Free The Chilling Change Of Air (Elemental Awakening, Book 3) by Nicola Claire

the stairs ignoring the voices I could hear in what had to be the direction of the kitchen. I couldn't face them now. Aktor's calm knowledge that things would be as they were one day, when I really didn't believe that anymore. Nico's smug smile that would assume things were progressing nicely, when I had never been so lost as I was right now. Sonya's confusion and pain on my behalf. Isadora's anger and altogether bitchiness. No, I couldn't face it.
    But the room assigned to me was a mess. Rain still pouring in through the shattered window. The fireplace a hissing bed of wet embers. The walls scorched, the bedspread ruined, the carpet soaked.
    I covered my face with my hands and let out a pitiful sob.
    Two hands landed on my shoulders and I was turned into a warm embrace.
    "I may not remember, but I know what I'm feeling can't be wrong," Theo whispered into my hair. "Give me time, Cassandra."
    I cried harder.
    And then he swept me up in his arms, tucking me under his chin and turned from the ruined room, stalking down the hallway. His foot pushed the door open on a smaller but no less luxurious bedroom, and proceeded to carry me towards the bed. A fire still flickered in the hearth, and as we passed it, it roared back to life. Happily flaring from a mere thought of Theo's, no doubt.
    I was too tired to throw Pyrkagia around, but I wasn't too tired to object to sharing a bed with a man who couldn't remember me.
    "I can't stay here," I protested, as he tucked me under the covers like a small child.
    "Shhh," was all he said, brushing my hair from my face and then moving back to the fireplace, staring blindly for a long while.
    I watched him, my body longing for something, that when given earlier I'd realised I couldn't accept. He was right there. Across the room from me. Mere feet away. And yet it might as well have been the ocean for all the distance that there still existed.
    "Go to sleep, Cassandra," he murmured, not looking up from the flames.
    I closed my eyes, felt the keen ache inside my chest, the pain as my heart was sliced to ribbons all over again.
    I could have him. I knew I could. All it would take was for me to get up out of this bed and walk over there. He wouldn't deny me. He wouldn't deny himself. His longing matched mine.
    But it was false. Or maybe just part of the whole. The attraction existed, but the love was no longer there.
    I rolled over onto my side, my back to the hearth. I ached in more than my chest now. I ached everywhere. When would this end? When?
    I'm not sure how long I lay there, how long he stood by the fireplace watching the flames, how long neither of us said anything but both of us knew the other was awake. I thought he'd leave, but maybe he was waiting for me to fall asleep first. I couldn't, as tired as I was, I just couldn't.
    God help me, I was in love with a man who didn't love me back. A man who had loved me once, told me he would always love me, no matter what.
    Tears leaked out of the sides of my closed eyelids as I thought back to Brazil and that moment in the shower, when Theo held me, comforted me, after being apart for so long, suffering so much, and then finding out I was more than just Gi .
    "However this plays out," he'd murmured against my lips, his hands smoothing down my back, over my arms. "I will always love you. No matter what comes next. I will always love you. Whatever you become. I will always love you. "
    I couldn't stand this. It was tearing me up inside. I couldn't live with this depth of pain. I'd survived the Gi . I'd barely survived the Pyrkagia. I would not survive Theo Peters.
    The bed dipped at my side and hard arms wrapped around me, "Shhh," he whispered. "Shhh."
    I let him hold me, because I am weak.
    I let him comfort me in his embrace, because I couldn't find the strength to pull away.
    I let him pretend he still loved me, because the alternative was killing me slowly anyway.
    I fell asleep in the arms of my Thisavros but feeling a lifetime away.
    And woke