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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

FRANKIE

My bedroom door opened. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand, letting the sleeve of my sweatshirt drown out the sounds of me crying. There were only two people who would enter my room without knocking. Mei-Ling and Everest. I wasn’t sure which one I hoped it was. Part of me was not ready to talk about what I just witnessed. I wanted to cry and be angry. Yet that little voice in my head reminded me I wasn’t a heroine in one of those rom-coms that eavesdropped a conversation and never gave the guy a chance to explain himself.

When I felt his aura slide over the blankets, I got my answer.

I wanted it to be him. I needed to know what the hell I just witnessed to know just how much crying was warranted.

The bed dipped beside me as he sat. “ Francelina? ” he whispered.

I sniffled and squeezed my eyes shut.

“Are you . . .” The blanket was gently pulled away, revealing me lying in a fetal position with tears running down my cheeks. His eyes widened. “You are crying. Why?”

I shook my head and rolled onto my back, needing a second without his face in my line of view to rein back in my emotions so I could communicate.

“Whatever it is, please tell me,” he said softly.

“I found your note and was lying here waiting for you to return when my rune stones flashed . . . and then suddenly I was astral projecting. You know I can’t control that, right? Like it just happens, and I don’t understand it. I can’t stop it from happening and I can’t pull myself out of it. You and Tegan have always rescued me from this?—”

“I know.” He scooted closer so I could see him leaning over me. “Where did you go?”

I clenched my teeth as a new wave of tears spilled from my eyes. My eyes and throat burned. I sniffled and wiped my face with my sleeves roughly. “I heard a conversation I shouldn’t have, I know that, but I was helpless to do anything about it.”

He scowled. “This conversation is why you’re crying?”

“Yes.” I nodded as I wrung my hands together. “I refuse to be the girl who doesn’t communicate and ask for an explanation for what I heard?—”

“No, that has never been your style.”

At that, I met his worried gaze. There was nothing in his eyes that suggested he knew which conversation I’d heard. Somehow that made it hurt more. “I projected to the backyard . . . where I saw and heard your conversation with Saber.”

His face fell. “I see.” He turned away from me, sitting sideways on the bed staring at the wall.

“Do you?” I sniffled and sat up to face his profile, crossing my legs under me. “I heard your whole conversation, Everest. The promise she asked of you . . . and everything after until Braison walked out. That was what allowed me to get away. Tegan pulled me out. But I heard all of it, Everest.”

He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I don’t yet hear a question.”

I gasped. That was not a good start. My pulse pounded in my chest. “So . . . so . . . so you’re choosing Saber over me?”

He had the grace to cringe even as he answered, “Right now, yes.”

I pressed my hand to my chest that was tight like someone sat on me. “You love her.”

“There are many forms of love, Francelina,” he said softly, in a voice so tender it made me want to throw up.

Fresh tears ran rivers down my face. He loved her. My soulmate loved another woman and was choosing her over me. I gagged and then scrambled out of my bed. There was no way I was adding insult to injury by vomiting in my bed. I pressed my hands to my stomach and walked away from him, needing him to not see how much this was affecting me. “If Saber and I were both in mortal danger right now, as in one of us was definitely going to die and you could only save one . . . who would you save?”

“Her,” he whispered without hesitation. “But that does not mean what you think it does.”

I spun so fast the world spun a little. I threw my hand out to catch the doorframe of the bathroom. “Then tell me what it means. I’m your soulmate. Tell me how that answer isn’t supposed to break my heart.”

He slouched forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The emotion in his eyes looked as wrecked as what I felt. That made no sense. How could he feel as hurt by this? He scrubbed his face with his hands. “There are some questions I am unable to provide answers to yet.”

“Because you don’t know or because you think you’re not allowed to?”

“I know the answer, I know what I want to tell you, but I cannot?—”

“ WHY? ” I threw my hands up and new tears splashed onto my cheeks. “You told us this morning you’re not bound by the same rules as everyone else in this realm because you’re the only living creature here that isn’t from here?—”

He stared at the ground, his long hair draping over his shoulders. “And yet I keep my tongue, because I must. That should tell you who I’m bound by and why I cannot answer.”

“Heaven.”

He nodded once but didn’t look at me.

I shook my head and pushed my hands through my knotted hair. “Heaven is stopping you from telling me the secrets you’ve been holding from me.”

“Yes.” He stared at his fingers like the answers were there. “There are some secrets I’ve kept for over a thousand years.”

My eyes burned. “But I’m your soulmate.”

He took a shaky breath, then finally met my gaze. His eyes looked shattered and haunted. “You trusted me through the car accident, through Avolire, and through Tampa. I’m asking you to trust me a little bit longer until it’s safe for me to tell you the things you want to know.”

“I do trust you. With my life . . .” I rubbed my chest and swallowed through the lump in my throat. “It’s my heart that I fear isn’t safe.”

He closed his eyes and cringed. “The well-being of your heart means more to me than I have words to express.”

I groaned and pressed my forehead to the doorframe. “Not if you’d choose her over me.”

“That’s not fair, even though I know the reason you feel that way is.”

I peeked up at him. “That makes no sense, Everest.”

He nodded and licked his lips. “I know. But it will.”

I pushed off the doorframe and wandered back into the room. “What does that mean?”

“It means I need time.” His blue and white gaze shot up to meet mine. “Just a little bit more time and all of this will make sense to you. I won’t need to keep secrets from you.”

Everything about my soulmate and his actions were totally and completely logical, I knew that with every fiber of my being, and yet that knowledge did not diminish the pain of him loving someone else. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I wrapped my arms around my waist and bent over slightly. “You’re protecting her.”

