Shadowed Ground by Vicki Keire Page A

easily, as naturally, as water rolls downhill. As easily as breathing. Only he wasn’t breathing. He was drowning. “Um.” He had to dig to find his voice. “Well.” Flowers and heat, soft curves and expectant eyes. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was closing, his vision graying. Was this what Cass warned against, reacting to her nearness, her body against his?
    She needs you. You can’t do this.
    He sat up so fast the world was a hurricane with him at the eye.
    “Eliot?” He felt her reaching for him, felt her alarm and hurt through the same bond she asked about. The bond he was perilously close to breaking. “Are you all right?” Her voice climbed as it did right before she got really upset. He forestalled her with the flat of his palm.
    “A moment,” he said, getting his breath back. He moved back an arm’s length. He would keep that between them. He must.
    But he could tell from her face, from her taut, angry, empty arms, that she didn’t understand. He would make her, then. It was what they both needed, to understand why this could never be.
    “First, they cut us. Here.” He indicated his palm with a vertical slash. He smiled. “You cried when they did that.”
    “But not you.” It was not a question, but he nodded anyway.
    “Then we held our palms together, and our parents wrapped them with a silver chain. Then I read from a big, dusty book. I don’t remember the words, only that you cried.”
    Emotions flashed across her face so fast he couldn’t identify them all. “Wow.” She gripped the bedspread. “I was what, six? How is that possible? How could we have even known that we were making promises that would last the rest of our lives?”
    “We were born to it.” He reached over and grabbed his own small red and yellow bag from the nightstand, twisting it and stretching the plastic.
    “Right. I’m only the heir of a non-existent kingdom and all that.” She made a face: half eye roll, half grimace. Sarcastic and embarrassed all at the same time. “But you? I mean, I know your uncle’s a Guardian, too, but what do you mean you were born to it?”
    There it was. The question he still didn’t want to answer. It was painful on so many levels. But he didn’t want to lie to her either, so he tried for part of the truth. “Guardians become quite close to their Wards. It’s impossible not to.” He rushed through the worst part. “Guardians and their Wards, they can’t… be anything more. Not …together. It’s against the law. Or it was, in Annwyn. But even worse, it would break the bond.” He found that he couldn’t look up from his plastic. He rushed on, his words filling the shocked silence. “They would stop being Guardian and Ward, and you… or your mother, for example, would be unprotected. Not that it happens, mind you,” he rambled, trying desperately to rein in the conversation before he made an even bigger idiot of himself. “We have families of our own, and more often than not, the heirs of Annwyn and the children of Guardians grow up together. It’s a natural fit, to bond together two children who are already close.”
    “Like us?” Chloe asked quietly. Wistfully, even.
    “You could say that,” he hedged, diplomatically. At her raised eyebrow, he broke down into soft laughter. “Ok, I thought you were a pain. You followed me around and got into trouble and I always got blamed for it. So I tried to keep you out of trouble to save myself.” He grinned. “I didn’t succeed, most of the time, but I guess our families decided it was a good enough fit.”
    “Not much different now, is it?” She smiled back.
    “Over the centuries, the same two or three families tended to produce Guardians and other protectors for the royal family. Like mine, the Grays. So in a way, it is something that’s in my blood.”
    “Your parents were Guardians?” she persisted.
    “Just one of them. My father was a scientist. My mother was the Guardian.”
    She nodded thoughtfully. “I