Epilogue
Varro’s POV
It has been twelve days since I lied to my mate.
Every one of those days has been a struggle to conceal my thoughts and fears from her.
Cress did not pass the test of five questions.
Not entirely, at least. At the time, I did it to protect her until I could further assess how much of the Drift she truly suffered from.
I considered the possibility that this disease of the mind could wax and wane.
If she just needed time and distance from the events in the Ledor Canyon, then bringing her unnecessary worry was the last thing I wanted.
In hindsight, I’m glad I withheld the truth.
Shortly after she struggled to pass the test, we were sent into the chaotic chain of events that led to her wielding more of her power than ever before.
If a lie is to protect someone, then it becomes a secret. And if it was to protect her, was it really so bad? I justify this to myself daily as I wrestle with my conscience.
Cress has a secret of her own. She does not know I am aware that Trace left her a letter.
When Cairis discovered it while preparing the body for burning, he came to me.
Out of respect. He said he did not feel comfortable giving it to her behind her mate’s back.
Especially since he was aware of their previous relations.
While I appreciated Cairis’ intent, I would have never withheld that letter from Cress.
I believe firmly in the power of our love.
Trace is dead. He wasn’t and isn’t a threat to our bond.
If anything, I wanted to believe the relaying of that letter would only serve to soothe the overpowering grief and guilt she felt for his sacrifice.
If it remedied the wound in any way, I’d want her to have it.
Cairis confirmed for me that he had delivered the note, but she has never spoken of it.
Never even acknowledged its existence. I nor Cairis read it.
For all I knew, she burned it, or hasn’t read it yet, but part of me believes she has.
After we left Artume, there was a weight lifted off her shoulders.
The grief for him and Nori was kept at bay, and all of the internal self-hatred she’d punished herself with eventually faded from her thoughts.
I never brought up how easily I could hear and feel those thoughts.
The way she loathed herself. I just loved her harder on those days.
The more time that passed, it felt as if the burden of it had finally lifted.
Her plague of nightmares seemed to pass as well.
This is why I couldn’t bring myself to introduce any sort of dark cloud over what little inner peace she had just found.
I also knew that, with Basdie as our final destination, I couldn’t promise her continued peace of mind.
Saryn was there—unless Idris broke his word and dealt him the punishment we had expected.
Cress and Saryn had never fully come to blows over Nori.
Add Trace to the death toll, and I feared for our mentor immensely.
While she could not directly blame him for their loss of life, she would be the first to reason that he is directly at fault for the mission going so poorly.
How Theory would react to all this would be another volatile component of our arrival.
Unless she had already been assigned to another mission, I was uneasy thinking of how she’d react to Saryn’s treason.
Needless to say, I was not eager to return to Basdie as quickly as Idris would have liked, and taking Cress up on the accidental detours was a welcome distraction from the Imperi.
But it would not be distraction enough from the Drift.
I worry the other Wielder’s journals that proposed a mate as a viable solution to the Drift were either sorely mistaken or simply did not have a large enough sample size to make such a bold conclusion.
With all our time travelling by horseback and making camp, sometimes in tents, other times at various inns, I made a point to ask her all about her life.
Just like we did before heading to Artume, I focused on committing the details of my love’s lifetime to memory as if it were my own.
I encouraged her to ask more questions about mine as well, so it didn’t seem so one-sided and intentional.
I didn’t want to possibly alert her to my true motivations and expose the storytelling for what it really was.
There were two reasons for my actions. Selfishly, the more I knew, the more I could watch for inconsistencies, memory lapses, even go so far as to challenge her with different questions in the future.
Unselfishly, I wanted to know her as deeply as she knew herself.
I wanted to see her the way she saw herself in her youth, before the Imperi, and how she saw herself today.
What if her long-lived life did not come with preservation of the mind like mine would?
I would remember for her. I would carry the weight of both our memories.
If someday I was the only confirmation she had of a past, then I would be that anchor for her.