“I’m protecting a lot of people. Yourself included.” His voice was as cold as a glacier and as steady as solid ground . . . but his eyes held a whirlpool of pain. I’d never understood when people said a person’s eyes looked haunted until right that moment. I didn’t understand what was happening, so I had nothing to lean on but the hurt.

“All is fair in love and war.” My voice was barely audible.

A dark, menacing aura pulsed out of him. He narrowed his eyes and growled. “Nothing is safe in love and war.”

Yet I did not fear him.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, feeling uneasy in my own space. “You didn’t tell me you were my soulmate because you knew we’d get to this conversation. If I was just a girl you hooked up with, then you didn’t owe me anything.”

All of that darkness snapped. For a flash of a second I saw the brokenness in him before he reset his mask. “It is killing me to keep things from you while I stand before you.”

I had to get out of here. I couldn’t do this. Deep down I knew I wasn’t being entirely fair, but my emotions were traumatized and fragile. So I held my chin high. “Then I shall fix that for you.”

He scowled and cocked his head to the side. His voice was guarded. “What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t love you in the dark, Everest,” I said flatly. “It means while I trust you as a person, as a member of this team, I cannot give you my heart or my body while you keep parts of you from me. Your allegiance is not in question here. I know your intentions are pure and you genuinely mean what you say—that this is hurting you too. But I can’t fight this war with your mother and her heathens while also fighting a war in my heart. I was ignorant in Avolire and Tampa, and I don’t blame you for trying to keep your distance from me. I know I pushed you to cross that boundary you’d tried to enforce and I’m sorry for that. Now I’m paying the consequences. So while I’m by your side in this war . . . until you can let me in, let me see all of you, then I am not yours. And I’m gonna ask you to respect that boundary, since you’re so good at that. So, please leave my room?—”

“Francelina—”

“Give me something, Everest.” I stared at him, trying to be strong even as my whole body began to tremble. “Tell me how you would feel if you heard me tell another man that I wouldn’t die to save you, that his life meant more to me than yours did. Tell me how you’d feel if you saw me hold another man the way you held her, let him kiss my forehead. Tell me how it would feel to hear me tell another man, not my soulmate, that the only life I’d sacrifice my own for was his and that I did not want to live if he died. Tell me, Everest?—”

“It would break me,” he said softly.

I nodded. “Well, this is me breaking, Everest. I think I deserve to know this one answer. I deserve to know why you are choosing her over me.”

He stared at me. I watched emotions swim across his gaze even while I could not identify them. “ Okay ,” he whispered.

I flinched. “Okay, what?”

“You’re right. You deserve this answer. I am sorry my magic is so weakened that I did not sense you around or I never would have allowed you to hear what you did . . . because without context, without history . . . what you heard is heartbreaking.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. When he dropped them, his face was flushed and his eyes red like he was also losing his battle with his emotions. “And I appreciate you giving me the chance to explain, to give you that context, because I swear it is not what you think.”

“Then what is it? You just told me you love her, so if she’s not?—”

“ She’s my daughter, ” he whispered.

I gasped. My pulse thundered through my ears. Surely I’d heard that wrong. “What did you just say?”

He pushed both hands through his long white hair with his eyes closed. He took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and met my wide stare. “Saber is my daughter. Biologically. I conceived her. She was born as an infant. As you were.”

I opened my mouth, yet nothing came out.

“She was born in the year one thousand, just months after Sweyn.” He pushed to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Perhaps if we had known Sweyn had been conceived, we would have waited, but Saber was already coming.”

“She’s your daughter,” I heard myself say. When he nodded, I frowned. “Her mother?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it. Then he grimaced and looked to the ground. “. . . Was my wife.”

Wife. WIFE. He has a wife?

“ My wife died a long, long time ago ,” he whispered with a rough voice, like speaking of it hurt him physically. “ In case you were wondering .”

Oh Goddess. He was married. He had a wife. And a baby, a baby who is now an adult. The emotions swirling inside of me were a mixture of pure, unfiltered, raw jealousy, yet I was also gutted. I felt hollow. It wasn’t fair to him. He was allowed to have married and had kids a thousand years ago. Feeling ripped apart and jealous over this was ridiculous, and yet there I was drowning in it. I tried to speak, to say something . . . anything . . . but nothing came out. I couldn’t even ask questions. I was just blank. All I could do was stare.

He nodded and took a few steps backward. “I will respect your boundary because you’ve asked me to but do not think for a moment that I am not dying inside a little bit every moment I have to keep secrets from you.”

I opened and closed my mouth over and over yet still nothing came.

Then he stopped and his gaze returned to mine, this time with fire in his eyes. “It is critical that no one else know the truth of her bloodline or her life will be in just as much peril as mine. I have kept her safe and secret for a millennium. I cannot risk her now, but I cannot take another breath while you think there could ever be another woman who holds my heart as much as you.”

My vision blurred and warped as tears pooled in my eyes.

“I love her because she is my daughter, and I hope this secret gives you some clarity.”

He turned and headed for the door.

“Everest.”

He paused and glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes glassy with emotion. “Yes?”

“ Don’t go ,” I whispered. I rushed over and threw myself at him. He caught me immediately and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry. I promise your daughter’s identity is safe with me. I will not tell a soul until you say it is safe.”

He sighed. I felt his relief roll through him. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for trusting me with that secret.” I gripped him harder, digging my fingers into his shirt. “I know you have a lot more secrets.”

“I do.”

“You can’t tell me yet.”

“I cannot.”

I nodded against his chest. “Is my heart safe with you?”

He cupped my face with his hands, wiping the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Your heart is my heart. They beat as one. They break as one. Nothing is more important to me.”