“How are you holding up?” Caleb asked me.
I chuckled. “I should be asking you that.”
“You’re the one who’s about to give herself willingly to that maniac,” he muttered.
I could feel his anger, the frustration fueled by his inability to stop me from doing what I was about to do. I understood how he felt, but, if the roles were reversed, Caleb would’ve done the same to save his mother, without abandoning the mission.
“You know why I’m doing this,” I said, not ready to get into an argument with him over my decision. We’d had a couple of heated conversations about it already, and I didn’t have the patience for another one.
I wanted to talk to him about the good stuff to get my mind off what we were about to do, not dissect it further to prove exactly why this step was necessary. I loved Caleb more than anything, and the only reason why we had arguments over this in the first place was because he loved me, too. He didn’t want to lose me, so I couldn’t hold it against him.
Caleb let a deep and frustrated sigh roll out. My stomach churned at the thought of not seeing him again. “Are you sure you’ve worked out all the kinks in the plan you gave us?” he asked, trying his best to gradually divert the conversation away from the hot points.
“As long as Nathaniel, Uriel, Angelica, and Deena meet up with Araquiel and Herakles, we’ll be fine,” I replied. “Amal and Amane have already worked out all possible scenarios, including the possibility that Ta’Zan already knows that Amal has been playing him. We’ve got it covered, Caleb.”
“Forgive me if I’m worried.”
His tone was clipped. I took a deep breath, carefully measuring my words.
“Honey… I want nothing more than to be there with you,” I said. “Let me just kill that crazy bastard first, and then we’ll take some time off, just the two of us.”
A few seconds went by in silence.
“Did you have something in mind?” he grumbled, making me smile.
“I was thinking we’d stay on Earth. Maybe Europe.”
“Yeah, I’ve had enough of these foreign trips, for sure. And the worst thing we can expect in Europe is… what, exactly? Some rogue werewolf, maybe?” Caleb replied.
There was amusement in his voice. I was getting him back to a lighter mood, and that made me feel better, too. As if my throat wasn’t closing up anymore. As if I wasn’t hours away from getting myself imprisoned in that diamond dome.
“We could try Italy. Tuscany is supposed to be gorgeous in September,” I murmured, already imagining the starry sky unraveling over the wild hills south of Sienna, with deer and boar roaming through the nearby woods and the midnight breeze brushing through my hair.
“I can’t believe we’ve never been there,” Caleb said. “We’ve been around for quite a while.”
“We’ve been busy saving the world, over and over.”
“Can we save ourselves, next?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
My heart fluttered at the thought of wrapping my arms around his neck and making love to him until the morning. Caleb was an essential part of my soul, and the chemistry between us was eternal. No matter what happened to us, and even if the sky crumbled, the love that Caleb and I had for each other was timeless.
“There’s nothing to save,” I replied. “We’re okay, Caleb. Sure, we bicker now and then, but what did you expect? We’re both stubborn as hell.”
He chuckled softly. “That’s true. Though, I admit, I still don’t regret kidnapping you. I’d do it again.”
I laughed, remembering how the two of us had met. Caleb had once been an enemy of sorts, my abductor, and the cause of much grief to my parents. But the fire between us was too strong. It didn’t care that Caleb was doing all sorts of crazy stuff for Annora. It was hard to shake a black witch off, and Annora had had her claws deep in his heart at the time.
In the end, our love prevailed.
“I mean, let’s not forget how you took Annora down,” he said. “You were something else, Rose. You didn’t give up, not even when she practically fed you to flesh-eating ogres. In hindsight, I’m an absolute idiot for doubting your ability to get out of this Stravian mess in one piece.”
“You’re not an idiot. Annora was a different pile of darkness and crazy, anyway. Ta’Zan is calculated. He’s cunning. He’s like nothing we’ve faced before,” I replied. “I mean, ogres and dragons are like flies on the windshield, compared to the Perfects.”
That made him laugh.
“I don’t want to lose you, Rose.” He sighed. “You… You changed my life. Your spark got me out of the darkness. You showed me that life is the sum of our choices. And I don’t want this choice of yours, to surrender to Ta’Zan, to break us apart for good. Am I making sense? I feel like I am, for the most part.”
I loved this side of him. Caleb was the tall, dark, and handsome type, the fierce and determined guy who was ready to burn down an entire planet for the woman he loved. But sometimes, this hard shell dissolved and revealed the softness beneath. I was his soulmate, and Caleb struggled to function without me. In all honesty, I was empty without him, too.
“It makes all the sense in the world, my love. But listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once. There’s no way in hell that I’m letting this place be the end of me. I didn’t come all the way here to get my ass handed to me by a guy who thinks he’s genetically superior and thus worthy of killing us all. No. I survived a crazy cult of witches, a kingdom of ogres, and an army of vengeful dragons, and I’ll survive this maniac, too.”
I paused, but Caleb didn’t say anything. I took it as a sign to keep going. There was more where that came from, anyway.
“Dammit, Caleb, I want us to rent a villa in Tuscany. One with a pool overlooking the hills. I want a hot air balloon ride and a taste of gelato—”
“You know your stomach doesn’t tolerate gelato,” he replied.
“A teaspoonful. I’ll have a teaspoonful with you, under the full moon,” I snapped. “But you get where I’m going with this, right?”
“I most certainly do.”
If I closed my eyes, I could almost see him standing in front of me, wearing that sly smile that always worked perfectly with his chocolate-brown eyes, as if he’d been specifically designed to dazzle me.
“I’m not dying here, Caleb.”
“It might not be up to you,” he mumbled.
“No. But I need you to know that I intend to do everything I can to come back to you. If I lose this, there will be no Tuscan vacation. No hot air balloon ride. No lovemaking under the moonlight for the two of us. There will only be death.”
