Frost Line Read online

  “No one has ever tested the limits of that restriction?” Caine asked.

  “Of course not.” Her heart did an unpleasant dance at the very idea. “Aeonia still stands.”

  “Things change,” he said.

  She turned to stare at him. Did he know something she didn’t? “How?” Less than two full days on Seven, and already she longed for that change. Since the Alexandria Deck had been rediscovered, would the Arcane be able to travel as they once had? Or would the Emperor destroy or imprison the deck so it could never be used again? She hadn’t possessed the ability to travel for more than two thousand years. She’d fed her need for knowledge by constantly losing herself in studies, but … it wasn’t the same.

  She shouldn’t crave it now; she shouldn’t feel as if she’d been robbed of an important aspect of her life when it had been taken away, but she did.

  “I have no idea,” Caine growled. “It was an observation. Things always change.”

  Neither did she have any idea. Perhaps the Emperor, or the Hierophant, or the High Priestess could come up with a solution. How long had it been since the Major Arcana had petitioned the One? How long had they been content to watch the lives they touched from afar? For far too long the Arcane had blindly accepted the rules that bound them. Was that a revolutionary thought? Was she breaking some unknown rule for even considering the idea?

  She looked back at the house, already second-guessing her decision to leave the Moon card there. The cards were too important. Perhaps they should—

  She pointed to a second-floor window. “Elijah’s room is there. We can teleport in, grab the card—”

  “No,” Caine interrupted sharply. “There are too many people in the house, and I can’t locate them all. I can’t take the chance that we’ll be seen.”

  “But—”

  He shook his head as he looked down at her. “You have your rules to abide by, I have mine. There’s too much activity here, and we can’t risk being seen. We can’t even stay here and watch for much longer. The police will be looking for Elijah, and these woods will be one of the first places they search.”

  “They won’t find him,” Lenna said softly. She felt some satisfaction that he was so safely far away. “How long will they search?”

  “For a long while. A missing child is a big concern.”

  “Of course.” She tried to imagine that Elijah was truly missing, maybe dead, maybe lost, maybe held captive, and her heart leapt.

  “We’ll come back tomorrow morning,” Caine said decisively. “We’ll retrieve the Moon card, and then we’ll concentrate on finding Uncle Bobby.”

  “What do we do until then?” Lenna asked. The idea of returning to their hotel suite and waiting out the night didn’t appeal to her.

  Thankfully, Caine had other ideas. “This might be your only chance to see the world, to experience it. What do you want to see?”

  Lenna thought of all the things she had seen when she’d connected with Caine, all the beauty, all the wonder of this world. She didn’t hesitate a single second with her answer. “I would like to attend a concert, preferably one featuring a pianist. I want to experience a thunderstorm, and I’d like to see the sun come up over the desert. Any desert. And mountains!” she added. “I want to stand atop a mountain.”

  A slow smile touched his lips. Her heart gave an unaccustomed leap. He didn’t smile often, and maybe he should. Or perhaps he shouldn’t, because the effect the smile had on her heart rate was too extreme, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her tight against him. “Piece of cake,” he said, and they were off.

  Tomorrow they’d continue trying to solve Elijah’s problem, they’d argue about who should safeguard the deck, and they’d disagree about how best to accomplish the tasks at hand. For tonight, though, Caine put all that aside to show Lenna the wonders of Seven. She had asked for very specific things, but what she hadn’t asked for, what he suspected she needed more than anything else, was to interact with the humans here.

  He teleported her to Paris for a concert, as she had asked. She was entranced by the young pianist, a prodigy who wasn’t much older than Elijah. Caine listened to the music, but instead of watching the musicians on the stage he watched her face. For someone who had lived such a long time, who possessed so much power, she was amazingly naive about some aspects of life. No, not naive—separate. Distanced.

  After the concert ended, he took her to a café where they drank rich coffee drinks and ate decadent pastries. They walked, rather than teleporting. That, too, was an experience for her. He suspected the food on Aeonia was perfection, but she was thrilled with her Parisian snack. Even perfection got old, when it was all you knew. As he had expected she might, Lenna spent much of her time in the café absently nibbling on the pastry while she watched the people, the chattering friends, the teenagers full of life, the lovers young and old. She drank it all in, her hunger for new experiences raw on her face.

  She deserved better than paradise.

  As soon as he had the thought he mentally laughed at himself, because what was better than paradise?

  Except the perfection of Aeonia would drive him crazy, and he knew it. He liked action, he liked being challenged, he liked overcoming obstacles and solving problems, getting his hands dirty, fighting, drinking, and relaxing with some fiercely hungry sex.

  The thought of sex made him restless, and he pulled her to her feet, took her to an alley where no one could see them, and whisked her to Australia for a fierce thunderstorm.

  They stood upon a stretch of land filled with sunflowers and watched the storm move in, and then he pulled her tightly to him and let the rain and wind rage around them. Lightning struck, thunder rolled. Lenna clung to him, shrieking a little when a bolt of lightning hit close enough to make the air feel as if it had exploded, but she wasn’t afraid; she didn’t know she should be. She laughed, then threw her head back and screamed, just because she could. There was no one there to hear her but him, and he had brought her to experience this very thing, the elemental power of nature.

  Rain soaked both of them; wind blew Lenna’s hair into a tangle. The wonder on her face was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

  When that was done, he took her to a desert in North Africa to watch the sun rise. She wasn’t bothered by the wet clothes she wore, and neither was he, but in any case their clothing dried quickly. The sands turned orange as the sun rose, and silently she watched, entranced. She didn’t laugh and scream, as she had in the storm, but remained silent, as if to make a noise in this place would be somehow wrong.

  They traveled the world in a single night. They experienced daytime on one continent, dark of night on another, and then they teleported into the sun once more. They walked in the teeming crowds of large cities, and watched children play on suburban playgrounds. They saw farmers and businessmen, mothers and movie stars. In the blink of an eye, they could be anywhere, do anything. He took full advantage.

  Caine didn’t want to dwell on the hardships that existed here, that existed on every plane except Aeonia, and he didn’t want to distress her, but her experience wouldn’t be the same without it. They visited a village so poor every man, woman, and child was undernourished. They went to a hospital and walked a hallway crowded with the sick and dying.

  While she didn’t touch anyone as she had touched Elijah, he could tell when she imparted her strength and will to the humans who had need of it. It was as if a wave only he could see undulated from her hands to touch those around her. In these instances she was no longer Lenna, a woman he desired, but was Strength, of the Arcane. Yes, they were one and the same, but now he could separate them to some degree.

  As the night came to an end, he took her to the top of a mountain in Tennessee. It wasn’t the highest mountain in the world, not anywhere close, but it was an impressive sight. Before them mountains stretched as far as the eye could see, smoky and blue, undulating across the horizon. They sat