Page 15 of Dark Rover’s Luck (The Children Of The Gods #95)

15

FENELLA

F enella glanced around the café, noting that most of the patrons had left, and the window at the serve-out counter was closed.

"Soon we will be the last ones here," she said.

Din looked up as if surprised. "So it would seem."

He'd been so focused on her the entire time that it was almost uncomfortable. She'd never had anyone look at her and listen to her so intently. Din was treating every word that left her mouth as if it were gospel. It made her self-conscious, made her think twice before saying anything, and then made her rethink what she'd just said.

It was flattering, but it was also unnerving.

Fenella wasn't used to such intense scrutiny, and she didn't like it.

Was that what other women craved? Was that what they meant by wanting to be seen?

Fenella wasn't sure she could tolerate such intensity for long. Ironically, she would have preferred Max's flippant attitude because then she could have been just as flippant back, and she wouldn't have to allow any emotion to penetrate deeper than the surface.

"Would you like to go on a walk?" she suggested. "We could explore the village together."

Perhaps shifting some of his focus to the sights would ease the burden he was placing on her.

"Of course." He rose to his feet and collected their cups and plates. "I'll just drop these at the bin."

She watched him walk over to where the café staff had left a bin for dirty dishes, admiring his taut backside and fluid walk.

His students must be salivating over him, and she could just imagine how many he had bedded. Now that she knew that voracious sexual appetite was part of what it meant to be immortal, she realized that Max hadn't been the anomaly she'd thought he was back when they had been together.

It also explained her promiscuity during her travels, even when such behavior had endangered her. That incessant drive had been killed by that Doomer, though, and nowadays the only way she could even think about sex was when it didn't apply to her.

He'd killed that part of her, and she hadn't even properly mourned its loss yet.

Well, truth be told, she hoped for a miraculous healing and for her soul to regenerate and return to what it had been before the last shard of faith in humanity had been beaten out of her.

"Ready?" Din appeared at her side, offering his hand to help her up.

"Yes." She forced a smile and took his hand.

The electrical current she'd hoped for didn't happen, but at least she hadn't felt revulsion either, so it was a step in the right direction.

He let go of her hand as soon as she was up. Standing beside him in her flip-flops, she realized how tall he was. She felt tiny in comparison, and that only added to her feelings of awkwardness.

"I've been to the village a couple of times before," Din said. "But I don't remember where everything is, so we might have to ask for directions on the way."

She waved a dismissive hand. "Or we might just make up designations for what we see on the way."

He frowned, looking confused by her suggestion. "Give me an example."

She pointed at the café. "This could be the outdoor dining hall where meals are served for the entire clan throughout the day." Next, she pointed at the office building. "This could be the school, and the clinic could be the art center."

He looked unsure about the game she suggested, but he nodded nonetheless, and Fenella smirked under her breath.

Men were so easily manipulated, especially during the stage of impressing a woman. After, when they were secure in having captured her affections, they were usually much less accommodating.

Walking beside Din along a winding gravel path, Fenella was conscious of the careful distance he maintained between them—close enough for conversation, but not so close that they might accidentally brush against each other. He was treating her like a skittish colt, which was understandable given what she'd been through, but he was overdoing it.

She wouldn't have minded him holding her hand.

"This path leads to the meditation garden." Din gestured ahead where the trail curved around a stand of trees. "Not many people use it, which makes it perfect if you need a quiet moment to yourself."

She wasn't sure if this was part of their game or if the meditation garden was for real, and the lone bench sitting under the tree didn't help solve the puzzle.

"Do you often need quiet moments to yourself?" she asked.

Din gave a small, self-deprecating smile. "Certainly. Especially at the university. Sometimes I lock the door to my office and pretend that I'm not there."

She grimaced. "I can imagine how hard it must be for a young-looking professor like you to fend off all the female attention to stay out of trouble."

He nodded, not even trying to refute her statement. "I think it became a sport for them." He chuckled. "Who can seduce the professor, that sort of thing."

She arched a brow. "And? What's their success rate?"

"Zero as far as my students go. It's against the rules, and I make it very clear that I follow them and don't engage with my students."

