Into the shadows we go and everywhere he steps, the light seems to grow, an impossible light that breaks through the darkness.
With it, comes calm.
More calm than I’ve experienced ever since I healed him and sent him away.
But at its edges is a tension I can’t deny.
My cheek is pressed to his jaw and his eyes consume me. The touch of his hands consumes me. I don’t know how far into the wilderness he’s carried me by the time he stops. There are paths and huts scattered throughout this place, and we could be near one of them or far away from all of them. I don’t even care.
A sense of desperation rises within me because this can’t be real.
Hecan’t be real.
“You’re a dream,” I say, my eyes burning with tears. “I’ve conjured you with my hopes and you aren’t really here.”
His reply is a brush of his lips to the corner of mine. “I’m here.”
“No.”
I’m suddenly struggling in his arms, pushing myself to the ground.
“Too cruel.” I shake my head at him. “I don’t get a happy ending. I’m a dark creature. Love does not belong to me. Happiness is not for me to claim.”
Tears drip down my cheeks, and I can’t stop them.
I back away so sharply that I bump into the tree at my back.
He reaches for me, one hand raised, his gaze suddenly filled with concern. “You made a mistake,” he says.
I was sliding to the side of the tree and now I stop. “What?”
“When you made me whole, you made a mistake.” His hand remains raised toward me. “It’s how I’m here. It’s how I remember you.”
“What mistake?”
“You commanded that I have the magic I wasmeantto have.”
Once again, he edges toward me, his form so tall, so imposing that he casts me into shadow.
“I don’t understand.”
His tone softens. “I was meant to have the magic of your darkness in my life, Caera.”
I’ve paused for too long, and now he reaches for me again, his hand rising to my cheek, the softest touch. “There is no balance for pure light without pure darkness. You are my balance.”
He lowers his head to mine. Brushes his cheek to mine. “I’m here. I’m not leaving. You are my other half. I need you in my life.”
I press my face to his, letting my tears fall, listening as he continues.
“At first, you were only in my dreams,” he says. “Night after night, I would wake up feeling as if I’d been ripped apart. I had no name for you. I didn’t know who you were. I searched for you among the light magic creatures, hoping to find you. Searching all the faces. But I was looking in the wrong places. Asking the wrong questions. I should have been searching in the shadows.”
He stops to draw breath. “Finally, I asked the right questions, and the supernaturals who were trying to help me… they couldn’t deny me the answers.”
He slips his arms around me, pulling me away from the tree.
“You are every bit as ferocious as you were in my dreams,” he says. “I want all of you.Needall of you. I can’t fall asleep another night without you.”
I don’t wait for more. I can’t.
