“Winter,” I sobbed back, no tears falling due to a lack of physical body. “What have you done?”
“You’re my life,” he said simply. “Where you go, I go. No exceptions.”
A hysterical laugh escaped me. “You are too fucking good to me, but everything is not as we thought. I’m not the descendent of the Great Queen.”
He paused, confusion tinting the small slivers of skin I could see around his eyes.
“She is the Great Queen.”
He finally turned to the other me,showing no visible reaction to the fact that I was hardcore twinning. “Explain,” he shot back.
“How did you know that version wasn’t me?” I asked before she could answer him.
“We’re bonded,” he said, without removing his shrewd gaze from her. “That’s a memory, with slivers of your power but none of your soul.”
I sank against him, my body molding to the crystals surrounding him.
“She is a memory,” I confirmed. Len’s arms wrapped around me, so tightly that if I’d been alive I’d be bleeding over his stone suit. “A memory I sent here, to the origin of magic and worlds, in case I returned to Faerie without my memories.”
“Explain,” Len bit out once more, and this time there was less patience in his voice. Even in soul form, his power filled the space, swelling in its intensity.
“Young god,” she said, “you have elevated in the power vacuum I created within Faerie. It makes sense that you would be chosen as a mate for us. It was my weakening and your burgeoning strength that allowed us to meet. For you to finally find me on your Great Walk. Earth could only hide my energy for so long when one is as strong as you.”
Len looked down at me, his eyebrows drawn together, and I nodded. “Yeah, it’s a fucking weird story, but I believe what she’s saying. I was the Great Queen, an Origin god of Faerie, until I had to walk away to save it.”
This got a reaction.Origin godmeant more to Len than it had to me. “There’s a lot of backstory,” I continued, “but we don’t have time. We have to return to Faerie and attempt once more to save it.”
I didn’t care what it took,wewould be returning. They made a mistake in allowing an Origin god to find a true mate, because damn the fucking worlds if I lost him. I was no hero when it came to my family. I’d save my daughter and pack and Faerie, but the rest of the worlds were on their own. This god thought like a shifter now too.
“We do need to hurry,” other me said, even though she was apparently fond of monologuing. “Here’s the basic points of it all. I removed myself to Earth to ensure the darkness didn’t have the power to keep spreading. All the remaining Origin gods hid on Earth too, and in doing so we created a space in the power balance. That is how new gods were born. It was all working until you found me.” Her voice broke. “We were together for two incredible months, and I told myself to walk away every single day, but I couldn’t. I’d been alone for so long, having no idea that there was such a perfect love out there. A love only possible due to my weaker state, but weirdly, when I was with you, I felt as strong as ever.”
“As if I contained the power you’d lost?” he mused.
The memory paused, before nodding. “Yes, that’s a possibility.”
Len’s voice grew harder. “What happened when I decided to complete the true mate bond, by heading home and calling you to me?”
Her voice shook. “It was the chance I’d been waiting for, so I encouraged you to return, knowing I’d have to do the hardest thing in my long life.”
My chest hurt so badly I wondered if I was dying again. Could a soul die multiple times?
“Wouldn’t it have been safer to keep your memories at least, so you knew not to return?” I choked out.
“Safer, yes,” she said with a sad laugh, “but it turned out I wasn’t strong enough to stay away. When the call came for me to return, I was mere seconds from letting myself fade into the abyss to find Faerie. It kept almost happening, and I knew that the only chance I had was to block off my Faerie side.”
She waved her ghostly hand between us. “The glamour I created was designed as a rebirth. We shed our Great Queen energy—and her memories—and turned ourselves into a shifter. A fascinating supernatural race I’d spent a little time with. I figured being with other magical beings would hide whatever quirks the glamour released.”
“Two things didn’t work though,” Len replied gruffly, his super brain putting it together faster than I had. “You couldn’t remove the mark I gave her, and you couldn’t completely remove the memories of our time together.”
She shook her head. “With the power I had, I should have been able to do both, but… maybe I didn’t want to remove everything. Maybe I needed to keep some of you. So, I decided it waseasierto createastory to explain away most of the memories Samantha was left with.”
“You didn’t know I was pregnant,” I choked out, as pain and regret rippled through me.
Her face crumpled, and the fact that this “memory” kept exhibiting emotions told me I’d placed more than just memories here. I’d placed a small part of myself. “A child was an impossibility I never considered,” other me said. “But clearly that was another quirk of the imbalance we created. Had I known about Tabitha, there’s a chance my choices would have been different. Something we’ll never know now. What is done is done, and we must repair the worlds to save our daughter.”
The absolute fucking insanity of this conversation wasn’t lost on me, but when shit like this happened, you had to roll with the punches. At this point I was pretty much a fight champion, taking shots like a boss.
“What do we need to do to come back to life and repair Faerie?” Len asked.