"What about students from other departments?"

Why was she pushing the issue? It was none of her business, and she had been far from celibate even before her transition.

Din smiled. "There are no explicit rules about that."

They reached a fence, which she hadn't seen anywhere else in the village, and the houses on its other side were a lot different from the ones on their side.

"What's over there?" she asked.

"That's Kalugal's part of the village. He paid for the construction, but the clan provided the land."

Fenella tensed. The former Doomer's name had come up several times since her arrival in the village, often spoken with respect and even admiration, but she still couldn't reconcile that with what she knew about the Brotherhood.

"You don't approve of him," Din observed.

"I don't know him," Fenella hedged, trailing her fingers over the fence. "Everyone speaks of him respectfully, even fondly, and he was invited to join this community, but given what his kind did to me, you can't blame me for being disturbed by him and his men being here. I look at every male I see, and I wonder if he's a clan member or a former Doomer." She took a deep breath. "I'm scared, and it's not easy for me to admit. It's like having been bitten by a rabid dog and then being afraid of all dogs that look like it even if they are the kindest and sweetest creatures."

"That's completely understandable, and for what it's worth, I initially shared your reservations, but I trust Kian. If he decides that Kalugal and his men are trustworthy, then I accept his judgment. Also, the Clan Mother compelled everyone in our community to cooperate and never strike against each other, so you really have nothing to fear."

"What about the things they did before joining the clan? If they raped, slaughtered, and pillaged, is all of that just going to be forgiven because they'd turned over a new leaf?"

He hesitated before answering. "I don't think that they did any of those things. Kalugal was always different, and he chose the right kind of men for his platoon, freeing them from Navuh's brainwashing and keeping them assigned to places where they were just regular soldiers."

Fenella snorted. "Right. Nice story. Do you have proof of their so-called innocence?"

"I don't," he admitted.

She threw her hands up in the air. "Why are good people always so bloody gullible? You think that because you are good and would never do such horrible things, everyone else, with the exception of a few monsters, is motivated by the same principles? That's simply not true. There are entire cultures that are built on evil underpinnings, and the few good people are the exception."

Din smiled as if she'd just proven his point. "Then you admit that there are exceptions, and even an evil society like the Brotherhood can have a few good people who are worth saving."

He got her there, but she was not willing to concede defeat yet. "Sometimes there are none to be found. Take Sodom and Gomorrah as an example. That story is told just to warn naive people like you that some places are so rotten that they are beyond redemption."

He stopped walking and turned to face her. "I understand your anger and frustration. What was done to you was unforgivable. If I ever get my hands on the one who hurt you?—"

"You'll what?" Fenella challenged. "Kill him? He's already in your clan's dungeon, being pressed for information."

His eyes blazed with inner light. "I hope they take their time with him, and when they are done, I'll ask Kian's permission to finish him off."

The vehemence in his voice gave her perverse satisfaction. It seemed he understood the depth of what had been done to her, and she appreciated that he didn't try to minimize it or suggest she should forget it and move on.

"That's nice of you, but you'll have to take a ticket and stand in line. Max said the same thing. He wants revenge for what the monster did to Kyra."

Din bared a pair of impressive fangs. "I'm willing to share."

Finally, he was showing his true colors, the kind that Fenella could feel good about. She didn't like the reserved professor. She liked the warrior hiding under the thin veneer of civility.

"That's very gallant of you." She threaded her arm through his, surprising him. "Shall we continue?"

Looking down to where her arm rested on his, he nodded. "There's a viewpoint a few minutes' walk from here. If it's not taken, we could sit on the bench and watch the sunset."

"Sounds lovely."

The viewpoint was beautiful, even though it was just a patch of grass with a bench, a few trees that provided shade, and several shrubs. What made it special was the unobstructed view of the ocean in the distance.

"I'm surprised that no one claimed this spot," she said as she sat down. "Now that I know it's here, I will try to make it every day at this time to see the sunset."

He looked at her with that intensely focused look again. "I will join you for as long as I'm here."

"Oh, that's right. You need to get back to the university. How long is your vacation?"

