He’d loved her when she didn’t believe that love existed. He’d listened to her stories, soothed away the dark terror of her past.He’d kissed her and held her and lulled her to sleep when she didn’t want to be alone.
Owen had loved her. And before Aziel, he’d been her whole world.
For years, she wished that he’d known that.
“Was it really you?” She asked suddenly, her voice feeling disconnected from her being. “Every time I was preparing to do something incredibly foolish, I would hear your voice or see your eyes. Sometimes, it was as if you were there in the room with me.” She turned to him, not surprised to see the solemn look weighing at his face, his eyes fixed elsewhere. “Was it really you or had I truly lost my mind?”
“It was really me.” He said softly, his voice barely audible over the sound of the river. When he looked at her and spoke again, he was louder. More certain of what to say. “Before I met you, Aziel and I were good friends. Aside from Trio and Desi, I was one of the only people in the entire kingdom that he trusted. When he discovered that he was being sent away, he made Desi and I promise to watch over you and protect you—he said that you were special. That you were aprincess.” He paused for a moment, as if contemplating what he wanted to say next. “I never meant to fall in love with you, Nymiria. I’d damned myself from the moment I kissed you, because I always knew that you werehis. You were never mine to keep—”
“How did youknow?” She pressed, inching closer to him. “How did you know about me—about Aziel and what we were?”
He lifted one shoulder, that sheepish grin slipping onto his face. “Aziel gave me a key to his room in the tower. Stable hands were required to sleep in the lofts at the stables and we had nowhere to safely light fires to keep warm, so he allowed me to use his tower if it got too cold. But,” he chuckled. “I stumbled across the trunk of his mother’s things. I found her journal when I was sixteen, two months after we met. And then, onenight while you were sleeping in the garden, a tear rolled out of your eye and fell to the ground. A moonflower bloomed thereimmediately. And then, I just…knew.”
There was no reason for her to feel angry. Shedidn’tfeel angry. In fact, she felt sad. Knowing that Owen had known, this whole time, that her soul was bound to another…
She couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for him to live with that truth all on his own, never being able to confide in anyone about how much it must have hurt.
“Anyhow,” he continued. “Dorid knew about us, Nym. He wasn’t daft—he knew that we were bedding one another and had for quite some time. It was only a matter ofwhenhe chose to strike. And when I overheard some of the other hands talking of how Dorid was preparing to be short another courtesan due to her infidelities, I took it upon myself to set us up to get caught. I confessed to the crime, stated that I didn’t love you but that you loved me, and begged for Dorid to intervene because I was beside myself with guilt for betraying my king. But, then, well. We all know what happened there—you killed me instead of yourself. And when my name appeared on Aziel’s toll and he came to greet me here in the Otherworld, he gave me the same position I had when I was living.”
“And what is that?” Nymiria’s chin quivered, her eyes hot with fresh tears.
Owen’s brilliant green eyes moved over her face, his smile wavering for just a moment when he saw the sadness in her eyes, the evidence of it spilling down her cheeks. “Being yournanny.”
A laugh bubbled up from her chest. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, overwhelmed with a strange softness. “The most annoying nanny I’ve ever had.” He joined in on her laughter, but after a moment, it dwindled to a pained silence. “I wish that you hadn’t wasted your time loving me.” She confessed quietly. “I wish you would have found someone—”
“It wasn’t a waste of time, Nymiria. Not for me.” His tone was finite, leaving no room for argument at all. Nymiria stared at him, unsure of what to say next. As if to save her from her own thoughts, Owen shook his head and shrugged. “I believe in Fate. I believe that people meet for a reason. And while it doesn’t always seem fair, I know that the reason I met you was the same reason you met me—we needed someone to show us that love was possible in the world we lived in, we needed something to believe in. For me, it was worth it.” He walked towards the cabin, then, his eyes twinkling with that same gleam that could make even the darkest of souls believe in joy.
