Gideon. Jacquelyn Frank
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remember quite well the day her father had been Summoned by an accursed human necromancer. She knew Noah remembered it, too. It was no doubt why the trauma of last Samhain had marked him so heavily. She did not need to read his emotional memories of having watched her body dissolve into nothingness to know how that moment must have scarred him. It had scarred her as well. She would never forget the pain and terror of that instant for as long as she lived.
But as she urged him to exchange memories of emotion using her empathic abilities—she of how she remembered their father, and carefully selecting and sharing what he held within him of their mother—they realized how very much like their parents they had become. It was comforting, healing, and uplifting to know.
“You were Father’s angel,” he told her.
“And you were Mother’s. I can feel in your heart how much she made you feel special.”
“She swore the day I was born I would be King. Father used to laugh at her. What mother does not have the grandest dreams for her child?” Noah moved his head back to look down into his sister’s pretty face. “But I think she truly knew. I also think she knew she would not live to raise you. She made me swear to protect you above all else. At least once a week she would tell me how I must keep that promise.”
“And you have,” Legna insisted. “I do not just say that to comfort you, so stop thinking it. It was you who saw the importance of Jacob’s connection to Isabella when she first arrived among us, even though she seemed nothing more than a human with only an honest wish to help us at the time. It was you who allowed her access to the library, skirting the outrage of the Council by doing so. Because of that access, she found the lost Demon prophecy. We discovered that Druid/human hybrids were in existence and were necessary for our survival as a species. Because of you, Jacob allowed himself to fall in love with her, to want to marry her.
“Because of you, beloved brother, generously offering to join them in the ceremony yourself, I had my hands on her the night of the full moon those five months ago when I was Summoned. If not for that connection, Isabella would never have been dragged with me into the prison of the pentagram, allowing her powers to dampen its effect and prevent my transformation into a monster that Jacob would have been forced to hunt down and destroy.”
“Do not,” he murmured, pulling her forehead to his lips, his desperation communicated through the hands that enfolded her head. “Do not speak of it. It shatters my soul to even think about it.”
It would have destroyed him.
Legna, his graceful, precious sister, caught in the dark, twisted magic of a pentagram that would have destroyed her beauty, her very soul, twisting her into a likeness of a demon humans would have expected to see. She would have become a monster who would have been hunted and destroyed in order to protect vulnerable humans and Demons alike. It would have been enough to embitter him for the rest of his life, and that was a frightening prospect for a man who ruled an entire species. He knew there was a huge difference between normal humans and the mortals from that species who dabbled in black arts and became necromancers, but if he had lost Magdelegna, he was not certain he would have been able to maintain the distinction.
“But all has turned out well,” Legna insisted to him, squeezing his hands in comfort. “You must stop thinking such dark things, Noah, and live in the comfort of the moment. I am well,” she reiterated, giving him another little squeeze to make him absorb the impact of her statement.
Noah nodded, smiling finally, his eyes lighting to a soft ash and jade color as he accepted her comfort.
“Yes. You are well. And healthy.” He took her hands in his, spreading her arms wide and perusing her. “I wonder sometimes why no one has come to my door demanding to make you his mate. Perhaps it is because, like Bella and Jacob, it is a Druid who must win your heart and soul. The chance of you being matched in an Imprinting has suddenly become a tangible thing. An amazing thing. You can see it now for yourself, just as I saw it when Mother and Father were alive. No one who has ever spent time in Bella and Jacob’s presence could possibly ignore the miracle such love can be, how rewarding that deeply spiritual connection is. Jacob is a changed man. I have never seen him so happy or content, and Bella is glowing with love as well as her pregnancy. I find myself envious.”
“I know.” Legna smiled softly at the mention of her new friend’s name and the good fortune Bella had found in her love for Jacob the Enforcer. “There has not been an Imprinting in our society in almost…well, frankly, I do not think I can remember when. I, for one, always used to think it was a fairy tale little girls were told. This was before I understood Mother and Father were Imprinted. I wish I had…I wish I could remember what you do. I wish I could remember the depths with which they loved one another. You make it sound so beautiful, and now that I watch Jacob and Isabella, how passionately they love, I wish it even more.”
“Well,” Noah chuckled, “little boys were told these fairy tales as well, but I think we tended to concentrate on the part about it being the most outstanding sexual experience known to exist in the world.”
“Noah!” Legna gave him a little shove as she scolded him. But she broke into giggles in spite of herself. “I think I might have thought about that once or twice myself. Take heart. Two Imprintings in a single week last October bodes well for you, my brother.”
“One can only hope,” Noah said with a lecherous wink that compelled his sister to cluck her tongue at him and roll her eyes in exasperation.
“You are incorrigible! And you wonder where your nieces and nephews get it from?”
Noah laughed, shaking his head. He realized then that Legna had once more found a way to turn the conversation away from herself and onto something entirely different. It had been her habit for as long as he could remember. Legna never discussed herself, her empathic nature always urging her to put her needs and emotions aside in order to assist others.
“Your point is well taken, sweet. I am beyond redemption and it is no wonder none will have me. In any event, I myself am far too busy to run around trying to find a Demon or Druid who suits me, no matter how tempting the rewards. Besides, all the courting nonsense, the emotions and sensitivity…We shall leave such things to the Enforcers. Simpering and sonnets suit them far better than they do me.”
Legna elbowed her brother in the ribs as punishment for his irreverent referral to Jacob and Isabella. Before Isabella, Jacob had been a lonely man, his soul aching to be accepted and cared for to balance out the stigma of his position as the one who enforced the laws on his own kind. So used to being held in contempt, as a necessary evil, Jacob had only discovered true happiness the day he had literally caught his Isabella up in his arms. Noah liked to tease Jacob for being “ruined” and “besotted,” but Legna knew her brother was happy for the Enforcers. Happier still, now that they would provide an addition to their race within a year, the first child born of a Druid and Demon mating in over a millennium.
Sometimes, though, Legna could not escape the feeling that Noah teased too brightly and tried too hard for wit with his disparagements of the Imprinting. She was an empath, she was his sister, and she had eyes in her head. Legna could see what he did not think she did, what he thought he guarded so carefully from her. She had seen the many times when the Enforcers were guests in their home, when Bella and Jacob sat with their dark heads bent together with so much love and sensuality of need for each other, and how gray-green eyes so like her own had watched them covetously.
“Well, I for one would be well pleased to see you so ‘afflicted’ as Jacob is,” she teased with warm neutrality, giving him a classic smile of beautiful mischief. “But for now, you have reminded me of an appointment I am late for.” Legna stood on her toes to buss her brother on the cheek. “You look tired and ought to nap.”
“I am not an old man in need of naps in the middle of the night,” Noah retorted indignantly. “The moon is only just come high.”
“Suit yourself, Noah. It was only a suggestion. Forgive me for bruising your delicate ego.” She was mocking him, stepping several feet back and spreading her arms wide as she curtsied low and reverently, with all the grace she had earned