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Shoving down my nerves to a place where I hoped he couldn’t see them, I moved into the space he’d left for me and stretched out on my back, turning my head to face him. He rolled to his side, facing me and sliding an arm beneath my head to protect it from the packed dirt beneath us. “What kind of story would you like to hear?” he asked, draping his other hand across my belly.

I sucked in a breath, forcing words to come out when all I could do was fixate on the touch. “Do you know any about the Fae and their mates?”

“I do,” he said, his voice sounding surprised as he nodded slowly. “The mates came to be a very long time ago. The Fae were cursed by the witches who fought against them in endless wars, their souls fractured in two upon their birth and their other half planted into another person entirely. Some were human, others were Fae as well, but being without their other half was said to be a painful experience. Like being half a person.”

“This is more like a history book than a story,” I teased.

“Alright, Little One,” he laughed. “There once was a Fae who waited over three hundred years for his mate to be born into her first life. This wasn’t typical, anything over one hundred years tended to push even the most stable of Fae past their breaking point. A life without half your soul was unthinkably cruel. And then one night, he felt the moment she reached adulthood, and he wept with joy.”

“What happened?” I asked, sensing from the seriousness on his face that this was not a story with a happy ending. I’d need to give him that caveat in the future. All romantic stories needed to end with them spending their lives together.

Life was hard and brutal enough as it was. The last thing I needed was a reminder of my loneliness in my bedtime stories that were meant to distract me from my grief.

“The witches shielded her from his view so that he could not get to her. They wrapped her in a cloaking spell, disguising her location and keeping him from her for many life cycles. But the spell didn’t protect him from feelingher. It didn’t stop him from falling in love with the essence of her every time she reached adulthood. It didn’t stop him from feeling every time she died, her life fading away as he wept for another life wasted. On and on it went over centuries. Over thirteen lives, he waited and fought to find a way to get to his mate before she could die the true death and he would lose her forever.”

“Did he ever find her?” I asked, swallowing back the burn of tears in my throat. I shouldn’t have felt sorry for the nameless Fae male. I shouldn’t have felt anything for him, knowing that he would have taken that human woman from everything she’d known if given the chance.

I’d been taught we were nothing but property to them, a being whose desires didn’t matter in comparison to the needs of the Fae, but now sorrow pierced my gut at the thought of spending all those centuries alone. Of feeling the other half of my soul die repeatedly. To think that somewhere out there was a male who was supposedly the other half of me was unthinkable; impossible. How could the other half of me exist outside my body?

“He did. She was in her final life cycle when the witches’ protection broke and he finally found her. But in order to complete the bond, he had to get her back to Faerie soil so that her life could be linked to his. Without it, she would remain mortal and die the true death,” he said, leaning forward to touch his mouth to mine gently.

I drew back sharply, resisting the urge to growl my frustration at him. “Did they make it?”

He sighed, murmuring into the space between us. “I don’t know. The story was never completed. They could be living happily in Alfheimr, or they could both be gone. Her to the true death, him to the madness that would have consumed him after losing her.”

“Why would you tell me a story that you don’t even know the ending of?” I snapped, lifting his hand off my stomach in protest.

He chuckled, replacing it immediately and using it to turn my body to face him . “Because life isn’t always tidy. We don’t always have the answers we want, and love isn’t always pretty,” he said, his gaze pointed as I swallowed audibly. “It’s messy and painful, but it is always worthwhile. It is always the answer, my star, not the problem.”

“You’re saying I should love the Fae male who is supposedly my mate?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I thought about the inconsistency with what he’d said in the past. One more tick for the suspicion that we could only be temporary.

One more nail in the coffin of what could have grown between us, if not for the threats looming on the horizon.

“No. I’m saying you should let yourself lovesomeone. If it is your mate, then so be it. But do not keep yourself guarded from the possibility of something more, out of fear of being hurt, because it is worth every moment of pain it will bring when it ends,” he said, the knowing expression on his golden-skinned face nearly taking my breath away. His words were so close to the very same thoughts I’d had earlier in the evening, an echo of something I’d known deep inside.

“What’s the point in loving someone if fate is determined to tear you apart?” I asked, the words a faint whisper that hovered between us. He closed the distance, caressing my bottom lip with his mouth briefly before it curved into the smile.

“Because even just for a little while, we don’t have to be alone. There is no guarantee they’ll ever find us. No guarantee that we’ll ever be taken back to Alfheimr, but if they do, do you want to go never having lived or made a choice for yourself? Or do you want to have enjoyed your freedom while you had it, before they strip it all away from you?” he asked.

It reminded me of the nights I’d spent wrapped in Loris’s embrace, risking death for a few moments of the pleasure that was forbidden to me. He hadn’t been someone who would have ever been meant for me, but he hadn’t been a danger to my heart, either.

Could I really risk my heart in the process? Or had it never really been mine to give?

“I can feel you thinking too hard,” he murmured, cupping my cheek in his hand beneath the curtain of my hair. He leaned in, his mouth coasting over mine once again and chasing away all rational thought. He rolled into me, moving me beneath him as his weight settled over me and pinned me to the ground.

Instead of feeling suffocating like it so often had when Loris did it, all I felt was comfort being wrapped in Caelum’s embrace. He kissed me, letting one of his hands skim down my body over my dress until he could grasp me around the back of my thigh.

I moaned into his mouth when his fingers brushed against my ass, guiding my leg out and around his waist so that he could sink further into me. So that he could cover me with his body.

I helped him, wrapping my legs around him until the twinge of pain that shot up my ankle drew a startled gasp from me. Caelum froze in place, pulling his mouth away and leaving me bereft, as if I needed to remember how to breathe on my own all over again.

He sighed, reaching back to guide my injured leg to the ground as he lifted himself up onto his forearms and stared down at me.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be fine, really,” I said, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I didn’t want him to stop, that I was ready for all the pleasure he’d offered me on countless occasions.

It seemed a betrayal to myself to voice the weakness he’d brought out in me, and to admit how desperately I needed to feel something after losing everything I’d ever loved.

Caelum’s presence was the only thing that made me feel alive, as if I hadn’t died with Brann on that cliff.