Page 157 of I Dream of Dragons

If I have these three souls in me… what about my own soul? That’s not a riddle. More like a fucking disaster.

I really came from another world. I wouldn’t be the first. An alien being. Doomed.

Phaethon curses in my mind, speaking words I almost understand. Their meaning hovers right at the edge of my grasp.

The shadows whip around me as the memory of the king cutting her throat replays. The muscles in my ruined back bunch. Fresh blood runs down.

She reaches through the writhing shadows to touch my face. “Jai.”

“It’s okay,makhair,” I tell her.

It will be okay.

Somehow.

What else am I not remembering? What else is hidden?

She isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to face facts. I don’t want to, either. A specific fact: that I spent a hundred years serving my mate’s murderer.

“I’m going to fucking kill the king,” I promise myself, hauling her harder against my chest. “Rip him apart.”

It’s on me. I failed her, and I don’t think I deserve anything good. Yet she’s here. The only good thing I ever had. In this life, at least. Are my nightmares flashes from the other world? What the fuck happened to me?

She appeared and changed everything, my plans for revenge and destruction, the plans to save the world. What do I care about the world when I can have her? But…

Marsyas. You are Marsyas. You came here… for a reason. What was it?

I’m fucked. I have too many gaps in my memory for comfort.

Looks like I’ll have to do something I don’t want to do. Something I refused to do even today, when for the first time the howling ceased inside my head.

I have to sit down and talk to Phaethon.

“Talk to me,” she whispers. “What’s on your mind?”

That I failed her and yet she still cares for me, and she’s fumbling in the dark as much as I am. That she hasn’t given up on me yet and I feel the realization soar through me.

Hope isn’t dead.

But in this prison on this island with all the magic and marks hemming us in, what difference does it make?

I’ll take it, though.

As the shadows withdraw, releasing me, and she gazes up at me, a hand on my face, I know I’ll take it. Take her, even for one night.

One last flare of light before the world goes dark.

Having her is an ephemeral thing. I’ve never known happiness that would last. Right now, though, she’s pressed to my side and time has slowed down, turning to gold toffee.

She has an arm wrapped around my neck and I have mine around her back.

I gaze down at her, memorizing every delicate line of her face, every pale strand of her hair, every inch of pale skin. She’s my girl, my mate, cast in different colors, a different creature.

Same soul, though.

Same beauty and sweetness.

Same fierce determination.