Page 30

The Story Of Us

I can’t tell what Reven thinks about me caring for him, but a new knowing settles over me, inside me, as if the goddesses themselves are whispering that it wasn’t the right time before, but it is now.

I pull my knees up and lie my cheek on them. “I care deeply,” I whisper.

And for the first time since I discovered his memories were gone, I let him see it. In the way I let my gaze trace the angles of his face. In the way I try to memorize every part of him and absorb every nuance of this moment, despite the imaginary glass wall between us. The tightness in my chest that hasn’t eased, the heavy thump of a heart that isn’t whole yet making that impossible, but now I don’t try to hide the way it’s hard to breathe.

Reven stares back at me, aquamarine eyes even more brilliant than the waters, questioning and wondering while we sit together in the paradise that should be a lovers’ hideaway.

But it can’t be that for us.

The smile I offer him is tinged with the sting of sorrow weaving through every thought and feeling I have about my bondmate. “If I showed you how much I care, even now that you’ve seen a little…you’d run.”

His gaze sharpens. “I don’t run.”

Did I offend him? “From this you would.” I swallow and don’t let myself look away. “You don’t trust it.”

Not yet.

He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t say anything.

“Also…” I hesitate. Do I admit this?

“What?”

I twist my lips, searching for the words to express this right. “When we met the first time, we didn’t like each other to start with. Love wasn’t really something either of us had been searching for.”

“You think the circumstances led to our falling for each other?”

“I…not entirely. But the circumstances are how and why we got to know each other. I got to see the people you saved, see your determination to stop Eidolon, how protective you are of the people around you who need it. You got to see…” I wave a hand like I’m swatting something away. “Whatever you saw in me. But I didn’t realize—”

I cut myself off. I almost said I didn’t realize how hard it would be to trust the magic that binds us. I do still believe we will find each other again in another life, but it wasn’t until this happened that it sank in how much I don’t trust that he’ll fall in love with me all over again, even then.

But I can’t tell him that part. Not yet.

Telling him about being bondmates would only make it harder for him, maybe even make him trust us less. He could see it as a lie to trap him.

“Tell me about how it happened,” Reven says.

I blink at him. “What?”

“How we met. Our story. Don’t tell me everything. Just the beginning. How we started.”

I am going to look at it as a good sign that he wants to hear. “Are you sure? Before you seemed pretty adamant that you’re a different man, and that you don’t want to hear about your previous life.”

“I’m sure.”

Just like Reven, decisive and succinct.

I nibble on my lip as I think about where to begin. “Do you hear the voices still?”

Nothing about him changes, but I can tell that he’s homed in on me in something near to shock.

“The whispers and cries for help from people all over Nova,” I elaborate. “The darkness brings them to you sometimes.”

“How did you know that?”

I smile. “You’ve always heard them. You used to hear me, long before we ever met.”

“You needed help?” He turns on his rock so that his entire body is facing me instead of the water.

Does he not like that?

I shake my head. “I wanted away from a life where the only expectation was that I die to save Tabra. Which even now I would do, if it came down to it, but because I love her. I guess I wanted the choice, and to be my own person with worth beyond just that.”

He stays quiet.

“After you were shed from Eidolon, you started finding the people you heard and rescuing them…” And from there it all tumbles out.

I tell him about how he gave the Vanished a safe haven. I tell him about the Shadowood. I tell him about how he kidnapped a girl he thought was the princess of Aryd, about to become queen, to keep her out of Eidolon’s hands…only to get the decoy princess instead. I tell him about his dragging me through Wildernyss, taking me to the Shadowood, and my secrets and his secrets. I tell him about healing me from my own glass I skewered myself with and show him the scar in my side. I tell about the attack on the Shadowood and fighting Eidolon in the palace in Oaesys.

About the start of us.

He sits beside me listening. Never takes his gaze from me. Never asks a question. Doesn’t even move except to blink.

I can’t tell what he thinks about any of it, but I tell him anyway.

Finally, I wind down. “A lot more happened after that,” I say. “But that’s the beginning.”

When he says nothing, I lapse into silence. But only for a little. “Did I put you to sleep?”

At that, he shakes his head. “Far from it.”

But then says nothing more.

I glance around us. What now? “Did any of it sound familiar?”

“No.”

I was expecting the answer, but it’s like taking an arrow to the back all the same, a sharp sting followed by a bloom of pain that spreads outward.

“We should return to the camp.” I push to my feet, which takes a second because I’ve stiffened up, sitting here so long.

Reven stands, too, and I don’t know what to do or say, so I guess I’ll just go. But two steps away from him, he snags me gently by the wrist.

