Page 11 of The Immortal’s Trick (Bound to the Immortals)

Lome steps closer, and I don’t move. I should. I should . But I keep my feet planted, determined to hear how he thinks he can help Nebet.

He reaches out an arm.

I finally begin to draw away, but he grabs my hand before I can take a step back.

“You are not in danger,” he says gently, sparks emanating from his touch. “Remain calm.”

His voice wraps around me like silk. My pulse slows. The knot in my chest begins to loosen. A strange, spreading warmth calms my nerves, as if Lome’s poured stillness directly into my bones.

And then—it’s like something inside me opens. My panic drains from me completely. I don’t understand it, but I don’t resist.

When I try to return to my fear, to remember why I should be terrified , the reasons slip like water through my fingers. All that remains is the heavy pull toward Lome and the need to hear what he has to say.

I nod slowly—a signal. I’m ready to listen.

With a breath, Lome releases my hands and turns to sit on a flat rock. He gestures for me to do the same, and I cross the small distance to sit across from him.

He looks at me with an expression I don’t yet have a name for. Reverent? Cautious? Hopeful?

“As you know,” he says, “I’m not from Alexandria.”

I dip my chin.

“But what you do not know is.. I’m technically not from Greece, either. My brothers and I have a home there now, but we’re not Greek.”

I frown, unsure how this explains anything. “Where did your parents come from?” His hair, his skin—he could easily be Grecian.

He lets out a quiet, strange laugh and lowers his gaze to the earth. “I don’t have any parents.”

Regret floods me. “I’m sorry?—”

“It’s not what you think.” He cuts me off gently. “My parents aren’t dead. I never had any.”

I blink. “You mean... You never knew them?”

“I mean,” he says, lifting his eyes again, “they never existed.”

My breath catches.

I’ve heard orphans say things like that. I’ve seen how denial can become protection. But the way he says it without any pain sends a chill through me.

“I feel your sadness on my behalf,” he says softly. “Please don’t. I told you, they were never real. There was no loss. I wasn’t born.”

My heart stops. “What do you mean, you weren’t born ?”

He holds my gaze. “Because I wasn’t. I was... created.”

Lome tells me how he and his brothers simply appeared one day in a field, fully grown, beside a glistening pond flanked by a cypress forest. None of them knew their identity or location, but each recognized the other as a brother.

I sit frozen, mouth dry, trying not to show how wildly my thoughts spin despite the weird calming magic of his touch.

Lome tells me six others appeared in the same field the following year. The brothers recognized them as kin, but they did not feel a bond like the one they shared with one another.

“We made our home in Greece,” he finishes, “near the fields where we first drew breath in case others showed up. And some did. But it’s been centuries since a new soul has appeared.”

My breath catches again.

“Centuries?” I echo, voice thin. “You said centuries.”

His eyes beg me to stay calm. “Yes. We’ve been alive for a long time. We’re... immortal.”

I stare at the ground. At my sandals. At my trembling fingers.

Immortal .

My thoughts whirl with the old stories—gods, monsters, curses. Is he one of them? Am I speaking to something divine? Something dangerous ?

I should have realized it the moment he brought me here. Why didn’t I run when I had the chance?

“You have nothing to fear from me,” Lome says gently, as if reading my mind.

My head snaps up. “How do you know I’m afraid?”

“It’s easy enough to guess,” he says. “But with you... It’s more than a guess. One of my abilities is sensing what you feel.”

“Abilities?” I repeat.

Without a word, he lifts his palm. A sudden burst of blue light shoots into the sky like a star set loose.

I gasp, watching it arc. Bright and unnatural.

And then I panic.

I drop to my knees, forehead pressed to the earth, eyes squeezed shut. I start muttering every protection prayer I know. Words to Isis. To Bast. To any god that might hear me and shield me from this being—this strange, glowing, impossible man.

“Eshe—” Lome’s voice breaks with horror.

I hear him move, step toward me, and my body tenses.

“I would never hurt you,” he says. His hands come down on my arms and lift me to my feet like I weigh nothing.

I try to look away, to keep chanting.

A single finger brushes my jawline. I cringe, leaning away.

“Eshe,” he breathes. “Don’t you know how much you mean to me?”

The words hang in the air. Weighty. Sincere.

My eyes flutter open.

Lome’s gaze overwhelms me. Soft and shining, lit with something that shakes me to my core.

“You are everything to me,” he whispers.

And then, he kisses me.

It happens in one seamless movement. His lips are on mine. His arms wrap around me. I’m pulled tight against the shape of him, warm and solid and real . And yet everything about this moment feels unreal .

