“Make sure you fasten it well,” I say softly as he begins to tie the knot. “I don’t want it coming off.”
“I don’t either,” he murmurs, and I lose my fight against the blush. Evander finishes the knot, tucking in the tiny bit of extra length underneath the loops.
I lift up my left hand. The yellow thread looks almost like spun gold around my ring finger. The knot is subtle, yet prominent, like a set stone. The sight of it is…beautiful.Yet simultaneously too much to bear. I drop my hand to my stomach, trying to quell the near-instant nausea, and turn away.
“Faelyn?”
I inhale slowly through my nose and then out through my mouth. Trying to reclaim my emotional balance. The shuddering breath helps.
“It’s so, so silly.” I try to force a laugh, lighter than what I feel.
“I doubt that’s the case.” He steps forward. I can feel him draw near as much as hear his footstep crunch against the forest floor. “But if you don’t wish to tell me…”
“When I was younger, I met my soulmate. Or, IthoughtI did. From the moment I laid eyes on him, I thought I knew that he was the one I was destined to be with. I could feel it with every fiber of me. Every strand of time and fate drew me to him. I was just sixteen, him not much older, but I knew I was ready to swear myself to him.” Glancing over my shoulder, I dare to look at Evander, pleased to find he doesn’t look too shocked. “You must think that to know such a thing at sixteen is far too young, but?—”
“Sometimes it is fate,” he whispers. I shift to face him, my fear of being judged for this confession fading. “The lykin have these beliefs, too. That there are old gods who made every spirit and crafted every soul. Sometimes, the souls and spirits were too mighty to be one being, so they were split into two.”
“I suspect Gruvun and Volst are examples of that.” Tides and water, two beings moving as one.
“What happened to your mate?” he says, forcing the question. I wonder if Evander is jealous of my lost love. Part of me hopes he is, because it would mean he cares. While another part of me wants to reassure him he has nothing to fear from a long, long ago flame.
“In truth, I never could confirm if he was my soulmate or not.” I tilt my head and stare up at the puffy clouds that backdrop the swaying trees. “We could wait on human marriageand formal ceremonies, but I wanted to promise myself to him. I wanted to know that what I felt—and suspected—was real. So I invited him out one night into the woods. I planned to take him before the ancient redwood on a new moon and ask the spirits to give me clarity. If we were truly meant to be one, to bless and unite us. Give us a sign our union was meant to be.”
I’m back in the thick that night. Back in the woods waiting…and waiting. Alone all night.
Wet grasses soak my trousers as I trek down the hills and along the paths to the hunter’s home. The windows are dark. The door ajar. The scent of the morning’s dew is so clean and crisp that I can’t even pick up on the aroma of him. His bed is cold.
“But I was wrong,” I finish softly, pulling myself from the memories. “He wasn’t my soulmate after all.”
“You confirmed this?”
“He never came.” I shrug, trying to play off the dull ache the memories still cause me. “A soulmate wouldn’t abandon their partner.”
“Perhaps something prevented him from coming?” Evander offers.
I close my eyes, huff, and shake my head. “He was a hunter’s son. A fighter who knew the lands and the woods. And I went to his house—there was no sign of a struggle. All their things were packed. It wasn’t a hasty departure; it had to have been planned. He knew he was leaving and…didn’t even tell me. He let me believe he would come and meet me. That he loved me.”
Silence as heavy as standing in that abandoned cabin settles upon us.
Lowering my gaze from the sky, I bring my attention back to the thread looped around my finger. “It had been years, really, since I thought about all this. But ever since my Grandma died and I came here, I can’t seem to escape the memories. Perhaps I never really accepted what happened.”
Evander closes the gap and takes my hand, running his thumb over the knot that he tied. “That means what you felt was real.”
“Don’t,” I whisper. “It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. He wouldn’t.”
“I am sure that he desperately,desperatelywanted to come to you that night,” Evander assures me with all the confidence in the world.
“You don’t know anything about it.” I try to pull my hand away but he holds fast.
“I know that it is the honor of any man to merely stand in your presence. But to be your mate?” He chuckles deeply, and there’s a bitter note to it. Almost sad. “That, that is an honor worth more than the names and bonds of all the spirits in the world. That would make one’s days worth living and every hour a delight.”
He loves you.The words strike true right between my ribs. They echo across my whole body like lightning sizzling under my skin, causing me to take a breath.Evander loves me. He isn’t telling me in so few words. But it’s there. I can hear it in the weight of everything left unsaid. In the heaviness of his stance. In the slight edge of fear that clouds his gaze and is no doubt tainting my own because…
…because…
I think I might be falling in love with him, too.
The realization makes me want to throw my arms around his shoulders. To place my mouth on his and kiss him until we are breathless. Until he pins me against a tree and takes me time and again—to the point that we collapse alongside our walls and fears and are left with nothing but that singular, all-important truth.
