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“Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance,” I recited Confucius as we slowed down. She pinched her eyebrows together, breathing hard. “Why?” “Because a weapon of death shouldn’t be in the hand of someone who hasn’t lived.” You can’t speak for a world when you only understand one point of view.
but it really pissed her off when other women still didn’t care that I was married. Not that it happened often, but she saw it as a sign of the most ultimate disrespect.
“Don’t you trust it?” I asked her. “What?” “That this will never end.” She needed everyone to know that I was hers, when it would save her a lot of aggravation if it could just be enough to know that I knew I was hers. I stalked toward her, slow step after slow step as my eyes dropped to her tits threatening to pop over the top of her dress. And believe me, I knew I was hers. The man in her bed every night. The father of her children. Her partner in everything I did.
“I want to kill anyone for trying to take you away from me.” I reached my hands around her ass, feeling the strap of blades around her leg, and lifted her into my arms. “If I ever leave you, it’s because I’m dead.”
She froze, seeing me watch her. I cocked an eyebrow. Another one? You want a cake, too? Maybe two cakes, Rika? She hesitated only a moment and stuffed it into her mouth, followed by another one, before flipping me off and stalking away with her chipmunk cheeks full of unhealthy food for the baby.
I knew what that was like. I had the scars to prove it. She had pills. I had razor blades.
“Michael, Kai Mori, Will Grayson…you. I should’ve known life would find a way to take care of her when I failed to. I should’ve known you’d find each other.” A gentle smile flashed across her lips. “She speaks like she has ten-thousand soldiers behind her now. You did that. Not me.”
She gazed up at me, the lines around her eyes giving away her age, but the look in them still like a child.
I looked down at her, something swelling in my throat, and it hurt, but I couldn’t look away, either.
I wasn’t sure why, but with Christiane, I didn’t care if I wasn’t the strongest in the room. Even well into my thirties, I had to admit, I kind of still wanted a mom.
“A good parent has happy kids,” she whispered in my ear. “Our kids are so happy.”
She laid her head on my chest, holding me close. I loved it when she did that. All the time I spent thinking she didn’t need me, and now I knew she did. She didn’t hold me. She held on to me.
Thoughts of things so much worse invaded my head, and my stomach rolled, knowing what happened to kids all over the world. The horror that might await if we lost them tonight.
“I’ve waited too long to see you and me walking around in one person,” I murmured.
“I swear, Kai,” Will growled. “You tell that kid to light a fucking candle from now on.”
We deserved what we had, and I wasn’t fucking teaching Athos—or my son—that they didn’t deserve exactly what they wanted. The last thing I would teach my kids was to cower, hide, or run.
“I think Octavia knew what the rest of us didn’t.” “Which was?” “She was never in any real danger.”
“No one stops us,” she whispered. “No one owns us.” I held her tight. “And we’re not changing.”
A key hung from the lock on the window, a small scroll of paper tucked in the chain. I looked around the room, wondering who it belonged to. Reaching up, I unhooked the chain from the lock, holding the skeleton key in my hand and pulling the paper out of the link. Unrolling it, I read black handwriting. “The chords of the heart need to be touched to be played.”
No one is immune to emotion when those chords are pulled. No one. I closed my eyes, feeling the blood under my nails as I wrapped my cold fingers around the key. One night soon. While everyone was asleep. We’ll find out what the key unlocks, Octavia. We’ll own the night.
