Page 30 of Voyage with the Reclusive Billionaire

“Not the way you’re supposed to love the man you marry.”

“But you do love me, don’t you, Eliza? Because I love you. I love you so fucking much it hurts. And I refuse to do the rite with you if you don’t feel the same way. Well, not until you do, anyway.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks now as she nodded. “Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, Cor. I love you. I love you so much that I can’t imagine being without you.”

So I smile at her and wipe her tears away with the pads of my thumbs. “Okay, then. Your ex-fiance doesn’t matter.” I pause, then add, “Not like my ex-girlfriend does.”

“Actually,” she gives me a look through her eyelashes. “That’s the other thing I needed to talk to you about. What Sylvie wanted to talk to me about.”

“Tell me.”

“She sensed something in me, Corvan. Something I didn’t even know was possible. Something that’s going to make our lives a hell of a lot easier.”

“What, Eliza?”

She takes a deep breath.

“I’m a descendant of the goddess Lethe. And I can make Savannah and Jade forget about what you are.”

Chapter fourteen

Eliza

We’d practiced for hours. I’d give Sylvie a phrase and focus on making her forget she ever knew it at all. Then she had me practice on other people, wider and wider and wider. Nothing important, just tiny things.

Sylvie had said, “Your power is exceptional because it knows no bounds.” She paused, then added, “I’m sure you know this, but Lethe is also the goddess of oblivion. Of nothingness. And if you can just sink into that feeling, wrap it around yourself, you could spread what you are across the damn globe. It could be amazing, but also very dangerous.”

And I would have, For Corvan, I would have. I would have made everyone forget about that stupid fucking article that released about him all those years ago. But I couldn’t make the papers themselves disappear. The reports done on him. Which meant that, if I did erase everyone’s memory of what Jade said, it left them with the potential to re-discover it. To add more fuel to the flame that was nothing more than an old ember now. Plus, his people had already done a pretty good job of making much of the reporting disappear.

It was better, we’d agreed, if I stuck to Savannah and Jade. Still risky, if Jade ever saw an article about her saying something she couldn’t remember saying, but… perhaps she’d just assume then that it was made up. No matter what, she’d have doubts. She wouldn’t know.

Which meant she’d leave him the fuck alone.

And that was enough for me.

I practiced as much as I could. I gave Corvan phrases to remember and then made him forget those phrases. From one side of the ship to the other, sifting through people until I found him. From just on the other side of the bed from him. Constantly, I was practicing. Because when the boat docked and most everyone went out to explore our Alaskan destination, Cor and I would stay on. It would be the perfect chance for me to truly be able to concentrate, to search across the distance, the oblivion I would sink into, until I found her. Corvan had found a photo of her for me, an essence for me to go off of.

I didn’t think I would need it.

My intention would be enough.

Savannah was close, easy. The next morning, after resting my brain and my power, I went after her. Land was visible in the distance, which meant I needed to seek her out, and soon.

I chose now. It would give me enough time to build myself back up before sinking deep into my power to find Jade—which would take who fucking knows how long.

Corvan was somewhere beside me and touching me, his presence something to solidify me, to ground me to my body while I searched through the void of minds until I found the right one. Something I’d quickly learned—it was a hell of a lot easier to pull yourself out of a place of pure nothingness when there was something to root yourself to.

Something that called you home.

So I sunk deep inside myself. I emptied myself of everything I was besides my power. In here, it was the only thing that mattered. I only ended up watering it down if I focused on the me of the equation.

Savannah was still asleep. It was early, so this was expected. And it was also another reason I’d wanted to do it so early—she was more vulnerable right now.

It was like sneaking in through a window. In this place, I was merely an essence. There were minds, there was me, and there was nothing.

I was merely a mouse. A mouse who sifted through her thoughts, who pulled on any string attached to Corvan’s name and removed the volatile ones. She would know him as the entrepreneur, as the ex of the younger sister she hadn’t seen in decades besides in tabloids beside Corvan.

And she would know nothing else about him. Every other thought or fact or opinion about him, every plan she made with her sister, I took with me. I stole it and absorbed it and made it a part of me. Mine to keep forever. Only mine.

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