Earlier, I left her with Zahra, for a girls’ day. They said they’d be going to a sushi place a town over from Mountain Vale. Remiss, I spent much of my afternoon mourning the distance between us—until she disappeared from my senses completely.
The tether between us that had been growing stronger since she accepted me as her soulmate snapped. Her heartbeat in my chest thumped into nothingness. Shevanished. She vanished, and when in my panic, I went in search of her, Zahra wasn’t home, and Alexios wasn’t home, andno onewas home.
She vanished, and I was alone.
In the silent fear, I found myself reminded of the fact I once stole Pollux’s soulmate, Kassandra, and put her in a place beyond his senses as a means to lure Pila from the dryad saplings for a scheme of mine. In the quiet anxiety, I wrestled guilt over having submitted Pollux to the very same horror of existing without the sensation of his soulmate.
The past hour without mine in reach has been suffering. Acute, all-encompassingsuffering, andIknow—logically—that my mate cannot die easily. Pollux had no such comfort when I took his Kassandra. And, yet, this past hour I have felt a remorse unlike anything I have ever witnessed before. In the whirlwind of emotion, I may have texted Pollux an apology. In the sicknessof knowing an apology could never be enough, I abandoned my phone on the very bench that my soulmate is passing now.
She’s here.
She’s back.
She’ssafe.
Reaching her, I fit my hands at her elbows andgrip. “Where have you been?” My voice rumbles, vibrating. She smells… She smells like… I growl, “Willow.” Must that woman be the absolutedeathof me? Of everyone in their perfect, loving little circle, she most resembles the chaos in my own skull. I would so dearly prefer to respect and appreciate that instead of finding myself on the brink of insanity every time she enters the picture.
Maybe this is why Cael and Pollux discarded me. Maybe I was just ashorrificto deal with. Maybe the stress ofmealso wasn’t worth it.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I know I was far worse.
I still am.
I’ll probably always be.
Inhaling, I flinch as a sharp, iron-rich scent pricks my nostrils. “You were bleeding.” Fingers shaking, I take her hand in mine, touch the spot that smells most like fire and blood.
Herfire andherblood.
My mouth dries.
Rage barely withheld, I whisper, “What have you been doing?”
She does not answer me. She instead settles something warm andpowerfulin my hand. It vibrates with condensed magic.Hercondensed magic.
“I made this for you,” she says, light voice enchanting as ever.
Heavy, her power weighs in my palm.
Swallowing, I trace the shapes, come to the realization I’m holding a hairpin that she’s fashioned out of herself into thevisage of a snake. Clutching it, I focus on what matters. “Who made you bleed?”
Again, she ignores me. “You aren’t going to thank me?”
A dry laugh escapes my chest. “My love,thankingsomeone is not regular behavior for a faer—”
“You’d die for me and let me torture you, but you’d not give me your soul?”
A thread of unease tangles around my heart. “My soul is already yours.”
“Then thank me.”
What has come over her in the time she’s been gone? It’s…terrifying.Beautiful. I am so deeply frightened, yet also enraptured. This is the first I’ve seen of her being truly at ease in my presence without the taste of my tongue on hers to cloud her judgment over with desire.
Unafraid still, she presses, “You won’t?”
Tone level, I say, “I do not believe either of us would be able to handle the sensation. You might surely pass out, and if you do not? If you take my soul in your hands instead? I wouldcrumblein response to such an intimate caress. Best I not tempt fate by baring it to you like that, Mine.” Tangling my fingers in her hair, I grapple for something akin tocontrol. “Answer me. What have you been doing, and why do you smell like blood?”
