Chapter 62
Allie
“You know what’s bothering me?” I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, staring at the parchments as if I wanted to burn them.
“The list is long, I imagine,” Dax drawled, twisting his wrist.
“Sounds like you want to be added to it,” I said, half joking.
But no grin graced his face. He just sighed and kept writing.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
The better question would have been what’s right.
Nothing.
The fortress was so silent, each of my steps echoed through the floors. Geryll was gone, I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Nadya or Mrs. Thornbrew in days, and Ryker was at war.
Mercifully, alive.
My stomach fluttered as I felt the pulse of him at the back of my mind. His energy was so rushed, I had to force myself to sit down and read instead of running around the city to expel it.
Even so, it was an unexpected comfort.
If I could feel him, he was breathing.
And…marching? No.
Pushing…pushing through something. Something which made him glad, but worried.
I exhaled a long breath.
It was debilitatingly easy to allow myself to reach him. I’d expected hesitation. Fear. Anger.
None of those emotions had come.
Feeling even that sliver of him was the most normal thing in the world. The same way my lungs breathed air to survive, my thoughts sought his presence for comfort.
It made me toss and turn at night, and not just because the dreams were becoming more vivid and I wondered if he could see them. Then wondered some more if he’d even like them.
A selfish thought in the grand, grim schemes we were facing, but one which slithered in my mind nonetheless.
Now I had something more to lose.
Something which felt natural and removed from the wickedness of this world.
I’d already accepted our marriage–and far from prying eyes and the sharpest parts of me, I’d relished in it–but calling us fated mates felt wrong.
Not because our souls were apparently meant to meld together–what did the fairytales say? The perfect union.
But because the concept erased all the effort we had to shoulder. Yes, our souls beat the same, down to the principles which sometimes tripped us, but onto which we both clung with the same stubbornness.
But the journey was ours to claim, not the gods’.
It was fate that our souls had met. We had to bridge our lives together.
And a part of me, the biggest and boldest, craved just that.
