If she were still alive, she’d be out there right now, beside Arawn. Slaying darksouls with her wind magic. Riding on a war eagle that Kinlear himself had trained, when hemeantsomething to this war.
When he thought, for a few years, that he’d found his place.
How terribly wrong he was.
“I’m sorry, Sora,” Kinlear whispered now, his breath floating away in a cloud upon the wind. He wondered if she was still out there, somewhere. If the Acolyte’s army had found a way to revive her, and she was out there,right now... fighting on the otherside of a war she never fully believed in to begin with.
Her body was never found, when Arawn went back to gather her from the Expanse. And while Arawnsworeshe was dead, the last time he saw her... a part of Kinlear had always wondered, if perhaps Soraya had made it.
The darksouls often took who was left behind. There was always a chance.
“I hope you found your way there,” he whispered. “I hope you’re at peace, if you did.”
He could barely even think her name without pain, without guilt tightening his chest.
Shehadbecome his for a time, just as he foresaw in his dreams.
They were Matched a few years ago, and the time they spent together was the most Kinlear had ever known ofromantic fantasy bookbliss. But in the back of his mind, whenever he was with Soraya...when she was asleep in his arms, her face pressed to his penance-marked chest...
Sometimes, he imagined he was holdingher.
The other woman.
The one whose scarred face he knew, but whose name evaded him.
His dreams still ended with her. Always her.
She was strong and she was lovely and she was – someday – to be whollyhis.
It made the pain of losing Soraya hurt less, despite the guilt that ate at him, day after day. Soraya left because she wanted to save him.
The Acolyte has power the gods do not,she’d promised, on the day before she defected.It’s all here, in the book!
She’d showed him the pages inside, but they were empty.
She wanted the Acolyte tohealKinlear of the very illness that was a part of his magic. He felt that they were intertwined, because just like Magus said...magic always required a price.Kinlear hated it, of course. He hated the sickness, the cough, the weakness in his leg.
They were the anchors that had dragged him down, for years, into what he called his eternal pit of misery.
But without his illness...
Would he still have his visions?
Would he still be a Veilborne, able to see suchwildandbeautifulthings...or would he simply beKinlear Laroux...the spare and powerless twin?
Regardless, Soraya wouldn’t see reason, no matter what he said. So, he thought the truth would be strong enough to make her stay.
He’d told her of his dreams, his gifting...his strange, unpillared magic. He’d told her everything...except for the bit about the other woman in his dreams.
He’d focused on what mattered most, instead: his mission tokillthe very Acolyte she longed to meet. He’d seen it. He believed it, with every fiber of his Veilborne being.
...and she didn’t.
He loved Soraya. Truly, he did. A part of Kinlear had died with her, that night on the battlefield. Sometimes, he still pulled her old letters back out, ones he’d kept from his time in Touvre, and cried as he reread them. Sometimes, he imagined what it would be like to hold her just one more time. To hear her laugh and snort if she laughed too hard, and then make fun of her for it...as he always did.
Gods, he missed the beauty and the chaos between them.
But what he felt for her?
