Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (21 page)

Farley sidestepped out from behind Daniel, surveying the still bodies of the Quorum members surrounding them. It didn’t even look like they were breathing. “No objections here,” she said, “I’m all for living.”

“Good. This messenger has been assigned to be your protector.” Agatha raised her arm and Kayden slipped silently to her side, looking extraordinarily sober. His tattoo, a few sweeping black lines of which were visible at the base of his neck, pulsed out a golden light. Daniel stepped forward.

“
I
am Farley’s protector.”

The cowled hood of Agatha’s robe turned; it looked more than freaky as it paused in his direction. “
You
are no longer Farley Hope’s protector.
You
are an oath-breaker. The Talisman is trapped inside you for the time being. However, this is only because the Reaver Aldan is dead. We understand that you fulfilled your promise to the Quorum by surrendering the power he gave you, but please know… the arrangement where you retain guardianship of the talisman is by no means a happy one in the Quorum’s eyes.”

A queasy feeling churned through Farley as she watched Daniel’s jaw clench and unclench. He looked like he was about to start arguing, which was probably a hideous idea. Agatha continued talking, ignoring the hard expression on his face.

“You are compromised when it comes to Farley because of feelings you swore would not be allowed to flourish. Therefore, you are not fit to be her protector. You are not able to distance yourself from the situation at hand, and you cannot follow orders. Our messenger will do both of those things this time. He knows the consequences if he does not.”

Kayden studied his hands behind Agatha’s back, picking at his fingernails. He looked wound taut, like one small nudge would cause him to explode. Daniel ground his teeth together, piercing Agatha with livid eyes.

“I will
not
leave her side.”

“As you wish. But you will defer to our messenger in all matters related to her safety, and you will do so willingly. We will not be moved in this matter.”

“Fine.” He spat the word out hard, flashing a barely concealed look of fury towards Kayden. The blond boy shifted awkwardly, which was strange. This was the perfect, most irritating way to get one over on Daniel, and yet he looked truly miserable about it. He glanced at Daniel, giving him a blank look, and shrugged.

This wasn’t how this meeting was supposed to go. Agatha was supposed to be overjoyed to see them; she was supposed to wrap her arms around them and squeeze the living daylights out of them. Instead, this stranger was telling them the only reason Farley was being allowed to live was because Daniel didn’t have the ability to take her soul from her. And he wasn’t permitted to take care of her anymore because his emotions made him a liability. A stone-heavy weight dragged down inside Farley’s chest, making it almost impossible to stand. Agatha turned away, making her way back towards the outer circle formed by the other Quorum members. It appeared as though they had been dismissed.

“Wait a minute!” Farley let go of Daniel’s hand and staggered forward in the loose snow before he could stop her. “Don’t I get a say in who protects-” She reached out and grabbed hold of Agatha’s arm, only to stop dead in her tracks.

A rushing sense of vertigo and a blinding pain pulsed through her body. A lurching, tilting sensation. A rattling slam. She opened her eyes, wondering why she was seeing stars, when Daniel appeared in her field of vision. He crouched over her, running his hands over her body in a panic. His mouth moved rapidly but there was no sound, just the look of fear in his eyes and the stars over his head. They really were stars. She was on her back. Pain dragged its claws through her again, tightening steel fingers around her bones.

“Farley! Farley!”

She looked up at him, frowning. A high-pitched tone burst through her head, trebling her pain. “What… what just happened?”

He pulled her up from the snow and into his arms, wrapping them tight around her body. “You
can’t
touch her, Farley. You can’t ever touch her.”

The confusion slowly fell away. Farley looked over Daniel’s shoulder and gasped, realizing she was fifty feet away from where she’d stood a second earlier. Agatha’s cowl had fallen down, and for the first time Farley saw her; a cold, bitter look was carved into her face as she stared across the clearing, her eyes no longer a warm brown but an impossibly dark black. She’d always looked young with the freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and her long chestnut hair tied back in a braid. Now the freckles were hardly visible, and her hair was drawn back into a severe knot. She looked older. Harsh.

“Know your place, child,” she shouted across the clearing, her voice louder than when she’d been shrouded in her hood. “And
you
know
yours
,” she told Daniel. In a heartbeat, the Quorum members disappeared, Agatha included, leaving the hunched over figure of Kayden standing alone in the center of the clearing.

Farley sucked in a painful breath, fighting back the tears in her eyes. She’d known it was going to be different. She’d known Agatha wouldn’t be the same- that her priorities
had changed. But the last thing she had expected, the very last thing, was that Agatha would be unrecognizable to her. That she would be a stone cold bitch.

If the earth was a room and that room was on fire, this sky was its ceiling, obscured by the rolling billows of bitter black smoke that rose up, choking out the light. The rain had come out of nowhere, torrential and angry, making the tarmac look like it was boiling right off the ground. Daniel steered the Viper down the highway, his mood as dark as the day. Farley knew driving was the only thing that could clear his head, and by some silent mutual agreement they’d both slipped into the car and abandoned the mountain.

