But why? She is the epitome of an angel, she exudes sublimity, sacred murals aren’t worthy of her face.
“I don’t think he meant to, he was thinking it and it just… slipped out. He shut down right after.” Her brows pinch together. “I know empaths are usually from the Light but I’m… I’m not…”
“Empaths havealwaysbeen one of the purest beings of light. They’re a type of immaru.”
She frowns hard. “But I’m impure, I’m not full of light.” And she sounds… repulsed, like it’s something rotten in her throat.
And I suddenly want to destroy whoever made her doubt the light she emanates.
“You’re notjustfull of light, no. We all have both, but you have more of each. They’re balanced. That doesn’t make youimpure.” My voice sours on that word, so I soften my tone. “You’re more.”
I cup her jaw, gently urging her to listen. “Every being, even immarus, are born with both dark and light inside them. Some beings like to try and forget that, some even pretend they only have one. But it’s a lie.” I brush her cheek with my thumb, then lower my voice. “We don’t know what happened to you, Jasmine, but… if it was anything like what happened to me…” I glance away, looking into the shadows that are always there. “Your darkness was encouraged to grow, something happened that made the Dark Goddess reach out and gift you.”
I feel it then, her darkness. The thin slivers that often remain hidden now appear, wrapping around her and me like velvet smoke.
“This,” I say, nodding at the one curling along my arm. “And your ability to meld minds. They’re gifts, Jasmine. It doesn’t mean you have less light, just that you carry the dark too.”
“How… how can you say that it’s agift?” Her voice is laced with bitter self-hatred. “My family were terrified when I first used it, I made someone slice open their own throat. I could barely control it.”
“But you did.”
She scoffs, but I refuse to let her self-deprecation continue.
“And we should have been there, as your bonds.” I bite the words back before they spill out too violently. “Kane had to teachme how to use both gifts, the dark and the mind melding. I know what it’s like to battle the dark and light. We could’ve helped you. We should have. We should have searched for you—”
“Ze.” That nickname will be the death of me, slicing through my heated words. “How could you look for something you didn’t know existed?” she says, a soft, sad smile in place, and it guts me, because she’s trying to ease me.
Trying to makemefeel better.
And I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve her.
“I felt something,” I admit in a whisper. “We all did, like a… hollowness. But I had Kane, and then Sai and Julien. With them, it became easier to ignore.” My chest tightens, the sharp guilt of knowing what that ache was all along hitting me. “I thought it was tied to our past, the trauma we’d all suffered.” Soft silver tendrils entwine with hers. “But it was you. The ache was always you.”
She’s so still, the steady rise and fall of her chest and our powers rustling over covers are the only sounds.
Her eyes lock with mine when she whispers, “I felt it too… I spent years trying to name it, but I could never find the right emotions until…” She wets her lips. “Saudade.”
Kane taught her that, I know he did because it’s his language, and now she’s using it to describe us. To describe the ache we all feel. Bittersweet doesn’t cover it.
She felt us too, all this time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen, that I pushed it away.” I draw back, hands falling from her, power rescinding. “I never thought it could be you.”
Now, she reaches for me, delicate fingers holdingmyface. “I ignored it too, Ezekial,” she whispers. “I assumed it was connected to my past, and that over time, it would pass.”
I close my eyes and fall into her touch, letting her warmth give me the strength to share everything. “There’s another reason I shut it out,” I murmur.
Her thumbs brush over my cheekbones, and when I open my eyes, I see no judgement, only tender patience.
“Kane’s told you of our father.” The title burns on my tongue. “How he took me… us. Me and my sister. He dragged us from the Light Realm and into—” I break off, my jaw clenching against the memory.
My mother’s screams as he tore us away, watching the realm, ourhome, crumble to pieces—ashes. I barely remember it now, cowardly, I melded most of those memories away.
“He didn’t want children, he wanted test subjects, specifically, he wanted to meld an immaru andidimmuinto a single vessel.” I try not to remember, but the worst memories, the ones that cling like poisonous tar, can’t be fully erased.
They always carve their way back to the surface.
“With my father’s orders, they started experimenting on us. Injecting us with darkness in a liquid form.” I grit my jaw as the cold, sickly sting rushes through me. “But it never went deep enough. Never took hold the way they wanted.”
