“Yes.”
“My eyes aren’t that color anymore.”
His chest heaves. “Zaya …”
Pulling the severed bonds closer to my chest, I peer into them again, even though I now know what I’ll see. I already know what image will tumble to the forefront, called forth by hopes and dreams I never knew I had. “We had plans. The four of us, yes. But also … just you and me, Carlos. Places we wanted to visit, trips we wanted to take. Dozens of years to spend with each other.”
“Please don’t …” Reck lifts his hands as if ready to plead with me. Then he catches himself, clenching those hands into fists at his sides instead. “What good is this? You want to hurt me? I can’t be more destroyed than I already fucking am.”
“I think you can. I know I have been.”
“What is that?” he asks finally. Shakily. Staring at the soul bonds now.
“Does it feel like it belongs to you?” I ask. “Because it feels like it’s mine.”
He nods, the motion seemingly on the edge of unhinged.
“The armoire opened?” Rath says quietly.
“It did.” I try to smile at him over Reck’s shoulder but only manage a grimace.
“Fuck,” Rought mutters, running a hand through his hair. “Fuck, fuck.”
“Enlighten me,” Reck says, trying to regain some of his edge.
“You brought your father back to the intersection point that night,” I say.
“I didn’t,” Reck says. “He must have followed me, but … you should have been safe there! We all should have been safe there.”
“Except Oso was Disa’s soul-bound mate,” Rath says.
I swallow, offering a slight nod to acknowledge his conclusion. “And after I died …” I look down at the soul bonds, vibrant but inert. Then with a mere thought, I allow them to fall open in my hands, releasing them. They drape across my raised palms, entwined. All four ends appear cleanly snipped, not torn free. “Disa took our soul bonds.”
Reck looks from the bonds in my hands to me. He’s utterly overwhelmed now, utterly undone. “Larkspur …”
“No longer,” I whisper. “I’m no longer the girl, the woman in this future. A future carved from the essence of the universe. Do you want to know what else your actions forced Disa to take from us?”
I understand I’m not being fair, not being as clear as I can be. But I’m struggling myself, struggling to move through, move past this moment. I know I need to bring him with me, somehow, even if it’s just to finally acknowledge all that has been destroyed between us.
Reck shakes his head. “No, love … no … I … can’t …”
I step toward him, the bonds still slung across the palms of my hands. The ends drag on the floor, completely lifeless. “Do you want to know what will never now exist?”
Reck slowly, inexorably, collapses to his knees, torso upright, head thrown back. He squeezes his eyes closed and takes a shuddering breath.
I wait, my heart and soul numb. Though I know this moment will embed deeply within me. I know I’ll never shake this loss, never mend the hole this knowledge will leave in my soul. And I’m forcing that on Reck too, following some innate instinct to do so.
Perhaps this is the same process by which Bellamy’s threads of fate, of life force, had to be debrided for Presh to help heal her soul.
Reck opens his red-rimmed eyes. He hasn’t shaved in days. He’s lost weight that I’m not certain he can afford to lose, not with a beast such as the cu-sith as his other half. “Tell me, then. I’m tired of walking around mortally wounded. So … so tired of … not having you. Not having my soul-bound mates. My universe-gifted family.” Tears slide down his cheeks.
An answering wetness pools in my eyes, hot and painful.
He already knows.
“Children?” he rasps. “How many? We talked for hours that last summer together, of traveling, then settling back in Vancouver in one of your uncles’ empty houses. Of … two children.”
“A girl,” I say, struggling to get words rather than sobs out. “With dark-gold curls, sun-kissed skin, and the sweetest singing voice.”