For the past hour, the only sound to break the silence was the juddering rubbery noise of the windshield wipers going about their work. From synapse and nerve ending to muscle and bone, every part of Farley hurt. Her heart most of all. She stared out of the window, lost in the rivers pouring down the glass. A small part of her tried to reason its way out of this dead feeling inside- that Agatha was alive and safe and that was enough. She supposed it
was
enough, but it was a dismal kind of felicity and she couldn’t work her way past it. Agatha wasn’t going to be around for them; she wasn’t going to be a part of their lives anymore. At least not in the way she had been before. That knowledge was devastating enough, but the weight of it crushed Farley for other reasons. With her mother missing, Agatha had stepped in to fill that role, and now that she wasn’t around to fulfill it, everything Farley had been avoiding dealing with rose up like a tsunami, ready to obliterate her into nothing.

Her mother was
dead
; Aldan was
dead
; her brother was an Immortal; she hadn’t finished school; Tess had been dragged into this nightmare; her boyfriend was going to be trapped inside the body of a nineteen-year-old for the rest of time; Agatha wasn’t coming back to them.
Ever.
And then, of course, there was Simeon.

Farley had no idea what the early stages of a nervous breakdown felt like, but this- feeling like she was scrabbling to keep hold of her sanity, only to have it rush through her fingers- had to be close. She closed her eyes against the foreboding skyline out the window, clenching her fists until she felt her nails pierce the skin. Physical pain was easier to handle than the emotional turmoil inside her head. Daniel’s hand fell over hers.

“What are you thinking?” he breathed.

“Just that I hate my life.”

“Gee.
Thanks.
”

He was smiling half-heartedly when she turned and looked at him, an apology written on her face. “I’m sorry. That sounded terrible. I hate
most
of my life. I love the bit where I get to be with you.”

Daniel pulled her clenched fist up to his lips, pressing them against the back of it. “This isn’t going to be forever,” he whispered.

But it felt like it was. She gave him a sad smile. “What are we going to do when this is all over?”

“What would you like to do?”

The question threw her. She’d asked him because she just couldn’t see past the mess their lives were in, couldn’t see past the horror of always being afraid for one reason or another. The inability to believe that anything good would ever happen again just left her with hope, and that wasn’t something she had in spades.

“I guess I’d like to finish school.”

He nodded. “I can get on board with that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I told Aggie I wouldn’t leave your side. I meant it. If you go back to school, I’ll be coming with you.”

A sharp laugh erupted out of her mouth. Daniel gave her a wounded look. “And what’s so funny about that?”

“Only everything. You can’t have gone to school for, like, a hundred and fifty years.”

“Actually, I never went to school.”

“W-o-w.” She enunciated every letter of the word, stretching it so that it had three syllables. “You’re gonna get eaten alive.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’ll have you know I studied the equivalent of eight complete degree programs with Aldan. And I’ve done a lot of independent study, too. I’m freakishly smart.”

His hubris was all bluster, but she knew there was truth in it. “I know you are, baby. I just meant if you haven’t ever been to school, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. High school’s like trial by fire. It
has
to be based on one of the seven levels of hell.”

“Well, I’ve managed to put up with you and yours. That has to have prepared me some of the way. I’m sure you’ll protect me for the rest. And as for hell, I think there really is only one level.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He nodded wisely.

“And what do you think it’s like?”

“Probably has something to do with hot pokers and non-stop country music.”

“Country music? Yech.”

“Exactly.” He stared out at the world being washed
clean while the rain hammered on the roof of the car like gunfire. “I will come with you, though,” he said quietly. “Anywhere.”

Farley felt like a balloon was being inflated inside her chest. She wanted more than anything for it to burst; the pressure was just too much. “Daniel?” she whispered. His brow wrinkled in response. “When Aldan gave you his power, you were a boy, right?”

“Physically, you mean? Yeah, why?”

She chewed on her lip. “I was just wondering… you grew when you received his power but then you stopped. Why do you think that is?”

He shrugged his shoulders but gave her a cautious look. “We don’t know. Aldan thought it had something to do with being in my prime. The talisman brought me to adulthood so I could use it properly. If I’d remained a child, I wouldn’t have been able to handle the power.”

Farley nodded. “Do you think you’ll ever… do you think…” She exhaled forcefully. Why was this so hard? It was a simple question. She should be able to ask him a simple question without tripping over her words.

“Do I think I’ll ever grow again?” Daniel whispered. “Do I think I’ll ever age?”

Farley looked at him, feeling hot tears prick at her eyes. She didn’t need to tell him he’d guessed her question correctly. The worry strewn across her face probably said enough.

“I don’t know. It’s been over a hundred years. I’ve been like this the whole time.”

She screwed her eyes shut, determined not to cry. “Then what are we going to do?”
What are we going to do about the fact that I’m going to age and you aren’t? What are we going to do about me looking ancient one day and you looking eighteen? When I die and you have to live on until the sun implodes and the world’s foundations crumble into dust.

None of it needed saying.

Daniel sucked in a sharp breath and spun the steering wheel into a hard right, aquaplaning on the sheet of water that flowed across the road. The Viper’s engine ticked when he turned it off but the roar of the rain quickly swallowed the sound. He ran his fingernail into the fabric of his jeans, dragging it distractedly across the rough surface. After a while, he said, “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

Farley sighed. “The time’s come. The time’s here.” It was stupid to delay this conversation. Of course he could put it off until tomorrow, but there were only a finite number of tomorrows. They would quickly turn into years, and those years would turn into decades in the blink of an eye. It really would be a blink of an eye for him, too.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” he breathed.

“If you dare suggest that we enjoy our time together while we can, I’m getting out of this car right now.”