Page 63

So Far From Where We’ve Been

The Celestial Alignment is in two days.

The Seers have already given us an hour—late in the afternoon.

We are facing, at the very least, trying to break six goddesses out of their prisons. Eidolon isn’t going to let that happen without a fight.

We’re not ready.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’ve been avoiding me,” Cain says from behind me.

Avoiding everyone, more like.

People going silent whenever I walk into the room, the emptier streets of Oaesys, and the knowledge that Eidolon could use me to mess it all up don’t feel great. I get it, though. We have to have multiple plans and backup plans to cover a multitude of contingencies, and I can’t and shouldn’t know all of them. So, I’ve been keeping to myself.

At the moment, that means lying on the large lounge chair in my glass garden. It’s more like a couch—big enough for two people to lie on—that Tabra and I dragged in here a long time ago. I flip to my side to find Cain standing in the doorway that leads from the bedroom into here. It’s still strange to me because this room used to be a secret space, and now it’s not. No more need for secret twin princesses, and so no more need to keep our garden to ourselves.

I hope future generations thank us for that.

“No,” I answer. And I haven’t been. Instead of resting like Reven told me to, I spent the day in Wildernyss on what I honestly hope was a fool’s errand. Something I won’t have to use when the time comes.

“No?” Cain crosses his arms. “Then where have you been hiding?”

I don’t have it in me to argue about where I’ve been today, or to care that I’m sitting here in a nightgown. It’s modest enough. “If I was avoiding you,” I point out with the loftiest air I can manage, “you wouldn’t have found me. Need I remind you that you taught me how to be invisible?”

Cain chuckles. I’ve missed that laugh. He used to do it more often, at least around me. Now, I can feel the tension between us like a bowstring drawn back.

We stare at each other for a long moment. There are worlds of unspoken words between us, so many things that have happened, so much that has changed. We’re no longer the city waif and the boy in the desert, laughing under the stars and whispering stories about imaginary futures we’d never have. He knew me better than anyone, despite not knowing who I was meant to be.

I clear my throat. “Uh. Were you looking for me for a reason?”

He gives his head a shake, like he was remembering, too. “The wall was a good idea,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Hakan’s awake.”

I pull my knees to my chest and give myself permission to sit with that piece of relief for a moment. “Is he okay?”

He nods. “Pissed as hell that Eidolon used his own lightning against him, but otherwise fine. But after he woke up, Pella did something weird.”

I huff out a laugh. “That’s nothing new. She does something weird all the time.”

He doesn’t laugh with me. Instead, his brows sort of beetle the way he used to do when he was a kid and didn’t agree with his father or something I had done. Both were equally likely to put that expression on his face.

He moves to sit at the edge of my chair. “She hugged me and told me how proud she was to be my sister, and that if anything happened to either of us in the coming days, she wanted me to know that.”

I lean back, eyes wide, but I don’t toss off some quick quip because I can see how much this means to him, although at the same time, something about it seems to be bothering him. “I guess we’re all taking stock these days.”

“Yeah. Well…” He spikes his fingers through his hair, visibly uncomfortable.

Without warning, he takes my hand, holding it in both of his, his calloused palms from years on horseback and living in the desert rough and warm against my skin.

“Meren…”

I’m about to lose him. It’s been coming for a while, but now that it’s actually happening, the younger me who made him the center of her world doesn’t want to let go. So selfish, I know.

“If anything should happen…” he begins.

I don’t bother to deny that it might.

He swallows. “Know that I have no regrets. You’re my best friend and always will be. You were also my first love.” He looks at our clasped hands, and I do, too, picturing just for a moment the tattoos we would both bear if we’d married in the Wanderer way like he wanted not so long ago.

He looks back up, mouth quirked. “And…you were my first heartbreak.”

Neither of us looks away or hides from this truth.

I squeeze his hand. “You were my first love, too. At least in this life. But fate, and bonds, and previous lives had other plans. I wouldn’t change any of it, but I wish I could have saved you the pain.”

He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t change any of it, either. Pain and all.”

My throat thickens. “Really?”

“Really.”

While there’s regret and a small sort of sadness in his eyes, this is also the first time he’s looked at me in a very long time in the way he used to. No hurt. No longing. Just as a friend. Nothing more.

The guilt that’s poked and prodded at me about Cain trickles away and we’re left—somehow, miraculously—like we used to be.

I’m just the girl who makes him laugh, who tells him when he’s being a pain in the ass, and who he shared all of his frustrations and secrets with. And he’s the boy who makes me laugh just as hard, who taught me to fight and hunt and survive in the desert, and who I also told everything to other than who I really was. Except now he knows that, too.

And I know in this instant that we’re going to be okay.

Not together like I think we both once pictured, but I’m not losing him.

Thank the goddess for that.

I do the only thing I can think of, what I wanted to do every time I escaped from Enora to find his zariphate in the desert where I could pretend I wasn’t me and he could pretend he wasn’t him. I swing my feet to the ground and pull us both up so I can wrap my arms around him. Sighing, I bury my face in his chest.

After only the smallest hesitation, Cain hugs me back tightly, his cheek resting on the top of my head. We stand that way for a long time, neither of us saying anything. Then, finally, “I’ll always love you, Meren.”

“I’ll always love you, too.”

I can feel his smile, and the last piece of my heart settles into place.

Eventually, he steps away. “Now that that’s settled, given that you’ve been waiting one thousand years for your bondmate,” he says, “I pray to the goddesses that you and Reven both survive whatever comes next and get to experience at least a little happiness.”

Him and me both. “Thanks. That would be nice.”

He chuckles, then looks at me like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans down and kisses my cheek, then turns sharply on his heel and walks toward the other room.

He glances back at me one last time, then closes the door behind him.

I stare at it for a long time. I’m glad we’re okay. Glad he’s okay. For me…well, what the future holds is entirely in the hands of a single, rogue goddess who still hasn’t returned to us and seems dubiously trustworthy at this point.

I sigh and look out above the open wall of my garden to the night skies. “You better keep up your end of the deal.”

Like I have any power to punish a goddess if she doesn’t.

“What did Cain want?”