Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [15]
Words could not describe what he had felt, what he had become for those few breathtaking moments.
Caelan had shared with Elandra, becoming one with her. Before tonight he had admired her from afar. His loins had ached with simple infatuation. But she had been forbidden and unattainable. Now, he glanced up at her, unable to see her, yet aware of her like the steady pulse of his own heartbeat. She had given him the beauty of her soul and received his. On some level he felt as though they had walked the road of life together in some other time and place. He felt as though he had known her forever—their memories, laughter, and passion bound together through the endless threads of time. The very concept of it sent tremors through him, for he now understood what it meant to love another more than himself, what it meant to put another first.
Again he glanced at her, and his heart swelled with the words he could not utter. No matter what they had shared in a moment of magic, that had been another world. Reality was this world, the here and now. Elandra still belonged to the emperor.
Frustration sawed through him. Hadn’t he fought in her behalf? Hadn’t he saved her when her husband abandoned her? At this very moment, where was Kostimon? Was he here, by his wife’s side? No, there was only Caelan, faithful Caelan, to watch over her and protect her. Did that not make his claim on her more valid than Kostimon’s?
Caelan gritted his teeth to hold back the temptations that suddenly swept over him. Perspiration popped out across his forehead. He was flooded with heat, with the conviction that he was going mad. His warrior’s blood pumped with a fury that urged him toward the madness. For years his only passions had been hatred and the joy of combat—savage, destructive forces that burned his heart. He had never imagined that he could also burn with love for a woman.
Had she not pleaded with him to come with her? Had she not shown her preference?
She was his. She had always been his.
A stumble tilted Caelan off balance, and his shoulder crashed into the wall. The jolt snapped him back from the edge.
Blinking, he rubbed his face and drew in several quick breaths, amazed at himself.
Was he losing his mind? To be feeling like this, to be thinking like this ... it was treason. It was forbidden. She was not his woman. She was the empress, not some village maiden he could throw over his shoulder and carry off like booty.
She trusted him, and he could not violate that by abducting her. She depended on him, and he could not respond to that with dishonor. Never mind what he wanted. Never mind if he burned as though he had been torched. Never mind that all the forces of a storm whirled and raged inside him, threatening to shatter honor, rules, and what was right.
To love her meant he could not harm her. He could not tempt her into dishonor. He could not even ask her to choose.
Besides, he had shared also with the emperor, becoming one with him. Even now he could still taste the darkness within Kostimon, as well as the incredible force of will that drove the man. Kostimon’s thirst for power, the vigor of his ambition, his lust for life and all that it offered still hummed in Caelan with a resonance that could not be entirely silenced. Caelan realized that he too possessed his own dark side: the failures in his past, his joy of combat and killing, the hatred for old enemies, and an unrequited desire for revenge. Even before his life had changed, before the Thyzarene raiders had destroyed his home and killed his father, before he abandoned Lea to die ... back when life was still good and still full of all possibility, he had craved weapons, had longed to be a soldier simply because he wanted to fight. It had always been a thread of darkness in his blood, calling him. And had the Thyzarenes not come and enslaved him, he would have still used a sword to carve his path of life.
The empire itself had