Page 51 of Enchantra (Wicked Games #2)

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TRUTH

Genevieve dashed from her room and bounded down the stairs.

Rowin. Rowin. Rowin.

Her footsteps must have been rather loud, because Salem winked into sight as she was hauling on her coat in the foyer.

“What the fuck are you doing, Vivi?” he demanded. “It’s midnight.”

“Rowin,” she rushed out. “Rowin. My memories. Enchantra. Knox. Oh fuck.”

“ What? ” Salem questioned as she froze.

“The cure , Salem. The cure! I have to tell Rowin. I have to tell Grave. Knox took the memory of it from me, but the King’s magic must have returned it,” she mumbled to herself.

Salem was watching her like she’d gone mad. And maybe she had.

Then, as she looked back at his concerned viridian gaze, something else rushed to the front of her mind. A name she used to call him.

Genevieve shook off the realization. That was a conversation for them to have another time.

“Vivi? Salem?” Ophelia’s groggy voice said as she descended from the top of the stairs.

“Go back to bed, angel,” Salem said gently. “Your sister is just having some sort of epiphany. I’ll handle it.”

“Salem,” Genevieve said carefully. “I have to go. Please .”

Salem gave a sigh. “You better not come home married to another stranger or half dead this time.”

Genevieve plunged into the balmy night.

By the time she saw the glow of the gas lamps lining the Riverwalk, she was a disheveled, sore mess. She wasn’t sure what on earth she was thinking.

“This is absurd,” she whispered to herself as she tried to catch her breath, chest heaving from her trek. “Why on earth would he be here?”

She looked around. There wasn’t a single soul in sight.

“I should go back,” she told herself. “This is?—”

Her words cut off as a figure suddenly poured out of the shadows in a cloud of dark smoke.

“Hello, trouble.”

Genevieve stopped dead in her tracks as she met his amber eyes. A sob tore from her throat.

The moment Rowin spotted recognition on her face, he lunged forward, wrapping her up in his arms so tightly she could barely breathe.

“You came back to me,” he said, voice gruff. “When I saw you a couple weeks ago and you didn’t put on the ring, I thought?—”

“It just took some time,” she whispered to him, tears pricking in her eyes. “It just took time. But I remember. I remember. Rowin .”

He pulled back, just enough to see her face, the tears that were now flowing down her cheeks. “I was stuck in that house, in that fucking game, for centuries, and yet these past couple of months have felt like the longest of my life.”

He kissed her then. Desperately. Plunging a hand into her hair as he showed her exactly how much he had missed her. When he pulled away, she could barely stand upright on her own.

“How long have you been waiting here?” she wondered.

“Since the day we brought you home,” he told her. “Lingering in the shadows until you found me.”

“How could you? How could you trade your immortality for me?” she whispered. “What were you thinking?”

He reared back in shock. “You saw that?”

“I saw everything ,” she told him. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you, that day in the Quarter. I hate that you must have been…”

“Devastated,” he admitted. “Ophelia warned me that you still didn’t remember. But even that didn’t prepare me for the way you looked at me and there was just…nothing.”

“That’s not true,” she swore. “Even without any of my memories, I felt drawn to you. We could be enemies, or husband and wife, or just fucking, but never nothing, Rowington Silver.”

His smile was brilliant. “Before you, I was going to spend my eternity alone, in the darkest parts of Hell. I’d much rather spend a single lifetime in your light. Or, at least, for however long you’ll have me.” Then he leaned his forehead against hers. “I want you to know, I really would have waited for you, right here, forever if that’s what it would have taken. I would have stood in this spot until I could no longer distinguish my own soul from the shadows. Until your light came back to me.”

She smiled. “I know.” Truth. “Does that mean…does that mean there are strings now?”

“As many as you want, Mrs. Silver. And tie them down as tight as you’d like,” he told her.

She gave him a devious smirk. “I was sort of hoping the tying down might be the other way around…”

“Oh, trouble, we’re going to have a lot of fun.”