"I took two weeks off, claiming a family emergency, but I can always call to say that the emergency continues, and I can't return yet. It's not like I depend on that job for a living. It's just something I enjoy doing."

That was a concept she couldn't wrap her head around. Everything she'd done during her adult life had been about survival, about earning enough to pay for food and a roof over her head. It would be nice not to have to worry about mundane things like that. It would also be boring. No wonder that Din chose to keep himself busy doing something he liked.

"Tell me about your work," Fenella said. "Is there more to it than having easy access to a horde of beautiful young girls?"

A smile lit Din's face, transforming his serious features. "My young students are a nice perk, but that's not what drew me to archeology. There's nothing quite like unearthing something that hasn't been touched by human hands in thousands of years and then trying to piece together the information that can be deduced from it. I see it as a connection across time, and for an old immortal like me, it's especially significant because so much of our past is guesswork."

"With how old you are, you've lived through so much of human history. You must know things no one else knows." She leaned closer to him. "We all know that what's written in the history books cannot be trusted. So much of the information has gone through the sieve of the writers' prism. None of it is objective."

He nodded. "My life might seem long to you, but I've witnessed a mere sliver of human history firsthand." He shifted on the bench, inching closer to her. "Last year, I led a dig in northern Turkey, and we uncovered a series of clay tablets with a writing system no one's been able to decipher yet. Pre-dates Linear A by at least a thousand years." His eyes had taken on that distant look people get when talking about something they're passionate about. "There are entire civilizations, entire languages that have been lost to time. Sometimes I think about all the stories that will never be told, all the knowledge that's simply gone."

"That's depressing," Fenella said.

Din chuckled. "I suppose it is. But it also makes the discoveries all the more precious."

The breeze ruffled his dark hair, and Fenella had a sudden, inexplicable urge to smooth it back into place. She clasped her hands in her lap instead.

"What about you?" Din asked. "You said you spent time in Greece. Where else did your travels take you?"

Fenella hesitated, sorting through which parts of her nomadic half-century she was willing to share. There were dark chapters she preferred to keep to herself—desperate times when she'd done things she wasn't proud of to survive.

"I moved around a lot," she said finally. "Europe mostly, though I spent a few years in Southeast Asia. Bangkok, then Cambodia for a while. Morocco for almost two years. I waited tables, served drinks in bars, cleaned hotel rooms—whatever would pay cash with no questions asked. And I played poker to supplement my income, but I had to be careful with that. A girl alone winning games is perceived as an easy target."

"That must have been difficult," Din said softly.

Fenella shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. "I adapted. The hardest part was never staying long enough to form attachments, but I got used to that as well. Though perhaps that was for the best. Attachments complicate things." She put a hand over her chest. "It's nice to have calmness here when it's quiet and there is no turbulence. That's practically impossible when there are other people in my life to complicate matters."

Din studied her face for a moment. "I know what you mean, but what's the point of living forever without feeling anything in here?" He touched his chest. "It's an empty kind of life. Ask me how I know?"

She tilted her head. "Are you lonely, Din?"

"Yes, and like you, it's by choice. But I often reflect on my decisions and wonder about their validity. Avoidance is not a recipe for happiness, and even though relationships are messy and sometimes painful, it's better to experience them than not."

Fenella looked away, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. "There was a monastery in Tibet," she said, deliberately changing the subject. "I stayed there for almost six months, high in the mountains where the air was so thin it made my lungs ache. The monks took me in, no questions asked." She smiled faintly at the memory. "Talk about choosing avoidance. I was the calmest I've ever been but also bored out of my mind."

He chuckled. "I can't picture you in a monastery."

"I would have stayed longer despite the boredom, but I couldn't stay anywhere for long. It's not just the non-aging that gives us away. It's the little things like hearing or seeing something that shouldn't be possible for a human or healing too fast from scrapes and bruises. We just can't live with humans without risking exposure."

"So, you ran again," Din said.

"It's what I do or rather did. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, now that I'm here."

"Whatever you want," Din said. "That's the gift of this place—the freedom to choose a path without constantly looking over your shoulder."