“As your wife!” How he could doubt her feelings for him?
He scoffed and pulled away. “But can you really be my wife? Can Arelim take human vows?”
A chill went over her. There was something she hadn’t considered.
Could she? While she’d known a number of Arelim who’d slept with mortals and had children with them, she’d never known any who’d married them.
Until her.
“You’re not exactly human.”
And that sent another fear through her.
Neither was Apollymi. The goddess of destruction had fallen in love with a Sephiroth warrior. While they weren’t Arelim, they were close kin to them.
That relationship had been so frowned upon by the higher powers that it had led to the Primus Bellum.
Consumed with a newfound terror, she bolted from the cot. “What have I done?”
Could loving Valteri cause another such war?
“Ariel?”
She couldn’t even speak of the horror. His father was Jaden, brother to Apollymi. If the gods had feared the power of Apollymi’s child mixed with a Sephiroth, would they not fear the powers of her child mixed with Valteri’s?
Nay, Apollymi was a dark goddess. Sephirii were warriors of light. It was the mixture of those two contrasting powers that had bred the Malachai race of demons. Creatures so powerful and dark that they were virtually unstoppable.
She and Valteri wouldn’t have that same mixture. They were both creatures of light. It was why he was still good in spite of the hate that had been delivered to him.
Surely, their relationship would be allowed. Just like her mother and her father’s.
Right?
Do you want to find out?
Dare you find out?
His gaze darkened and the sudden suspicion in his eyes stung her. “What?”
“I know not, Valteri. I never felt this way before. In the past my senses were dull. ’Tis only now that I see true colors, smell true scents.”
“And what do you feel?”
“I…” Ariel paused.
She couldn’t say it out loud. Would the curse work immediately if she did? Over and over, she saw him falling dead before her, and she knew she could never utter the words lodged in her throat.
I love you.
So, she sighed instead. “What of you? Why do you want me to stay so badly?”
Valteri shook his head and rose. His emotions were so entangled that he didn’t know how to answer so simple a question. Part of him would die for her, and another part wanted to curse her existence and all that she stood for.
Fate was indeed a cruel bastard.
“What can I say, Ariel? When I look at you, I see a promise for a future and that terrifies me. Because the one thing I’ve learned in this life is that the worst betrayal always comes when you learn that the one you’d take a sword for is the one holding the hilt.”
“I would never betray you.”