“Besides, what else would I have to brag about? It’s earned me quite the reputation around here—that I was the first person to ever love The Goddess of Life.”
Nymiria chuckled, following him inside once again. “Oh, I’m certain that you are very highly revered here.”
“I am, actually.” He hummed, cutting a path towards the kitchen. Nymiria lingered by the door, watching as he removed the boiling pot of tea from the woodstove. He filled cups with the brew before retrieving two wooden plates from the shelves above the water pump, too focused to realize that Nymiria had gone so still.
She hoped that it was true—that everyone here loved him and that he was well-respected and well-known. Because what hurt more than having him die was also having very few people in the world that were left to remember him with her. She hoped that his name was known from one end of the Otherworld to another. She hoped he felt the love and safety he deserved while he was living.
“I know that you can’t stay.” He was placing the tea and plates of bread and cheese on the table. Three of them. As if someone else would be joining them. The table, she just now realized, was littered with embroidery supplies—tambors with fitted clothsin them, already blooming with art. Owen didn’t embroider. Nymiria had always been the one to fix his clothes when they needed hemming or if they ripped, as he always refused to even learn how to thread a needle. “But I would like for you to meet someone.”
The door in the hall that had been closed earlier suddenly opened, a sleepy-eyed woman appearing, rubbing lazily at her eyes. Nymiria’s heart fluttered with hope, already smiling when the dark-haired woman lifted her gaze. “This is Eevyan. Eevyan, this is—”
“Nymiria.” The woman whispered, her rose-bud lips pulling back into a small grin before worry tugged at the center of her brow. She turned to Owen, lips parting in question. “She’s not supposed to be here.”
“It was Aziel—I’ll explain at a later time. Though I will start by informing you that she’s insisting upon going back, so there’s no need for us to make her a room.” Owen assured her.
After a brief awkward silence, Owen urged both of the women to sit and eat. Nymiria sat at the far end of the table, watching with warm eyes as Owen slid into place between them. Food and drink, Nymiria learned, was not so much of a necessity as it was a treat. They did notneedit in the Otherworld, but it was something to offer comfort to the wandering souls that hadn’t been ready to transition. Many chose to stay in this place, finding it more comfortable than the idea of vast nothingness and endless rest.
They ate peacefully, none of them speaking until their plates were cleared and the tea had all but gone cold. Eevyan looked at Nymiria as if she wanted to ask her a thousand questions, but was far too shy.
Owen, seeing the look on the young woman’s face, placed his hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Eevyan was aprincess, too.” He explained joyously. “She was killed, used in a scheme to fake her cousin’s death.”
Nymiria’s throat felt as if it was swelling, as if she could have choked if there had been anything in her mouth to choke on. “That’s—good gods, that’s horrible.” She managed, meeting the young woman’s gaze. “How old were you?”
“I was twenty.” Eevyan’s voice was deep and soothing, but it was one of those voices that exuded authority and class. She’d been coached, it seemed, to say and do all of the right things at the right time, to speak properly and enunciate, though her accent was quite thick. Nymiria couldn’t quite place it. “My cousin was sold in secret by the man she believed to be her father. They needed a body in order to fake her death.” She said it as if it mattered very little, her face void of emotion as she lifted her tea to her lips. “It happens.”
Though it was horribly tragic, Nymiria could not stop herself from releasing a small and nervous chuckle. “Being born into royalty is often like that, I suppose.”
Eevyan smiled. “Burden of the crown.” A woman of few words, but with a biting sense of humor. Nymiria was delightfully pleased.
As time passed and the sun began to change positions in the sky, their conversation continued. Nymiria learned of Eevyan’s life, how she was born in an underground kingdom, never allowed to leave until she became of age. It was only then that she was able to convince her uncle, another king, to allow her into his kingdom to continue her education. She’d wanted to become a historian, to work in the temples she’d only ever had the chance to read about in books. She traveled the entire continent gathering stories and lessons—even began writing her own collection of legends and artifacts that she wanted to present to her tutors back at the temple.