I still, my back to him, and close my eyes, absorbing his touch, breathing through it, willing it not to end, for him not to let go. Not yet.

“I’d like to…try something,” he says, in a voice gone lower, softer.

Careful not to move my arm so I don’t break his hold, I angle toward him. “What?”

“I want to kiss you, if you’ll let me.”

If I’ll let him? My heart leaps. Try holding me back. “Why?”

“Maybe it will trigger a memory.”

So not because he really wants to kiss me. That arrow in my back twists, but I face him and move so close I have to tip my head back, close enough for the heat of his body to penetrate my flimsy clothes in the cool of the desert night.

And still not close enough. “Kiss me, then.”

I don’t know why, but the words come out as a challenge, more than giving permission, which I’m also doing.

He rears back a tiny bit, as if that surprises him, but I also see the instant the light of his own challenge steals into his eyes.

Eyes that remind me of the ocean on rainy days, turbulent and crashing, Reven doesn’t look away.

Neither do I.

I’m snared, like an animal in a trap I don’t want to escape. “You still smell like home,” I whisper.

I told him that once. A time not too much unlike this one, when we were alone in a clearing in the Shadowood together. I told him he was a good man, and I kissed the self-inflicted scars on his wrist. Scars he no longer has. And I said he smelled like home.

And just like that time, surprise lights his eyes. “So do you. Like the arctic weeping trees that grow on Tyndra’s shores.”

Goddess, maybe this is how bondmates work when we meet in each life. We say things and do things…familiar things…until our souls finally recognize each other. “I know. You told me that before, once.”

“I did?”

I nod. “I think those trees must be like creosus willows like this one.” I glance up at the branches that cocoon us, putting us in our own little world together. It’s not in bloom now, but when it does, it smells like heaven—fresh and new. Like dreams.

In that moment, he’s not a stranger who doesn’t remember me or act entirely like himself. He’s just…Reven.

Kiss him.

I move my hand to brush a lock of his hair away from his forehead, the texture just as silky against my fingertips as when I was allowed to touch him this way.

“What are you doing?” His voice drops even lower. The rough texture of it should be abrasive to my ears, but to me it’s a caress.

Even so, I pull my hand away. Slowly, because I don’t want to stop. “I shouldn’t have…”

He’s here with me. That should be enough for now.

He searches my eyes, then, haltingly, leans closer.

I stay very still, trying to control my breathing, trying not to do anything that would stop him.

One kiss. Just one.

Another memory to store away for my ravaged heart.

His kiss, when it comes, is soft, but over too fast, although he doesn’t sit all the way back, still leaning in like he wants more.

I close the small gap between us and softly feather my lips over his. A teasing caress. A sweet, soft, luscious caress.

“Goddess above,” he breathes.

Hooking an arm around my waist, he pulls me flush against him and takes over.

I almost cry out, because we’ve done this all before. But I’m not stopping this with tears, damn it. It’s too precious to lose.

His lips part mine, warm and firm and commanding, gentle yet somehow urgent, and I am a thousand times willing to go where he leads, opening for him like a lotus flower rising and spreading out in the sun. Our breaths mingle, growing heavier as we angle our heads, seeking more, turning the kiss impatient.

The familiarity of it—the finally of it—has me wanting to burrow into him and never leave.

This time I know exactly what this feeling is. Need. Delight. Coming home. Desperation to never end. But it’s the heat that sparks in my skin around my arm and my forehead where the lines of the thread that bound us touched during that rite.

“He will never love you again.”

My emotions have allowed the Shadows to slip out, to slide into this moment between us.

I make a small sound in my throat.

I hardly hear myself, but Reven must have, because he stops abruptly, lips still against mine, breathing hard. So am I.

“Reven?” I whisper.

When he doesn’t answer, I pull back slowly. He stands with his eyes closed tight, frowning so hard I’m surprised he’s not giving himself a headache.

Why? Was it horrible? Did he hate it? Did he remember something? Or maybe he can’t and was trying to with that kiss?

“Reven?”

He opens his eyes finally, but it’s no help. His expression is indecipherable.

“Meren?” Bene’s shadow passes overhead. I don’t blame him. I’ve been here a while. But his timing couldn’t be worse.

“Not now,” I say to the skies.

Reven looks up. “You’d better go.”

Then shadow sucks in from around us to cover him and when it melts away like a dark mist, he’s gone.

I pull the sleeve of my top up to find the sparkling lines of our bond already fading away again. Did he see them? Did he feel them and know what they mean?

I hope not. Because if he did, then his first instinct was to run.