Page 50

I choked, struggling to breathe.

My eyes were open.

But I couldn't see anything through the veil of tears flooding my eyes.

It felt as if every nerve in my body was pulsing and pulling from the energy of everything around me, but it wasn't fueling me, I was simply devouring it just as the inverted energy around the Harbinger of War had done!

It was a struggle, but eventually, I caught my breath and stopped convulsing from the fear flooding me.

"Goddamn nightmares," I whispered, breathlessly, pushing my clinging hair back from my face with a shaking hand. "I need to up my meds or start taking them."

That was not a normal nightmare.

The old creepy guy was nowhere in sight.

It wasn't the normal kind of darkened procedural crap, and I wasn't being referred to as if I was an overly priced lapdog...

But it felt so real!

The pain that the Harbinger of War was in, the loss she had experienced, the unfathomable loss that was consuming her very soul...

It was so overwhelming that I feel it even now!

"It was just a nightmare," I reminded myself, taking my pulse, and trying to control my breathing. "Never would I kill my father, ever. Never would I kill Zannie and be so indifferent about it," I reminded myself. "It was just a dream. Nothing to be concerned with... I hope it isn't anything to be concerned with," I stammered, wiping away the tear that rolled down the side of my face. "I'm really tired of world-altering crap right now, and I cannot do that right now."

When my breathing leveled and I stopped crying, it finally registered with me that I wasn't alone.

Awesome Sentinel-in-training I am.

Normally, I would have gone into defensive mode.

However, Viggo's scent was ingrained in my heart and mockingly wrapped around my soul.

"What do you want?" I complained, trying to ignore the fact that the very person I was crying over earlier, that I threw myself at, the Prince who didn't want me, was sitting at the foot of my bed looking out the window while I gave a recap of the nightmare I just had.

Harper was supposed to protect me, and yet he isn't here and Viggo is.

"You said to ask you tomorrow, and it is tomorrow," Viggo said in a quiet voice, wiping his eyes.

I looked from him to the clock: 3:15 AM.

"What in the hell is wrong with you?" I complained. "It is three in the morning. Just because you don't need your damn beauty sleep doesn't mean the rest of us don't."

"You have been awake... I need to know why you saved Majandra," he said, ignoring my complaints.

Crazy jackass.

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?" I asked.

Viggo didn't look at me, but he nodded once.

"Fine," I grumbled, sitting up, gathering the blankets around my hips. "There were many reasons why I should have saved her, there were even more reasons why I shouldn't have saved her because she was a real bitch to me and made my healing way more painful than needed, I'm sure. But ultimately, it was the look on your face," I said, looking away from him.

That got his attention, and he turned to look at me and it made me regard him.

I didn't want to look at him.

But I wanted him in my bedroom and my bed, even if he just broke my heart.

Hormones were a bitch.

The soft rainbows of light dancing across his pale skin from Harper's lantern made Viggo look ethereal.

But after what he did to my heart in the pool, he was a nightmare, not a dream.

"What do you mean?" Viggo whispered, studying my face.

Nervous, I tucked my hair behind my ears. "The expression on your face wasn't something I've ever seen from you before; fear, loss, pain, guilt... I didn't know what she did, who she was, or if you were just upset about losing a lover, but I was going to do everything in my power to make you feel better. And to do that, you needed to not experience it."

"You saved her for me?" he asked, confused.

"There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you," I said before I could stop myself. "But that doesn't matter. What happened in the pool was a mistake, you made that more than clear, and I have to accept that which I cannot change. Can I go back to sleep now?"

I was the farthest thing from accepting as possible, but Harper had a point.

With Royals, things were set in stone, so why subject myself to the heartache that a few years of fooling around and enjoying each other's company would cause?

Viggo pulled a piece of paper from his pants pocket and unfolded it, looking at it intently before speaking. "What happened in the pool was a mistake because I did not ask permission to touch you in such a way. Consent is very important, as you know, and I will never disrespect you by not asking for permission to indulge in all guilty pleasures when it pertains to you."