These were heavy worries to carry, even for me.
Sometimes I would rise earlier than her in the mornings and wander the forest nearby, trying to chase the anxieties from my waking mind.
Being connected as deeply as we were, it was hard not to accidentally slip in and out of one another’s mental space.
This is why I preferred the nights we stayed at an inn.
With other travelers around, she and I knew it was the Imperi standard to keep our shields up at all times.
She never questioned why our bond was quieter during these stays.
One evening, the sun had begun to set and there wasn’t another inn on our map for miles ahead.
A map that we would mysteriously lose before ever arriving in the Elorns; not easy to claim you’ve been lost with a map in hand.
Cress led us a ways off the beaten path, seeking a water source for the horses.
When she found a shallow creek amongst a lush bed of moss along the forest floor, I was more than content to make camp there.
She pitched a tent while I made us a fire.
By the time we had completed our typical chores, the twilight sky was barely visible through the heavy canopy of trees.
We may have been farther inland from the sea than I’d prefer, but at least it wasn’t the mountains yet.
Our previous detour had taken us as far as the plains.
Cress insisted on seeing Nori’s homeland with her own eyes.
I had to admit, the fields of wheat were quite a sight to behold.
I have fond memories now of Cress walking through the endless tall grasses, dragging her fingers along the fluffy tips of the awns.
She seemed more restored than I’d seen her in some time, and I was glad I didn’t protest the longer trip.
“Your skin is just as gold as these fields,” she had remarked.
Lost in thought of those memories, my attention was stirred when a bare-footed Cress suddenly climbed over my seated waist, straddling me.
“Well, hello there,” I said, pleased at her compromising position.
She rolled her hips forward—the wicked little thing.
My cock hardened and began to strain against my pants.
There was no hiding the arousal she drew from me.
I am reminded of so many nights in Basdie, before she knew I was hers, before she ever gave herself to me, that my hand and selfish thoughts of her were my only route to relief.
“You know, with the company of only the forest creatures, we can be as loud as we want,” she said teasingly.
“When has that ever stopped you before?” I pushed strands of her hair behind her shoulder and began to inspect that delectable neck of hers.
“You’re right.” She paused, then slid her hand between her thighs, running her fingertips along the length of me, above the fabric. “But I want to make sure the Gods can hear us loud and clear. After all, they made us for each other, right?”
Her breath fanned against my lips, and at the end of her question, she squeezed my member for good measure.
Cress’s eyes darkened, and gone was the sweet and innocent female I first met; what remained was my Moirai. The flames of desire flickered in her gaze, and when she showed this side of herself, it took all of my self-control to not punish her for being so unmerciful with her affections.
My voice dipped low. “Do not tease me so, or I’ll be forced to subject you to a song you won’t so easily recover from.”
She tightened her grip, grasping it firmly, forcing a deep grunt from me.
That’s it.
It’s time she understands that first and foremost, I am of the Sea, and there is a reason rumors run rampant regarding our kind… And the unrelenting way we like to fuck.
I grabbed her hand tightly and pulled it away, pinning it behind her back. I watched as her pupils dilated, and in that very moment, I knew, she knew, that there would be nothing soft or gentle awaiting her, and that she incited this. She had lit this flame in me. And I would make her burn…
I rolled the frame of my body to the side, flipping her over onto her back. Now, I held the upper hand as I pinned her body to the ground. Her gasp of surprise as I made the swift, fluid motion to this position was only the first of surprises I’d wrench forth from her.
“You wish for the Gods to hear us?” I said before biting the edge of her earlobe, tugging it playfully with my teeth.
“Yes,” she panted, already caught up in the frenzy of anticipation.
I ran my hand down the center of her stomach, pushing past the top of her loose pants and cupping her slick sex with my fingers. I watched her back arch with want as I pressed my fingers in ever so slightly.
“I fear your ecstasy may draw their envy.”