With that, I pat her on the back and head back to the academy to find a bickering Cam and Leif.
“She okay?” Cam asks.
I nod, grabbing each of them by the arm as I ready myself to take them back to the garden.
“I think she will be.”
29
Echo
Afew days after Wren’s departure to Oonos and Leif’s entrance into the garden, we’re both undergoing a brief ceremony to accept our roles here and tether ourselves. The transition has gone surprisingly smoothly, despite a few hiccups at Leif’s first appearance.
“I don’t want to become part of your troupe of lovers,” Leif told me on the very first afternoon. Totally out of the blue. It wasn’t like I was flirting with him or anything, but I think he just wanted to get it out there, so there were no misunderstandings.
I snorted, but it was Soren that answered, stepping right up in his face and towering over the weaver.
“Harem.”
“What?” Leif said, his eyes darting from Soren to me and back again.
“We’re not a fucking marching band. We’re her mates. Her harem, if you will. And if you’re going to be living here, you’ll respect Echo and her relationships.”
Leif nodded and took a step back. And that was that.
Today makes it all official. This place will be my home.
I’m wearing a bright yellow dress and Leif is in a shirt and tie as we gather with my mates and Camellia around the fountain in the center of the garden where we make our vows to the garden and to the souls we’ll bring here and deliver into the afterlife.
It’s short and sweet and feels strangely like a wedding, except one where I’m marrying a water fountain instead of a person.
Once we’ve spoken the vows, the fountain glows blue, like it’s accepting us and tethering our souls to the garden. I look at my mates who are wearing varying degrees of smiles. Brogan is grinning widely, so happy and proud. Finn is smiling softly and Soren is smirking like he has a secret I don’t know.
“Welcome to the family,” Soren says. “Now, much as I’d love to party all of us together—”
I snort because I don’t think that Soren has or will ever want to party. He pinches my butt in retaliation and continues, “—I’d rather have a private celebration with my mate. I guess you two bozos can come along, too.”
“It’s just you and me then, Leify boy. We’ll find a quiet spot as far away from them as we can and we can drink heavily and try not to picture exactly what the fuck a ‘private celebration’ entails.”
The two of them wander off, seeming happy enough.
Soren takes my hand and Finn puts one of his massive palms to the small of my back and they lead me to a part of the garden, I’ve never been before, and I grow uncertain about exactly how this afternoon is going to go.
I’d been envisaging a sex fest.
Well… hoping for one, anyway.
We stop outside a gorgeous little cottage painted sunshine yellow with a beautiful wisteria growing up the front.
“What is this place? How have I never seen it before?” I ask.
“It’s yours,” Brogan says, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Your home here. If there’s any part of it you don’t like, we can change it, but we all kind of designed it together. It’s for you to have your own space here.”
“But the bed’s plenty big enough if you want company,” Finn adds with a dangerous grin.
They lead me inside and it. Is. Perfect.
A quaint little kitchen, a dining table big enough for six, and a couple of giant couches make up the ground floor. Upstairs, there’s a bedroom with a monster bed that looks like three king-size beds put together. There’s not much room for anything else, other than a closet and a bathroom with both a massive shower and a gorgeous sunken bathtub.
