Page 91 of A Sweet Destruction

We’d broken into a back file room or library of sorts. The shelves that cut through the room were made of a rich wood, likely made from the trees of the forest that surrounded this little idyllic town. My mind itched to just consume everything, to know this history of this place from the very beginning.

It was a pure desire, wanting to learn. The Empire had recognized it and twisted it into something that could serve their needs. I shook off the feeling, physically pushing it away with a roll of my shoulders.

“You okay?” Ford said low, the exhale of the words pushing through the fall of my hair and tickling my ear. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d made it through the window, a testament to his own skills and the Bond’s inherent comfort around him, allowing him to be the only being on either world who could sneak up on me with any success.

“Mhm,” I murmured, not quite able to do much else while a lightning bolt of sensation was shooting down my back.

“Good,” he said, moving around me with a hand hovering over the center of my back. As I watched him dip in between shelves, looking for any stragglers, I had to forcefully push aside the little trickle of disappointment that he hadn’t actually touched me.

I was in a real awful state if I was pissed about him respecting the boundary I set.

You have to ask, the Bond grumbled. Then, a soft please. The Bond had begged me many times over the years, but it tended much more in the listen to me or I’ll make you pay realm.

I stepped up to Ford right as he finished his initial search, placing a careful hand on his shoulder. He jerked like I’d shot him, but just as fast, secured my hand to his shoulder with his own right as I was about to pull away.

My breath stuttered in my throat at the sudden redirection of my blood towards my hand, like my entire life force was trying to reach for Ford. “I—I was thinking we should start over there,” I said, thankful for the fact that I had to whisper. “That—”

“Easier out if someone comes back in,” Ford finished for me, punctuating his words with the pass of his thumb over the back of my hand. Whether that was intentional or passive, I didn’t know.

Falling into muscle memory, we moved on silent feet to the front section of the shelves, Ford alternating between standing on guard and looking at the papers left out on the reading desks while I passed over the files and books looking for anything of note.

I didn’t even know what I was looking for until I found it. And find it I did, resting high on the second row of shelves. My hand stopped over the book before my mind even fully caught up, slipping it out of its hiding spot, inconspicuously placed between two popular religious texts.

At the same moment, Ford turned to me, his face ashen and his jaw slack. “You first,” he said, nodding at the book clutched tightly in my hands.

It took several tries to speak, words struggling to bypass the shock constricting my throat.

Theories on Deity-Matches: Uncovering Your Soul’s Partner.

The book was tattered, poorly bound in the way that self-distributed manuscripts often were. “This…” I said, trailing off as I opened the book, searching for the one word I hoped dispelled my quickly developing theory.

Pages and pages and pages and nothing, not a mention of paranimas in sight. It was the word for Soul Matches in the old language, one that we’d learned from Muli themselves. Before then, the priestesses had only referred to Matches in general terms by their compatibility, though Soul Mates was often thrown around for those rare few with a one hundred percent match.

It had been a Muli priest that had first used that term, someone who’d joined on an early campaign between our worlds. From what I understood, the entire unit he’d accompanied had been killed or injured, his life spared because he was a religious leader. When he was captured, he’d shared a host of information, including that Matches were abundant on Muli and people were born with their Mark. The only thing that had been news to him was the discovery that those Marks allowed you to cross the Bridge into another world.

Now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t recall if anyone in his unit was documented showing Marks. Maybe it was because they…didn’t have them?

But that made no sense. Nearly every single person we’d met in Muli had a Mark. But then again…

“Esme,” Ford said softly, pulling me out of a spiral of thinking right as I was about to tip over into oblivion. I blinked up at him, my heart rate immediately calming.

I handed him the book, though he likely would have been able to read the title upside down. “I don’t know how old it is, but the wording is off. No mention of paranimas. Things could have changed, but this doesn’t look like it was a well-regarded book.”

Ford nodded slowly, a sign of his careful processing, so in opposition to my rapid intake. “I think that’s because it was probably seen as the writings of some religious quack.”

Much like on Vir, in similar caste-aside books that discussed a mystical bridge between worlds. Ford handed me the papers he’d found, and my breath seized in my throat. “Oh…”

“Yeah,” Ford sighed in agreement. “Take your time. We can’t take these.”

Take my time remembering these, so I could replicate what I’d seen the second we got back, he meant.

My chest stuttered with uneven exhales as I studied each piece of paper in my hand. Templates, really. For Marks.

Each sheet had a Mark drawn onto a rudimentary figure, with detailed descriptions on the sides. The one I was looking at was for that of a trail of birds up the left side of someone’s body, my mind tingling with recognition. This belonged to someone in this town.

Someone named…Tania and Raven on this particular sheet. Both names accompanied by a code of numbers and letters, designating them to some unit.

I continued reading, falling into a focused state that drowned out everything around me, save Ford flipping through that cursed book and looking at the shelves around us. Right as I made it to the end, my hands shaking, Ford’s entire body tensed and jerked me back into focus.