When he says it like that, it sounds as if Viggo is making a deal with the devil.

But now knowing what happened with his aunt and how she lost her title over of Royal because of non-consensual actions, I understood and respected Viggo because of his respect towards my boundaries and body, not to mention, what I wanted.

"I appreciate that very much," I said. "I understand better than you could imagine, and knowing what happened to your aunt and the title she lost because of a stupid male, a Prince that couldn't take no for an answer..." I shook my head. "And you wonder where my animosity towards Royals comes from," I said with a humorless chuckle.

"I have never wondered," he promised me. "They are truly not worthy of the time or effort."

I chuckled over his tone. "I'm sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable in the pool," I said at length.

"You did not," Viggo promised. "Ariadne, I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. My heart and soul belonged to you before I took my first breath. I have traveled the world trying to find you, to protect you from what is coming, but I was not fast enough to protect you this time. And now I have foolishly pushed you away when you are finally here in front of me because I could not articulate myself and see that something was wrong."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"I should have known something was wrong when Zaidin did not know me in Stockholm," he whispered, wiping away the tear that rolled down his cheek.

"What? We just met you... I just met you! You don't even find me attractive," I reminded him. "You can't love what you don't have an attraction towards, that isn't how biology works."

That wasn't the most important thing, but it was important to my self-esteem.

Viggo smiled a small, soft smile, his attention on the piece of paper in his hand. "I would never do you the injustice of simply saying you are beautiful because you are beyond words to me. I do not think there is a proper way to articulate how amazingly breathtaking inside and out you are to me. Before I went to the Academy in the Clouds, I started to lose faith that I would ever find you, and then I was roomed with your brother. But when Zaidin acted as if he did not know me, that we were strangers..." he struggled to hold back the tears flooding his eyes. "Then you sent Zaidin that frame with a picture of the two of you as children and then as teens from your vacation in London, and that is how I knew that I had finally found you despite your brother acting as if we were strangers."

My eyes widened.

"Zaidin got suspicious when I started asking questions about you and where you were," he explained. "I demanded to know where you were and why he was acting as if he and I were strangers. It was not until I saw his luggage tags from when he returned from visiting you over summer break that I figured out where you were. I had to go to great lengths to be close to you, I had waited so long to have you in my life again, and then I did something foolish like what happened in the pool. It was uncalled for and inappropriate. You must know that I did not mean to hurt your feelings or lead you down a path we cannot go-"

I pressed my finger against his lips. "No. Paths are meant to go down, and ours is not meant to go down alone," I promised him, not entirely sure where the words or sudden courage came from.

Viggo smiled.

"I need you to use your words, speak them aloud, because I am unbelievably confused right now, and only you can answer any of the questions biting my tongue," I reminded him.

He signed. "That is fair," he agreed, causing me to smile.

"You've loved me since the moment you first saw me, which was a few weeks ago, but you've searched for me for a long time. That math isn't adding up."

"Things are not as they seem," Viggo said. "We met long ago." He handed me the picture in his hand.

It was a picture of me and Zane as kids, we were maybe five or six years old was all, with two other kids that looked to be around our ages. All of us were sitting on a dock over turquoise water. I had one arm thrown over Zane's shoulders and the other was over the shoulders of a chubby, pale boy with shoulder-length black hair, full lips pulled into a gap-tooth smile, dimples in his round cheeks, and vibrant green eyes.

"I don't remember this..." my words trailed off as a stabbing behind my eyes flared, then I remembered. "It was Argentina, right?"

"It was. You remember?" he asked, surprised.

I looked at the picture, my fingers caressing over the pale face of the boy next to me.

"That vacation we had gone with another familywhile Father had to see to business for the Unified House that presented inSouth America," I said, struggling to remember. "Zannie and I were so happy tobe around the other kids, we were elated and beyond excited, counting down thedays even... It was something we looked forward to..." I winched. "Why don't Iremember?!" I demanded, tears flooding my eyes. "Why can I not remember you?!"I demanded before crying out as the searing behind my eyes intensified tounimaginable pain that caused me to fall forward, off of the bed.