“Then I’ll stay until you tell me to go.”

She closed her eyes as if the words had hurt her, and he had to force himself to remain still and not reach out to comfort her, to touch her.

Touch her? I want to touch her?

He crossed his arms over his chest in a physical denial of the shocking thought.

“Earth,” he said, his voice sounding too loud in the silence that had fallen between them. She looked up at him then with a question in her eyes. “You called it before, when you tripped the red fledgling. You called it to open so that you could escape from the sunlight on the rooftop. You called it to close the tunnel behind me at the abbey. Can you not simply call it now and make your request of it?”

Her gentle blue eyes widened. “You’re right! Why am I makin’ it so hard? I’ve done it like a zillion times for other stuff. There’s no reason why I can’t do it for this.” She held her hands out, palms up. “Here, grab hold.”

It was too easy for him to unfold his arms and press his palms to hers. He looked down at their joined hands, and he suddenly realized that, except for Stevie Rae, he’d never touched a human for any reason except violence. Yet there he was, touching her again—gently—calmly.

Her skin felt good against his. She was warm. And soft. Her words came to him then, and what she was saying moved inside him, nesting there in a distant place that had never before been touched.

“Earth, I have a big favor to ask you. Rephaim here is special to me. He’s in pain, and he’s havin’ trouble gettin’ well. Earth, I’ve borrowed your strength before—to save myself—to save those I care about. This time I’m asking to borrow your strength to help Rephaim. It’s only right.” She paused and looked up at him. Their eyes met as she echoed the words he’d spoken to Darkness when he thought she’d been unable to hear him. “You see, he’s hurt because of me. Heal him. Please.”

The ground beneath them quivered. Rephaim was thinking it was strangely like the skin of a twitching animal when Stevie Rae gasped, and her body jerked. Rephaim started to pull away, wanting to stop whatever was happening to her, but she held tightly to his hands, saying “No! Don’t let go. It’s fine.”

Then heat radiated from her palms into his. For an instant it reminded him of the last time he’d called on what he believed to be the immortal power of his father’s blood, and Darkness had answered instead—pulsing through his body and healing his shattered arm and wing. But quickly Rephaim understood that there was an essential difference between being touched by Darkness and being touched by the earth. Where before the power had been raw and consuming, swelling him with energy and shooting through his body, now what filled him was like a summer’s wind beneath his wings. Its presence in his body was no less commanding than Darkness had been, but it was power tempered with compassion—its infilling was living and healthy and growing instead of cold and violent and consuming. It was balm to his overheated blood, soothing the pain that pulsed through his body. When the earth’s warmth reached his back—that raw, unhealed place where his great wings grew—the relief was so instantaneous that Rephaim closed his eyes, breathing a long sigh as the agony evaporated.

And, throughout the healing, the air around Rephaim was filled with the heady, comforting scent of cedar needles and the sweetness of summer grass.

“Think about sending the energy back into the earth.” Stevie Rae’s voice was gentle, but insistent. He started to open his eyes and let loose her hands, but again she held tight to him, saying, “No, keep your eyes shut. Just stay like you are, but imagine the power from the earth as a glowing green light that’s coming from the ground under me, up through my body and hands, to you. When you feel like it’s done its job, envision it pouring from your body back into the earth.”

Rephaim kept his eyes closed, but asked, “Why? Why let it leave me?”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “Because it’s not yours, silly. You can’t own this power. It belongs to the earth. You can only borrow it, and then send it back with a ‘thank you very much.’ ”

Rephaim almost told her that was ridiculous—that when you’ve been given power, you don’t let it go. You keep it and use it and own it. He almost said it, but he couldn’t. Those words seemed wrong while he was getting filled with earth energy.

So instead, he did what felt right. Rephaim imagined the energy that filled him as a glowing green shaft of light, and envisioned it pouring down his spine and back into the earth from which it had come. And as the rich warmth of earth drained from him, he spoke two words very softly, “Thank you.”

Then he was himself again. Sitting under a big cedar tree on damp, cold ground, holding Stevie Rae’s hands.

Rephaim opened his eyes.

“Better now?” she asked.

“Yes. Much better.” Rephaim opened his hands, and this time, she, too, pulled away.

“Really? I mean, I felt the earth and thought I was channeling it through me into you, and you seemed to be feelin’ it.” She cocked her head, studying him. “You do look better. There isn’t any pain in your eyes anymore.”

He stood up, eager to show her, and opened his arms, unfurling his massive wings as if he were flexing a muscle. “See! I can do this with no pain.”

She was sitting on the ground staring up at him, wide-eyed. The look on her face was so odd that he automatically lowered his arms and folded his wings against his back.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I—I’d forgotten that you flew to the park. Well, and from the park, too.” She made a sound that could have been a laugh had it not sounded so choked. “That’s stupid, isn’t? How could I have forgotten somethin’ like that?”

“I suppose you got used to seeing me broken,” he said, trying to understand why she suddenly seemed so withdrawn from him.

“What fixed your wing?”

“The earth,” he said.

“No, not now. It wasn’t broken when we came out here. The pain you were filled with didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Oh, no. I’ve been healed since last night. The pain was caused by the remnants of Darkness and what he did to my body.”

“So how did your wing and your arm get fixed last night?”

Rephaim didn’t want to answer her. As she stared at him with those wide, accusing eyes, he found himself wanting to lie—to tell her it had been a miracle wrought by the immortality in his blood. But he couldn’t lie to her. He wouldn’t lie to her.

“I called on powers that are mine to command through my father’s blood. I had to. I heard you scream my name.”

She blinked, and he saw realization flash through her gaze. “But the bull said you’d been filled with his power and not your daddy’s.”

Rephaim nodded. “I knew it was different. I didn’t know why. Nor did I understand I was getting power directly from Darkness himself.”

“So Darkness healed you.”

“Yes, and then the earth healed me from the wound Darkness left inside me.”

“Okay, well, good.” She stood abruptly and brushed off her jeans. “You’re better now, and I gotta go. Like I said, it’s tough for me to get away now that the House of Night is all freaked about a Raven Mocker bein’ in town.”

She started to walk quickly past him, and he reached out to grab her wrist.

Stevie Rae flinched away from him.

Rephaim’s hand dropped instantly to his side, and he took a step away from her.

They stared at each other.

“I gotta go,” she repeated.

“Will you return?”

“I have to! I promised!” She yelled the words at him, and he felt them as if she’d slapped him.

“I release you from your promise!” he yelled back at her, angry that this small female could cause such turmoil within him.

Her eyes were suspiciously bright when she said, “It’s not you I promised—so you can’t release me.” Then she swept past him, her head turned away so he couldn’t see her face.