"I can't promise you that, Mira. I can't promise to put you through any more hurt or distress than I already have." He took her face between his palms, tenderly smoothing his thumbs over her cheeks and her trembling mouth. "But I will promise you this: I love you. God, I always have. Did you even realize that? All those months and years of trying to push you away when we were young. I was terrified of how much I cared for you. I'd lost so many people I loved, I couldn't bear the idea that if I let myself love you, I might lose you one day too."
"You'll never lose me, Kellan." A soft sob caught in the back of her throat as she reached up to put her hands around his neck. Her pale purple eyes glittered in the moonlight, filled with welling tears. "I don't care what the vision showed you. I won't let you go. I'm yours. I always will be."
"Ah, Mouse." He eased his forehead down against hers, wishing he had her stalwart courage. "You honor me well. Too well."
"I love you," she whispered. "I'll never stop loving you."
She clung to him now, and he held her close. As close as he could gather her to him. And still, it wasn't close enough. It never could be, when it came to his feelings for this extraordinary female.
He didn't want to die. And the last thing he wanted was to leave Mira again - all the worse, to leave her behind once more in true grief and pain. He would do everything in his power to prevent the vision from coming true, but he knew too well the power Mira's gift of Sight possessed. He had seen it predict fate with unerring accuracy. It was a knowledge he couldn't deny now, no matter how much he wanted to believe they'd find a way past the death sentence Lucan was destined to hand down to him.
But they still had the here and now.
They had this moment.
He rose with her, taking her up to her feet with him on the grassy mound atop the bunker. On the easternmost horizon, a thin glow was forming, just the barest edge of dawn. The night had passed and they were still safe. Still together, for now.
And they had hours of daylight in which to deal with decisions neither of them wanted to make.
Until then, Kellan wanted only Mira.
"Come with me," he murmured into her silken hair. "Let me love you for a while."
She slipped her hand into his and they walked, together, back into the sleeping fortress.
Back into the haven of his bed.
Chapter Eighteen
MIRA'S DREAMS WERE VIVID, WRENCHING. NIGHTMARES filled with tears and anguish and loss.
Such unbearable loss.
Kellan . . .
She came awake on a start, her eyelids lifting in the dark silence of a room that smelled of damp stone, distant brine . . . and him.
Thank God, only nightmares.
Kellan was right there with her, both of them na**d in his bed. His heart thudded leisurely beneath her cheek, his bare chest warm under her palm. He was there. He was safe.
He stirred beneath her, and Mira held herself very still, not wanting to disturb his sleep after the long vigil he'd kept atop the bunker.
Not to mention the hours of unrushed lovemaking, which must have worn him out as well. Though she wouldn't have imagined it then, when he brought her to shattering orgasm three times, his own release never far behind.
The thought of his passion, the pleasure they'd given each other just a short while ago, helped soothe the panicked beat of her heart. It calmed her to recall his words - his tender promise of love - as they'd embraced under the waning starlight in the moments before he'd brought her to his bed.
Kellan loved her. He didn't want to leave her; she knew that. But he would. As he'd told her so gently tonight, when he was ready to surrender to the Order, he would do it alone. He didn't want her there.
And thinking about him facing judgment - and her vision's prophesied outcome - by himself put an icy knot in the bottom of her stom-ach.
She had to work to tamp down her dread, willing herself not to go back to her nightmares of a few moments ago or to the unbearable thoughts of what Kellan had described seeing in her eyes. Although the urge to cling to him now as he slept verged on desperation, Mira was too wired to lie still. Her head was buzzing, her limbs restless, worry nagging at her like tiny fish nibbling at her sanity.
Carefully she extricated herself from Kellan's side and eased her way to the edge of the bed. He sighed and rolled over, his breathing settling into a deeper slumber. Mira rose, unsure what to do or where she could go to shake off the heavy weight of her anxiety. What she needed more than sleep or distraction was answers.
She needed to know what her future held with Kellan. More than anything, she needed some glimmer of hope that they could, somehow, overcome the trouble they were in and find a way to be together.
She shot a glance over her shoulder, toward the foot of the bed. Her eyes lit on the trunk that rested there on the floor. The trunk that held Kellan's grandmother's mirror.
No. It was dangerous even to consider it.
She didn't even know if it would work.
And yet she reached for her empty contact lens case on the night table beside the bed, then her feet were moving her silently across the floor, carrying her to the wooden locker. She crouched down in front of it. Silently lifted the lid.
The silver hand mirror lay facedown on top of a stack of Kellan's shirts. Mira picked it up, her fingertips brushing over the carved design of the Archer family emblem.
She had to try.
She had to know, even if it terrified her to do this, something she'd never attempted before. The worse terror was not knowing, fearing that what Kellan saw might actually be his fate.
If there was any chance that looking into her own unprotected gaze might give her even a slim hope of a future together with Kellan, she would risk anything. She would pay any price to know for certain if he was destined to live . . . or doomed to die.