I told you to stay away.
I could not. Come with me now.
She laughed. Not without Tyr.
Tyr is dead. He will not return.
He lives.
This is not life, Cynara. Tyr was never with you.
We survive because of him.
Ronan knew she would not listen, here in this plane where Tyr’s presence lingered in the power she had given him. She must come back to herself, to the doubts that had made her deny the reality of that terrible joining.
He could not carry her across the threshold. She must shake off the false past as he had done, or she would never be free even if she survived the Kinsmen.
He filled his thoughts with every good moment they had shared: Kord’s rescue, the long conversations, the escape from Dharma, their last mating.
And the love he was too great a coward to express.
You are my life, Cynara. Without you I will die.
Her confusion sucked him into a vortex of discordant emotions. It was Tyr, not Cynara, who had suggested freely giving up her knowledge in exchange for life and eventual freedom; Tyr who had expressed contempt for Ronan; Tyr who would gladly sacrifice a friend, a mate, a nation in order to survive.
With all his will, Ronan made her see that he spoke truth, made her accept the bond he had thrust upon her when he had claimed the right to defend her life with his body. The lambent blaze of her hair fell across her eyes. She trembled.
And took his hand.
Cynara had often dreamed of falling a great distance and hitting the ground with shattering force, only to find herself waking in her own bed.
She opened her eyes to the sight of bare bulkheads and merciless light. Ronan sat cross-legged beside her, stirring with the same sluggishness she felt in her own body. She knew that touching him with her thoughts would be easier than reaching out with her shaking hand.
Her mind was clear. Achingly, profoundly clear.
Kinsmen. She pushed herself erect, struggling to rebuild the mental shields that surely must have failed. The ship remained silent save for the vibrations of the engines.
“I do not know,” Ronan said, “how much longer my defenses will hold. Are you well?”
Well? She turned to him, and it was as if she had forgotten the look of his face, the color of his eyes, the sound of his voice.
Mother Sea… she had forgotten how much she loved him.
You are my life.
‘Tyr,” she whispered. “What did you do?”
Ronan shifted his weight but moved no closer. “You were lost, Cynara. It was necessary to bring you back if you are to escape the Kinsmen.”
Back. She followed a trail of memory to Ronan’s hut, Sihvaaro’s warning, the challenge and its inevitable conclusion. Bitter, galling helplessness.
That was when she’d given up the battle she’d fought every day since Tyr’s death. She surrendered her pride, the fierce determination to deny what her heart had always told her.
Tyr had come. Tyr had given her the dispassion to act without fear or remorse. She’d felt nothing for Ronan’s grief, and only a kind of grim satisfaction when she took Lenko hostage and won freedom from their captors. She would have killed the shaaurin if necessary. All the time she and Ronan ran from the Kalevi settlement—even when they fell into Kinsman hands—she had judged every action with a calculating eye to survival.
“You believed Tyr would do what you could not,” Ronan said. “I had abandoned you, and you saw no other way. But Tyr was never able to help you… not now, nor at any time since his death.”
She could hardly endure his sadness. “I know I hurt you,” she said. “You must believe… whatever I did or said—”
“I know.” He touched her hand. “You have no cause for regret.”
No cause. “You shouldn’t have done it, Ronan,” she said, closing her eyes to the firm belief in his. “Tyr was the one who had the power to resist the Kinsmen. He was the one who took Lenko hostage and got us free of the shaauri. Without him—”