers.” I handed him some tissues.
    “We’ve come full circle,” he said, using
them. “I remember that first day we met, that day I handed you
those tissues. I felt so bad that day that I’d made you cry.”
    “I needed you to tell me what you did back
then,” I replied. “But sometimes crying is good. I always feel
better afterward. You must feel better too, to finally let it
out.”
    “I’m leaving tonight,” Terian said, standing.
“Sundown is coming with me. This time I’ll find my brother’s
family, and put his spirit to rest.” He hugged me hard. “Thank you.
I owe you one for this. You need some spell or a potion for
something, just let me know.”
    “Thanks,” I said automatically. “You don’t
have to—”
    “I want to,” Terian said firmly. “You’re my
best friend, Sar. I’ve never had a friend like you. I love Sundown,
but it’s not the same.”
    “You’ve been there for me too, my gallant
sorcerer always ready to save me,” I teased.
    “I always will be,” Terian said gently,
kissing my forehead. “I just wish you wouldn’t get into all the
trouble you do. I’m good, but there’ll come a day when even I can’t
save you.”
    A shudder went through me. That day had
come: it had been today …Quickly I masked my feelings. I didn’t
want him to know any of it. “Hopefully not. When will you come
back?”
    “I’ll be back in a week or so,” Terian said.
“If I’m longer, I’ll