Page 71 of Ruled By Fate

He looked at her and couldn’t seem to think of a response.

“I can’t go to Elysium, Cameron.”

He looked confused. “You have to.”

She arched an eyebrow. “I think you’ll find I don’t.”

“Brianna—”

“I can’t just up and leave,” she insisted. “Especially if there’s no guarantee that I’ll return back at the correct time. I have friends and family. I have a job. A life. A thriving, vibrant plant.”

He studied her. “Surely, you must be joking.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Joking that my life here is worth defending? Joking that my friends and family are worth sticking around for? I am most certainly not joking, Cameron.”

He exhaled in frustration. “Brianna, I didn’t mean… look, you were the one who said you needed answers about your pendant, and you were absolutely right. And now that the Elysians want to give you those answers—”

“But that’s not what you said, is it? You said that they need more information about the pendant themselves, which is why they want me to come. To study it. To study me. And who knows when or if they’ll see fit to return me to my world. My life.”

She got up off the couch and started to pace. “You said the darkness can’t find me, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“My family and friends are safe. If my leaving would make them safer, I’d leave in a heartbeat. But if they’re fine, and if I’m invisible to all the dark forces trying to get me, then I’m not going to leave my life and go hide in some state of fear and paralysis in a place where ‘time flows differently,’ Cameron. What if going there changes me? What if, I don’t know, what if I come back five years older than I was when I left? Or ten years younger?”

Her pacing continued and intensified.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t think—”

“You don’t think. But do you know? Can you imagine what that would do to Sherry? To my dad? He’s already lost so much. That would break him.” She shook her head. “Leaving poses the greater risk of hurting those I love. Not to mention… I don’t know if you were listening to me earlier, but there is something extremely weird going on at that hospital, and I intend to find out what it is. I might want answers about this pendant — hell, I might be desperate for answers — but it doesn’t sound like your people have those answers. And I’m not keen to trek off to some alternate dimension on a lark.”

She stopped abruptly in front of him and crossed her arms over her chest, looking for all the world like Denise until she jutted out her chin like a defiant child. “I’m staying. That’s final.”

Cameron’s face processed several conflicting emotions, landing on exasperation at least twice before settling into something like bemused resignation. He rose to stand before her. “Then I’m staying, too.”

“What?”

“I was gone maybe twelve hours, and you raised the dead, Brianna. God only knows what you’d manage to get up to if I left you to your own devices any longer.”

She studied him shrewdly, unable to believe he’d be willing to accept defeat.

Her angel had been alive for centuries. Many centuries. Given the mere sight of him, given all that he’d come to represent, she couldn’t imagine there was a single thing she might refuse that he couldn’t insist upon by force.

Especially if he thought it might help. Especially if he thought it was the right thing to do.

“You’re really okay with this?” she asked warily. “You’re not going to stand there all unassuming, then drag me off into the ether the second I close my eyes to sleep?”

She was about to add something threatening like, “Because I carry mace.” But in hindsight, she was always quite glad she decided against it.

His lips curved up with a look she was becoming increasingly familiar with, one of amusement and exasperation, as though he knew exactly what was running through her head. But when he spoke, there wasn’t any pageantry, and there were no games. He was simply honest. “It is your choice, Brianna. Such a thing must always be your choice.”

She took a step back, blinking in surprise. “So, you’re really—”

“Okay with it?” he finished with a touch of sarcasm. “No, I wouldn’t go that far. But that’s the tricky thing about free will. It doesn’t matter how I feel.” He tilted his head, eyes twinkling with mischief. “A fatal flaw in an otherwise perfect structure.”

She snorted with laughter, stepping towards him once again. “Or maybe it’s the only thing that gives us a fighting chance,” she countered.

He opened his mouth to contest it, then grew abruptly serious. “That may well be.”

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