“He told me you’re the one who asked Riviana to do that.”
My father didn’t look directly at me or acknowledge what I said.
“Thanks for doing that.” I wished I’d thought of it myself.
“I was offered that gift once. Thought he deserved the same.”
“But she went back in time and changed the past, which directly interfered with the living.”
“I know,” he said. “But if anyone deserves it, it’s him.”
I loved how much my father had grown to care for Callum. He’d wanted him dead and then embraced him like a son. He seemed to forgive Callum’s deceit quicker than I did, when he had almost died because of it. “Dad, I wanted to ask you something.”
He turned to look at me directly.
“When I traveled to the island to trade my soul for Callum’s…” I remembered making my way through the forest and hearing a woman’s voice in my head, moving right past my ears like the wind. “I moved through the forest toward the line of torches, and I heard a woman’s voice.”
His eyes narrowed slightly as he listened.
“I didn’t recognize it.”
“What did she say?” he asked quietly.
“Lily, go back.”
Those words seemed to mean something to him because his pupils actually dilated.
“Then she said…go back to your father.”
His expression was locked in place, but the rest of his body changed. It stiffened in places, and his breathing deepened.
“Do—do you know who that was?”
He hadn’t blinked since I’d broached this conversation. He seemed impaired by his own emotion. He eventually nodded then looked away, staring across the sea again as he became lost in thought. “I heard the same voice when I made my deal with Bahamut.”
“Who is she?”
He stared out at the sea for a long time, like he was debating whether he should tell me. But he eventually looked back at me again, a hint of emotion in his eyes. “Vivian.”
My father’s first wife, a woman who was still in his heart but never a part of my life. She knew who I was and tried to stop me from squandering my soul…because she cared. I wasn’t her daughter and she’d lost her own, but she still loved me like I was hers.
“When you really love someone, you always love them…and every extension of them.”
I walked in the door after a day on the boat, and Callum was on the couch, shirtless and beautiful as always.
His eyes lit up at the sight of me, and he rose to his feet.
“Don’t come near me. I smell like fish.”
His lips lifted in a smile, and he hugged me anyway, bringing me into him and kissing me like I was fresh out of the bath. He cupped my face and dug his hand into my hair too. “I couldn’t care less,Xivin.”
I pecked him on the lips before I headed into the bathroom to use the tub. I turned on the faucet so the water would fill from the tank, and I lit the fire underneath so the water would get warm as it filled the basin. It was a large bath, far bigger than most people had.
I dumped soap into the water to create the suds and then undressed before I got into the tub, the water level low and only up to my stomach.
To my surprise, Callum walked inside already naked, like he intended to join me.
It was a big tub, but it wasn’tthatbig. He was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall behemoth of a man with arms the size of my head.
