Dylan tilted her tear-streaked face up at him. "Will you take me out of here, please?"
"I'll take you anywhere you want to go." Rio smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, erasing the wet tracks. "Do you want to go home?"
Her sad little laugh sounded so broken, lost, somehow. "Can we just...walk for a little while?"
"Yeah. Sure." He nodded, tucking her under his arm. "Let's get out of here."
They walked in silence, down to the elevator and then out of the hospital to the warm night outside. He didn't know where to take her, so he just walked with her. A few blocks up from the hospital was a footbridge that led to the East River promenade. They crossed it, and as they strolled along the water's edge, Rio felt people staring at him as they passed on the walkway.
There were furtive glances at his scars, and more than one wondering look that seemed to question what he was doing with a beauty like Dylan. A damn good question, and one he didn't have a sensible answer for at the moment. He'd brought her into the city on a mission - one that sure as hell didn't allow for detours like this.
Dylan slowed at last, pausing at the iron rail to look over the water. "My mom got really sick last fall. She thought it was bronchitis. It wasn't. The verdict was lung cancer, even though she never smoked a day in her life." Dylan went quiet for a long moment. "She's dying. That's what she just told me tonight."
"I'm sorry," Rio said, drawing up next to her.
He wanted to touch her, but he wasn't sure she needed his consolation - wasn't sure she'd accept it. Instead he settled for touching a strand of her loose red hair, easier to pretend he was catching the errant tendril from blowing into her face on the light summer breeze.
"I wasn't supposed to be on that trip to Europe. It was going to be her big adventure with her friends, but she wasn't well enough to go so I took her place. I wasn't supposed to be there. I never would have set foot in that damn cave. I never would have met you."
"Now you wish you could undo it." He didn't ask the question, merely stated what had to be simple fact.
"I do wish I could undo it, for her. I wish she could have had her adventure. I wish she wasn't sick." Dylan turned her head and looked at him. "But I don't wish I could undo meeting you."
Rio was stunned silent by her admission. He brought his hand up to the soft line of her jaw, looking down into a face so fair and beautiful it stole his breath. And the way she was gazing up at him - as if he were a man worthy of her, a man she could love...
She exhaled a quiet, unsteady breath. "I would take it all back in a second, Rio. But not this. Not you."
Ah, Cristo.
Before he could tell himself it was a bad idea, Rio bent his head down and kissed her. It was a gentle meeting of their mouths, a tender brush of lips that shouldn't have made him burn like it did. He reveled in the sweet taste of her, in the way she felt so right in his arms.
He shouldn't want this so badly. He shouldn't feel this need, this tender affection that was kindling inside him every time he thought about Dylan.
He shouldn't be pulling her closer to him, splaying his fingers into the warm silk of her hair as he brought her deeper into his embrace, lost in her kiss.
It took him a long time to break it. But even after he lifted his head, he couldn't stop caressing her face. He couldn't let go of her.
A group of teenagers shuffled past them on the promenade, rowdy human boys in clothes several sizes too big for them, talking loudly and shoving at one another as they went. Rio kept his eyes on the youths, suspicion spiking as he watched the gang pause near the railing and take turns spitting over the edge. They didn't seem overtly dangerous, but they did appear to be the types perpetually ready for trouble.
"Demetrio?"
Rio glanced down at Dylan, confused. "Hmm?"
"Am I getting close? Your real name, I mean...is it Demetrio?"
He smiled, and couldn't resist kissing the freckled tip of her nose. "No, that's not it."
"Okay. Well, then, is it...Arrio?" she guessed, beaming up at him in the moonlight as she stepped slightly out of his arms. "Oliverio? Denny Terrio?"
"Eleuterio," he said.
Her eyes widened. "Ay-lay-oo-what?"
"My full name is Eleuterio de la Noche Atanacio."
"Wow. I guess that does make 'Dylan' seem a bit mundane, huh?"
Rio chuckled. "Nothing about you is mundane, I assure you."
Her smile was surprisingly shy. "So, what does it mean - a gorgeous name like that?"
"A loose translation would be 'he who is free and of the night everlasting.'"
Dylan sighed. "That's beautiful, Rio. My God, your mother must have adored you to give you an amazing name like that."
"It wasn't my mother's doing. She was killed when I was very young. The name came later, from a Breed family living in a Darkhaven in my homeland. They found me, and took me in as one of their own."
"What happened to your mother? I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't - I know, I ask too many questions," she said, shrugging apologetically.
"No, I don't mind telling you," he said, finding it remarkable that he really meant that.
As a rule, he hated talking about his past. No one in the Order knew the details surrounding his awful beginnings, not even Nikolai, whom he considered his closest friend. There'd been no need to talk about it with Eva, since they'd met in the Spanish Darkhaven where Rio was raised and she knew his ignoble history.
Eva had politely chosen to ignore the ugly facts surrounding his birth and the years he'd spent as a foundling, killing because he had to, because he didn't know any better. The young savage he'd been before he was brought into the Darkhaven and shown how to live like something better than the animal he'd had to become in order to survive on his own.