Page 40

Ever More

Reven let’s go of the line, too, and it floats away, disintegrating as it does, like an ember caught on the breeze.

“I’m sorry,” the priestess says.

“There’s nothing that can be done?” Reven asks.

She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen a bond broken in all my years. Never heard of it happening in all of history. Nothing in our books and scrolls even mentions it.” She glances between us, mouth open like she wants to say more, then shakes her head again.

“Could we bond again? Would that fix it?” I ask. Hope is a nasty, desperate, pathetic thing sometimes.

She purses her lips, thinking. “It would rebond you, but likely not restore what’s lost.”

And Reven doesn’t want to rebond with me. Not now, at least.

“I see,” I say, and turn away from both of them, walking toward the hidden panel in the wall. Not the one to the secret room, the one to our glass flower garden.

“Meren?” Reven’s voice reaches across the distance between us, but I don’t stop or turn back. I can’t.

“Please go.” I need him to leave before I give in to the emotions that are crashing through me in a riotous storm .

“Are you sure—”

“Just go.” Go before I lose it.

I pause, staring at the wall, waiting. And when the soft click of the door closing behind them sounds, I squeeze my eyes shut.

It doesn’t help, though, because when I do that, I see his arm and the evidence of our broken bond.

Eidolon poisons everything he touches. I knew that, and yet somehow, I thought our bond was safe. But even that is destroyed.

No more bond, and instead I’m tethered to the wrong version of the same man.

With hands turning lifeless, I press at the panel and follow the steps down into the walled-in secret garden, coming out into moonlight that makes my creations wink and sparkle. Different flowers, different colors from the sands around our dominion that Tabra would bring me from her visits, the earliest ones misshapen, the more recent lovely in their smooth simplicity.

I drop onto a chaise lounge that sits in here beside a small table, only I don’t want to lie down. Instead, I draw my knees up against my chest and wrap my arms around them and stare at the single black flower among all the glittering colorful ones, that one made from the sand of the Obsidian Desert.

Tabra brought that sand back from her first visit to our ever-burning Sacred Tree. I was so jealous she got to go for our sixteenth name day. I’d wanted to see the Sacred Trees of the dominions more than anyone. Cain had promised he’d take me to see ours together, but he went without me, too.

A sigh escapes me.

That day Eidolon took Reven back into himself, I was bracing for the pain I knew would come next, the knowledge that I’d have to go on without him and keep fighting. But that was when at least a small part of me believed that Reven would remain alive and well and mine even trapped inside Eidolon, and that I’d get him back some day, even if it’s in an afterlife.

Now even that tiny sliver of hope has been taken away.

I wonder…would Scoria take my soul now if I asked her to? Or maybe Tabra could release me? She has her throne back, and allies to help her defeat Eidolon.

As for me…

I turn away from the flowers that mock me with the person I was when I made them, trapped in a life I didn’t want but full of thoughts of a future all the same. Even if I resented the path I was on, I didn’t want to run and hide from it like I do now. Even the moonlight is too bright here.

I lay my cheek on my knees and stare into the shadows in the corners that escape the moons. Quiet shadows. Darkness used to hide me, protect me, but now is trying to kill me from inside.

“I can’t do this anymore,” the words whisper from me. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

The shadows don’t move. They don’t do anything. And Eidolon’s shards are locked so deep, they can’t—

“Meren.”

My eyes flash open. For a split second I think maybe the Shadows got out, but the wall beside me shows the shadow of a man.

On a gasp, I jerk my head up to stare at Reven who is standing there…staring at me, turquoise eyes inscrutable as always.

I use my shoulder to wipe away tears I didn’t even know had fallen. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“I can’t.”

I glare at him. “Can’t or won’t? I’m fine. I don’t need you—”

“I heard you.”

I’m irritated and too exhausted—mind, body, and soul—to even hazard a guess as to what he means. “Heard what?”

“I heard your words in the dark. Felt your pain.”

I still can’t find the energy to move…or care. “And what? You came here to end it for me?”

“No.” He surges forward, dropping to sit on the chaise beside me before I realize he’s even moved. “Don’t wish that. Ever.”

“What do you care?” The whisper is raw in my throat.

He grunts like those words hurt him, then he reaches for me like he’s going to cup my face, but I lean back, as much as the chair allows, and he stills, hands midair, his gaze flashing to mine.

Don’t touch me unless you mean it.

Instead, we stare at each other. I pretend his gaze really does lose the distance that’s been there, and he’s looking at me the way he once did. It hurts. Goddess, does it hurt. I wish he’d leave, and I wish he’d stay all at the same time.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

Then his hands are in my hair and his mouth crashes into mine.