I don’t know how to respond. My hands tremble, but my stomach flutters. My knees weaken. A strange sound escapes my throat—a half-sigh, half-cry. Because no matter how terrified I was a moment ago, something in my heart responds to him as if it’s been waiting for this.

How?

How does he make me feel like this ?

Lome pulls away, barely, just enough to look into my face. He’s panting, smiling faintly.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the first moment I saw you,” he confesses in a throaty growl as his arms fall away.

I can’t breathe. My lips still tingle. My whole body shakes.

This isn’t right. I don’t even know him. He’s not human .

And yet?—

Something deep inside me responds to him like a prayer finally answered.

I press my fingers to my lips, dazed.

He watches me carefully. His hands hover near my arms, as if afraid to touch me again but unwilling to let me drift too far.

“What was that?” I whisper.

His expression shifts. Not smug. Not victorious. But... adoring. Like I’m the miracle.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I shouldn’t have done that. Not yet.”

His eyes say the opposite.

“I don’t understand any of this,” my voice shakes. “Why tell me all of this?”

His silence thickens the air between us. Then he speaks, barely louder than the wind through the trees. “Because you’re mine.”

I flinch. “Excuse me?”

He steps back, just enough to let me breathe again. “You are my One, Eshe.”

The word means nothing to me, but the weight of it in his voice makes my heart twist.

“Your One ?” I echo.

He nods slowly. “Each of my brothers has one soul in the world we’re bound to—our soul’s match. When we meet them, everything changes. The connection is instant. Unmistakable. It alters us.”

My chest tightens.

“I’ve been alive for hundreds of years, Eshe,” he says, “and I have never— never —felt anything like what I feel when I look at you.”

I take a step back.

This is too much.

Too strange.

Lome doesn’t follow, though, how he fists his hands makes me think he wants to.

“You feel it too,” he says confidently. “I can tell.”

I think back to the market and the moment our eyes met. The jolt in my chest. The pull I couldn’t name. The sense that I already knew him. That he was important.

I brushed it off as girlish attraction, but what if it was something more? What if his soul really did recognize mine?

No. That’s madness.

I shake my head. “It can’t be true. I’m not special. I’m nobody. Just a poor farmer’s daughter.”

“Not for long. Not if you agree to be my bride.”

I freeze. My breath lodges in my throat.

Did he just ask me to marry him?

Lome steps back, solemn and slow, and then kneels. Kneels. Right there in front of me, pressing both hands to the left side of his chest.

I can’t move. Can’t speak. This moment doesn’t belong to the real world.

“I know this is much for you to learn, and it seems unreal,” he says, sincerity radiating from every word.

“But I am an immortal, destined to live all the days of Earth. It has been revealed to me and my brothers that we have mortal women we are meant to find. I will spend the rest of my days in this world alone unless you agree to share eternity with me.”

He bows his head low. “Will you, Eshe Akil, do me the honor of becoming my wife and making me the happiest immortal amongst us all?”

My mind floods with images: the old wooden beams of my home, the rustling fields, my sister’s laughter, my brothers chasing each other through the grass, my mother and father when they were still young and in love.

Before they were tired and grew apart.

Before we lost so much.

I look at Lome. This stranger. This foreigner. This god . I can’t marry him. I shouldn’t . It’s madness.

I search for words, some gentle refusal, but as if reading my intent, Lome’s head lifts sharply. His expression changes. He knows.

“All your mortal troubles will be gone, Eshe. I will love and cherish you forever. I will take care of you. I will take care of your family.”

Each sentence tests the cracks in my resolve, but the last one splits me wide open. “My family?” I whisper.

He rises and nods. “You will marry into a wealthy family, Eshe. Your family will not want for anything if you are my bride.”

Hope bursts up inside me like a spring after drought. Nebet. I can save Nebet.

Lome steps toward me, slow and deliberate, and takes my hand. He raises it and presses a soft kiss to the back, never breaking eye contact.

“I will do anything to make you happy, Eshe. All I ask in return is that you agree to be mine.”

I study everything about him—his eyes, his lips, his strong jaw, the way he swallows nervously, waiting for my answer. I’ve known him for days. Days . And still, I can’t name a single thing about him that feels wrong, aside from the most obvious.

He isn’t human.

But he’s been nothing but kind. Gentle. Respectful. And he hasn’t used his power to force me, though I now know he easily could have. He’s offering, not demanding.

And if I say yes, Nebet will be safe. My family will be free.

I look at him— really look.

And with my heart thundering like a storm, I know what I have to do.