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Had he ever thought about having sex with her, or was it just Lindi who wanted something a little more? Then again, she was so touch-starved she may have turned to a cactus for pleasure if it would offer it.

“I didn’t think you would like being close with me. I assumed you didn’t want that.”

“Oh,” she rasped, lifting her hands so she could interlock her fingers to play and fidget with them coyly. She lowered her gaze to look at him through her lashes while hiding her face. “Does that mean you want to?”

She could almost feel her heart coming up her throat in nervousness. They were married, and this should be normal, yet it was anything but normal between them.

Lindi no longer knew what normal felt like.

“It’s never truly crossed my mind,” he answered dully. “Whichever way this act results in what I want is all I care about.”

In the back of her mind, Lindi played out a scene. One in which she grabbed an invisible dagger and shunted it into her heart and played dead because... his words were so detached and callous he may as well have felled her. She even heard her imagined cry of pain as the blade dug deep.

Instead, she bolstered herself with courage, and a touch of her outrage. How dare he deny her pleasure under his lack of care? A woman had needs, and so should a man! Even if he was a freaky shadow being.

She lifted her hands in annoyance, almost like a shrug, but also like she could reach out and wring his non-existent neck. “Don’t you want pleasure? Human men seek it constantly, even going to places to find it.”

Even doing it themselves, her mind grumbled.

After inserting herself into different societies, Lindi was learning that the belief system she’d grown up in wasn’t a shared one.

Men still preferred pretty virgin maidens, but not all societies made it a requirement, and not all shared that same sentiment.

She’d blushed at her first brothel, and the first set of tits she’d seen paraded in public with no one batting an eye like it was strange.

A lot of what she learned was that customs could be contextual, and they differed between people and backgrounds.

Then again, she may have also been sheltered by her parents and their isolated farming lifestyle.

Learning all this made her mind fill with different fantasies, and her body thrum with need.

Over time, it was worsening. She’d been alive for almost seventy years.

.. and her lust was building. Her need for affection was stifling, and if she had to be subjugated to another wormy tendril, she’d claw at the ether and murder his undying ass somehow.

But he’s a man, of sorts. Hopefully he’ll...

“Coitus seems like a pointless activity, since I’d find no pleasure in it. This way is faster.”

Lindi promptly shut her fallen jaw, and her features tightened in dismay. She fisted the bottom of her blue tunic, unsure if she wanted to weep or scream at him. Instead, frustration bubbled in her chest and Lindi didn’t know how she wanted to release it.

She bit the sides of her tongue as she gritted her teeth and lowered her eyes to look at anything but him. She found his toes and mentally cursed him to stub the pinkie ones at every chance the universe permitted it.

Her anxious heart changed and swirled with rage instead. Undenied, lusty, needy rage.

“Have I upset you?” he asked, as if he was uncertain. “Is this something you want?”

“Obviously, if I’m bringing it up,” she muttered as low as possible, her face twisting up further. She tried to smile to show it was fine, but she knew it was more like a horrible cringe as it pulled tightly across her face. “But don’t mind it. Forget I asked.”

“Lindiwe,” he warned, just as she reached out to grab one of her boots.

“I’m rather embarrassed now,” she admitted, shoving her foot into it before grasping the other. “And I’d like to leave.”

Weldir waved his hand towards her raven cloak floating beside him – intangible to her currently in her physical form – as he secured it with a tendril to it to keep it solid for him.

“I have yet to fix this. I thought we agreed that you would stay here until I have completed that task.”

“I will go without it for now,” she stated, while turning her head away from him defiantly. “If you place me near Nathair’s home, I will spend time with him.”

“We can speak on this, if you’d prefer.”

Lindi threw her hand out. “I would sincerely rather not. If it’s not something you want, then I see no reason to convince you otherwise.”

She’d also never beg for it.

I wish I didn’t ask, she thought, craving nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die of mortification. Gosh. I’m so embarrassed.

She doubted he understood how much courage she’d gathered, and she hadn’t expected to be rejected so coldly or outrightly. But she wanted something more from him, even if it wasn’t true affection.

Just something to feel like she wasn’t as alone as she sometimes felt.

Something to look back on with fondness, and to remind her body that it could be loved physically, even if emotionally it felt impossible.

She couldn’t – nor wouldn’t – offer it to anyone else, even if he hadn’t made that a requirement.

She was his wife faithfully, even if it was a distant role in all ways.

Mum and dad said I would be a spinster if I continued on my lack-of-marriage path. She felt like one, except she somehow produced children, like by a sexless miracle.

Weldir was barely her friend. At most, he felt like a lifelong acquaintance she couldn’t shake from her tail.

In reality, she wasn’t all that upset with Weldir.

She was just disappointed, and that emotion could be rather crushing to one’s spirit. She was angry at the situation, that was all. He didn’t even seem to truly understand how or why she was hurt, and it was just another case of Weldir being Weldir.

A god who lacked comprehension of what it was like to not only be a human, but someone with needs, wants, and longing.

But the long silences and absences were more painful than she was ever willing to admit, especially as she had no idea how to strum up a conversation.

Worse still, on the odd occasion that she tried, he wasn’t always there.

Such things would warp the mind of most humans, so how she’d managed to retain a semblance – let alone an abundance – of sanity was beyond her.

“I don’t feel anything, Lindiwe.”

She closed her eyes, wishing for the conversation to end. “Yes. I gathered that,” she snapped out a little harsher than she intended. “You’re very detached. You always have been.”

She hadn’t expected him to feel affection or a sickening ache to be near her, but she’d been hoping they could at least find pleasure together. Their bond was apparently forever, so why not find enjoyment in it somewhere?

Still, Weldir admitting that he didn’t feel anything was just another blow her psyche couldn’t take right then.

Maybe somewhere in her mind, she wanted to feel adored emotionally, but she’d been willing for at least physically.

She didn’t like that he was so open about how little she meant to him, considering all she’d done for him as his wife and servant .

She turned from him when she felt the inevitable well of tears forming and made sure he couldn’t see it when she palmed her cheeks to keep them from falling.

“I’m hoping Orson will be there,” Lindi continued while forcing an uplifted tone in her voice, trying to distract from the conversation and hoping he would just allow it. “I haven’t seen him and Nathair since you made me leave Austrális last.”

Weldir’s following sigh wrapped around her entire body, seemingly exhausted with her and her human emotions. “As you wish, Lindiwe.”

By her next blink, she was transported to his mist within the Veil, and a cascading waterfall in the daylight thundered just before her. The rainbow that greeted her was too joyful and bright for the despondent pain that clung to her lungs.

With her hands bundled into fists, she looked down into the Veil, and Nathair’s lake.

Why do I feel like I keep being punished for giving him my soul?