Page 124 of Seduce Me in Shadow

I can’t.

“Ouch! Damn it, I thought magical healing would be less painful. Did you fry my skin together?”

Sydney. At the top of the stairs, I shake my head wryly. Even when my life is shit, she amuses me. I have to figure out how to watch over her because I can’t leave her when her life is indanger. After all, the diary was stolen out from under Bram, so clearly the wizard makes mistakes.

I’ve been teetering on the razor’s edge between the magical heritage I rejected and the human world I cling to. Sydney, God love her, is diving headfirst into the very danger I’m desperate to escape. My heart aches with the knowledge that we’re reaching for different futures. The thought of mating with her, of binding ourselves together, sends equal parts longing and terror through me. She’d wither in the mundane life I’ve built in Dallas, and I’d die a thousand deaths watching her risk everything for a magical world that’s already cost me so much.

Admittedly, being back in the UK has stirred something in me, a sense of belonging I’ve forgotten. Today’s battle with the Doomsday Brethren awakened the soldier in me, made me feel alive and part of something greater again. But I’ve lost my edge. The ghosts of my fallen platoon haunt me, and I can’t bear the thought of failing another team, of watching more people I care about die.

I’m fucking angry, but Bram’s right to cut me loose. It’s time I do the same with Sydney, no matter how much it tears me apart. I’ll see Lucan settled, keep her safe from afar, but nothing more. The alternative—watching her sacrifice herself for this cause, becoming a shell like my brother—it’s unthinkable. I love her too damn much to let that happen, even if it means breaking both our hearts.

As I enter the bedroom, Sabelle leaves, answering my unspoken question. “Conrad just left. Sydney’s all right.”

“Indeed,” Sydney insists as she digs into her handbag and extracts the camera. “Help me edit this film? I know you’re against me transcasting, but you saw how evil Mathias is. We can’t let him continue to run amok. I want magickind to see for themselves within the hour.”

“You understand that there’s no going back? You’ll both incur Mathias’s supreme wrath and be trapped in magickind forever.”

“Trapped? I have a chance to save lives and achieve everything I ever dreamed. Nothing worth doing is without risk.”

“Pretty speech. I don’t think it will comfort you when Mathias tries to kill you. I won’t help you transcast.”

She cocks her head. “You’re actually walking away and leaving this mess to Bram and the others and wasting your abilities when you could be helping, too?”

“Bram gave me the boot, and I’m leaving something I never wanted to be involved in.”

Sydney pauses, draws back. “You’re leaving me as well.”

“I’ll protect you. But I can’t remain this close, care this much, and lose you,” I choke. “I…can’t.”

Clenching her fists, Sydney tries to hold back sudden tears. And fails. “I don’t understand you. First, you ran from your parents and your heritage, spent ten years trying to be American and human, when you’re neither. You came back to help your brother, why? Obligation? Because you couldn’t avoid it without feeling like a heel? You’re not running from the Doomsday Brethren and me; you’re running from yourself—like you have been your whole life.”

I accept her rebuke in silence. Sydney simply doesn’t understand. Nor can she relate to the tangle of affection and duty I feel for Lucan after losing Westin. And she has no way of comprehending the disastrous results of failed magic. But I’m not sure it would make a difference if she did.

Some things simply aren’t meant to be.

“You’ve oversimplified everything,” I tell her.

“Have I? Explain to me exactly how this isn’t running from your destiny.”

Sydney

Caden sighs. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

Which means he isn’t even going to try to explain. Guilt feels like a blow to my chest.

“Make me understand. Why?”

He rakes a frustrated hand through his mussed brown hair. “Magic isn’t always…good.”

“Mathias proves that,” I reply tartly.

“I mean that using magic, even the sort you think is good, can change your life in terrible ways.”

His words renew my dread. I wrote my fantasies about him in the Doomsday Diary to lure him to my bed. Did that change our lives in terrible ways? How much of our affection and passion is due strictly to the book’s magic?

I want to scream. “You’re always so bloody vague, raising more questions than you answer.”

Pacing, he grapples for words. “Magic is all new and interesting to you now, but it’s ripped apart my life more than once.”

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