Choose Your Enchantment

Or Cross the Assassin who can't kill her.

“I can’t believe you painted your cottage pink for Harold’s girl,” Libby said, leaning over me to squint at the fine print of the Werewolf Law for the Eighteenth Century I was studying.

I looked up at my oldest friend. “I thought you left.”

She studied me with bright eyes while her mouth twitched as she held back her smile. She was in a good mood today. “How long have you known her?”

I raised a brow, impatient to get back to the archaic tome that was still the basis of werewolf law in current times. It clearly needed a radical update, but I wasn’t part of the werewolf legislative system. Pity. I should have made more of an effort in that direction during the last decade. “We went to school together,” I finally said.

Her shock was adorable. She grabbed my hand and squeezed my fingers painfully. She had an impressive death grip. “When you were a tiny child in elfland? Fifty years ago?”

I squeezed her fingers back and set her hand firmly away from me. We were old friends, but dynamics change. She had a possessive husband who wouldn’t like my scent on her skin. And I had…

I stood suddenly, walking over to the window to look out past the natural swimming pond to the pink bungalow. She was really here, tucked into my care mostly against her will, but I could be very persuasive. From the first time I’d heard her song, known her soul, I’d been hooked. No one could be so sweet, so good, but with an undercurrent of wild will that swept me off my feet and dragged me under. Six feet under. I’d died that day, only death was kinder.

She’d worn a red dress that brought the roses out in her cheeks. She also had red roses tucked in her mahogany hair with a spray of baby’s breath. Simple, but so lovely. Her eyes reflected her warmth, soft, gentle, sweetness that begged to be held and protected. I watched her cross the room, her eyes catching mine as she moved shyly, but surely in my direction. I stayed rooted to the spot, like a tree she’d entranced, unable to do my duty, to avoid entanglements, to focus on my job.

Halfway across the floor, she flinched and her shoulders rose, pain crossed her face, and I knew that I’d make sure she was safe, protected and well. 

Libby tapped on my shoulder, making me remember myself again. “She said that you were rude to her. Why would you be rude to a civilian?”

I blinked and turned away from the window to look at my golden, angelic, demonic friend. How much could I tell her without it becoming a burden for her? I didn’t know. I was too close to my new guest to have any kind of objectivity. “I tortured Delphinia Erasmus for two months. I don’t deserve her good opinion.”

She raised a brow. “Two months is a long time to torture someone. She doesn’t know it was you, or she wouldn’t be here.”

“Mm. I intend to keep it that way. I would prefer if she didn’t become enamored with my polite persona.” Except that having her look up at me with shining eyes and a soft smile was everything I wanted. It wasn’t right, though. I could fool the rest of the world, but not her.

She sighed heavily. “Poor Cross, so beautiful, having to constantly keep the females at bay. Particularly the ones you want to keep close.”

I shot her a look. “Do I?”

“Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept her alive for two months while she transitioned. That’s where you disappeared to? You looked positively haggard for a year afterwards. You threaded your life force through her? Are you going to tell her?”

I held very still. “Tell her…” I couldn’t tell her my feelings. I couldn’t cultivate her affections when I was the monster who had hurt her so badly, all because I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t do what was necessary, not when my feelings were engaged. It was my greatest character weakness, why I’d never be part of my parent’s world.

She cocked her head and gave me a look. “She’s good at keeping secrets. And maybe you could use some happiness. I’m not going to say deserve, because may we never get what we deserve, but still, what would it hurt if you took some happiness along the dark and deadly way?”

She pressed her forehead against mine so we could stare into each other’s eyes creepily. “Cross, it’s okay to want something.”

At the thought of wanting Delphinia Erasmus, of touching her, looking at her, being with her, heat flared in my belly, twining through my limbs in a burst of energy that literally shocked Libby, knocking her a step away, blinking rapidly.

I shook my head, struggling to contain the surge of power that reminded me of my father. “I can’t love her.”

“You mean you do love her, but you can’t stop pretending, or your whole world will crash and burn.”

I blinked at her. “I don’t love her. I have no right to love her.” Not after I refused to give her what she begged for every day. Hundreds of times a day she pleaded, while her bones broke and cut through her skin, while her organs gave out and only my will held her to life. I’d never used my will like that before, and I never had since.

She scratched her head, face scrunched up like she’d remembered something unpleasant. “Okay then. We’ll pretend that makes sense. We both know that you wouldn’t have forced someone to stay alive against their will if you weren’t emotionally compromised, but we all have secrets we don’t want ourselves to find out.” She sauntered towards the door, leaving me with a flurry of ruffled feelings that had me aching to find Delphinia, to beg her forgiveness, to be something she could love.

“Even monsters need love,” she called back before she left the vaulted library.

I stood there, feelings tearing me in different directions before I walked, almost against my will, to the nearest glass door that led out onto the terrace. I walked slowly, trying to hold myself back, to change directions, but my course was set. I had to see her, to tell her that she couldn’t trust me, that she had to be wary of me, that my life was hers if she wanted to end it and exact her revenge.

The door opened under my hand, and there she was, curled up on the couch, face relaxed in sleep, warm brunette hair spilling over the edge in a swirl of silken waves. I would die for her. I would kill for her. But I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t. She was what I’d been created to protect. After all this time, that hadn’t changed.

I carefully pulled a soft throw over her shoulder and backed away before the scent of her, flowers, wind, and wild, could drown me. Love is pain. If I could have saved her by loving someone else, I would have. But I couldn’t. She was the only woman in the world who owned my heart.