Deidre studied her hands. They were so human, their coloring peachy, the skin delicate. She hadn't looked in a mirror, but she guessed she had the healthy coloring of a mortal. At least she had the mind of a deity still, the memories and …
She froze. Memories. Deidre concentrated hard. She'd expected Darkyn to screw her over somehow, and she now knew how. She was human in every way, including her memories. She recalled nothing beyond her human age of twenty-six years. Knowledge gathered over tens of thousands of millennia … gone! She struggled to recall what her real mother looked like or the day she became Death or even the day she met Gabriel.
The memories were gone. Something cold slid through her. The sensation was almost physical. If she had to guess, she'd call the emotion fear.
Cora placed an omelet before her with a fork. Deidre glanced at her.
"Gabriel wants one of us with you at all times," Cora said. "Did you plan on leaving today?"
"Leaving."
"I think you like going to the farmer's market in the morning."
"Yes." She thought she vaguely remembered seeing the farmer's market before.
"I'll let him know. He's supposed to come by this afternoon."
Deidre dropped her fork, not expecting the news. Cora was walking away already, leaving Deidre to her internal war. She wanted to see Gabriel; it was the reason she'd done everything she'd done. But she didn't feel quite ready yet. As someone accustomed to being in control of her world, she needed a little more time before she was ready to face him. The purpose of this apartment was to give her a place to practice being human.
She didn't need to practice. She really was a human.
Her thoughts went to the deal she'd made human-Deidre. She wasn't going to have much time to prepare herself, either. Darkyn was never going to let his newest treasure go, but Deidre didn't intend to lose her deal.
Wynn's warning weighed heavier on her thoughts. To win Gabriel, Deidre planned on lying to him, convincing him she was human-Deidre. As much as she distrusted Wynn, she'd seen the caution in his features, the haunted wisdom of his gaze. He wasn't the arrogant, ruthless Immortal she remembered.
Broken. The word fit him. The human world that fascinated her had broken him. She didn't understand how, when there was so much beauty around her.
Deidre couldn't learn to become the human she created in half a day. She considered. Wynn said to tell Gabriel the truth. Telling him that she'd mated off human-Deidre to the Dark One would make Gabriel hate her. She wasn't willing to lose him already, not after all she'd gone through to keep him.