Chapter 20

Surprise and delight filled Anya the more she talked with Trajan. She might not fully remember him, but she knew she liked him.

"So how did you know Eikki?" Anya asked, washing her bowl and cup.

Trajan huffed out a breath. "It"s a long, complicated story."

Anaya hazarded a guess by his suddenly guarded tone. "One that you aren"t going to tell me?" She turned and jumped as she almost crashed into him. He was standing only inches from her, his autumn scent washing over her. Something buried deep in her psyche told her that it was comforting because she was safe when she was with him.

Stupid memory, why can"t you come back enough for me to know why I should believe that.

Trajan moved past her to wash up his wine glass. "I"ll tell you, but not tonight. It"s not only my story to tell, and I don"t want to keep you up later than necessary."

"You said you were going to prove we"ve met before," Anya said, knowing that there was no way she was going to be able to sleep just yet. The bed in her room had a powerful allure after days of sleeping on the ground, but not as powerful as the man in front of her. She had been dreaming about him all week, and her curiosity wasn"t going to be satisfied until she knew why.

"I"m a man of my word," Trajan said, his smile wide enough to make heat curl unexpectedly in her stomach. "Follow me, and I"ll show you."

Trajan led the way through the house before opening the door to a large sitting area. Anya bit back a gasp of delight. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a fire burned in the large stone fireplace. There were heavy rugs on the floor, and paintings hung on any wall space the bookshelves didn"t occupy. It was a real private library, and she had never seen anything like it outside of movies.

"Wow, this is beautiful," she said. She loved books and rarely had the time to read them in the past months as she ran the farm.

"Ah, but the real treasure is above the fireplace," Trajan said and pointed at a picture.

Anya walked towards the fire to get a closer look. Hanging in a frame was a crayon drawing obviously done by a very young child. The figure on the left had messy brown hair and held hands with the figure on the right with yellow hair and green eyes.

"Did your kid draw this?" Anya asked. She hadn"t picked him as the father type, but she had been wrong before.

Trajan shook his head, a slow half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You drew it for me one day when I came to visit. This is proof that we have met."

"And that"s why I"ve been dreaming about you. After Tuoni zapped me, I swear I dreamed of you every single night," Anya replied and then looked back at the picture, trying to find the lost memory of drawing it. "I was quite a terrible artist, wasn"t I? I"m surprised you still have it."

"When a fearless mortal girl draws you a picture, you don"t throw it out."

"Fearless? Hardly. I was always afraid when I was a child."

Trajan folded his arms. "Not of me. It was quite a surprise to have a little girl want to be my best friend after I first met her and refuse to let my hand go."

Anya cringed in mortification. "I did? That doesn"t sound like me. I was afraid of the things in the darkness more than people, so why would I be afraid of you?"

Trajan hesitated for a few moments, weighing up his reply. "Because I am the thing in the darkness. Every mortal fears my kind. It"s deeply ingrained in them, except for you. You held my hand that day, not knowing you were touching a monster."

Anya stared at the man sitting in front of her, looking like he belonged in a GQ shoot and not in a house in Skazki. "So what kind of monster are you then? I mean, I"ve met a death deity, an immortal witch, a firebird prince. Even I"m meant to have some kind of hidden magic, so we can all be monsters together."

"You aren"t a monster, Anya. If you were, Yvan would have left you to Vasilli."

"Why don"t you stop dodging the question and just tell me?"

"Because he is a demon," said a deep voice from the doorway.

Anya turned in surprise as a giant wolf stalked into the room. It had shiny black fur, smelled like rain…and had just spoken.