Rogue Belador: Belador book 7 Read Online Free PDF Page B

my telling her that I don’t want to put Brina under pressure because I feel that will cause her to slide backwards.” He swallowed and stared down. “But Macha thinks Brina knows who I am.”
    “Brina does.”
    “Not in this realm.” He hated admitting this out loud. “Brina knows who I am as the man who comes here and talks to her each day. I tell her about her past, but she has yet to remember any of it on her own, or what I really mean to her.”
    “But in your dreams—”
    “—her memory is fading there, too,” Tzader finally admitted, the words twisting out of his gut. There was more to her deterioration than what played out on this realm, more than any of them had believed, and he had no idea how to combat it. He explained, “In fact, it’s getting worse in the dream world. Brina is seeing ... things. I don’t know if it’s hallucinating for a moment, visions or ...”
    “Or what?”
    “Or if Brina is losing touch with reality.” Dear goddess, that hurt to admit. He struggled for his next breath. She was slipping away from him, minute by minute.
    Lanna’s jaw dropped. “Why did you not tell me?”
    Because he’d been living in a fool’s paradise, enjoying the few times Brina still recognized him when they dream walked together.
    He hadn’t realized the significance of dream walking until Lanna explained that his meeting Brina in the dream realm was far more than his mind in control. He and Brina actually met in person during dreams. When they did, she remembered more while she was there.
    Or she had at first.
    Even those cherished moments of recognition were diminishing.
    She hadn’t recognized him last time until he’d caught her hand as she turned away. He clung to the optimism raised by that one touch like a man holding the last inch of a lifeline.
    He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t tell you because saying something out loud gives it life.” And I can’t face losing her , he finished silently. “If I take Brina to Macha right now, the goddess will know I’ve been misleading her for over a month.”
    “What will she do?”
    “Based on what Macha has said and done up until now, I have a sick feeling she’ll teleport me back to the human world and start parading men past Brina until one piques her interest.”
    “She must not do that to Brina. Or you,” Lanna conceded. “You have been loyal to Macha for many years. She should help you and Brina.”
    At twenty-eight, Tzader had been Macha’s North American Maistir for almost five years. He took over when his father died, but he’d been his father’s second-in-command from the moment he’d turned nineteen. Pretty much his entire adult life.
    That should count for something with Macha.
    Lanna chewed on her lower lip. “You have not told me what we are going to do now.”
    Tzader owed this young woman for all she’d done to protect Brina and be her friend, and for helping him keep Macha at bay with the spell that shielded their conversations. “You said there was one more thing I could try with Brina in the dream world.”
    Standing and animating her hands as she spoke, Lanna whispered, “I also said you could be harmed, maybe even die, if she did not remember you when you both came out of the dream. You might both lose your memories. I am not sure of outcome.” 
    “I’m out of options, Lanna. I won’t be tossed out of Treoir without a way back to protect Brina.”
    “She would not want you to risk so much.”
    “If the day comes that Brina’s memories all return, she would never forgive me if I failed to try everything possible. She would wonder how I could have truly loved her if I had not been willing to risk all and keep her out of a stranger’s arms.” If that day came to be, everyone would find out just how dangerous it was to piss off a woman who wielded ancient Treoir power.
    “Macha would not really expect Brina to marry someone else, would she?” Lanna asked, in the voice of a teenager who couldn’t