Chapter 62
The day crept by in heavy silence. Tethys, now a mere ghostly husk, trailed Araes through his bedchamber as he packed his things.
With each folded tunic he placed in his leather pack, the tear in her chest ripped further apart.
She sat on his bedside, with eyes unfocused, listening to the scuff of his boot against hardwood as he traversed the room.
Araes didn’t speak. Not even a sound or breath escaped his weary lips.
He just packed.
“Araes…” she whispered finally, her voice searing her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“Yes, my love?” he replied. His boots continued to shuffle back and forth across the room. From the armoire to the packing table. Again and again like the incessant tick of the clock.
“There’s something we must do before you go,” she replied.
He paused mid-step. Then, a weight pressed on the bed beside her.
Behind the curtain of curls concealing her tears, she watched Araes’s hand brace against the comforter.
Every vein along his knuckles rippled with life.
“I’ve given you almost everything. Now, there’s one thing left, and it’s been yours since the day we met. Maybe even before then.”
He tipped her chin up, his eyes begging hers to meet them.
“Procyon and I may be bound together by the mortal marriage rites, but we never completed the Elythera,” she said, risking a glance toward him. “I cannot promise you every part of me, but this one…I’ll gladly give you.”
Araes loosed a breath, his jaw flexing as he took in the depth of Tethys’s request.
“The Elythera?” he asked, brushing a thumb down her chin.
“It’s an immortal ritual, binding two souls together.
As a child, Euda taught all of my siblings the Elytheran rites in the event that we might find someone to share the rites with, but I lost hope a long time ago…
that is, until I met you. It will connect us—tether us—to one another.
No matter where you or I go, or how lost we may be, the Elytheran bond will always bring us home,” she replied, leaning into his touch.
“Are you sure?” Araes asked. His eyes glittered with wondrous warmth as she nodded and kissed his palm.
“I’ve never been more certain in my entire existence, Araes. I love you. My Elytheran rites were always meant for you.” She rested a hand on her abdomen, searching for the little flicker of light that grew there.
She wanted to tell him. To show him the future they’d shape together and the life their love created. But saying goodbye would be all the more difficult if he knew the truth.
“I love you too, Goddess. No distance or war or primordial-fucking-being could keep me from you,” Araes replied, pulling her into his chest. Her tears, salted and warm, seeped into the fabric of his tunic.
Tethys wanted to melt into him. To stay enwrapped in his arms for the rest of eternity.
Here, they were no longer two individuals, but two pieces of a whole.
“Do you accept, then?” she asked, wiping her damp cheeks.
“Yes, I accept.” She heard the smile in his voice, saw the love flashing in his eyes.
In the past, sitting here, facing a man she’d offered her world to, would have terrified her.
She’d fortify her walls and push him away, just as she did so many of her friends and family before.
Tethys’s heart, once calloused and cold, now settled in her chest. Everyone she’d ever loved, ever trusted, always left.
Everyone before him.
Tethys rose from the bed, smiling as she retrieved Araes’s dagger from the baldric resting beside his leather pack.
Araes shifted, keeping his eyes fixed on the silver blade as Tethys dragged its edge along her palm.
She winced, letting the sting of the dagger burrow through her skin as it drew a steady trickle of blood.
“Here,” she said, passing the blade to Araes. He mirrored her action, gliding the blade’s edge along his own skin.
“I assume you aren’t squeamish, Lieutenant,” she mused, returning to her seat beside him. He arched a brow, cradling his palm.
“Only when it comes to your blood,” he said, chuckling softly. Wonder refracted off the flecks in his irises as Tethys pressed her thumb to the blood now pooling in her palm.
“Do as I do,” she said, brushing her thumb, painted red, down his lower lip. She knew the rites. In a time when soulmates and happily ever after didn’t feel too far out of reach, Tethys had taken them to memory, in hopes of one day sharing her soul with another.
Araes mimicked her movements, staining her lower lip with his blood. She welcomed the sweet metallic taste on her tongue. Araes didn’t flinch or shy from her touch as she traced his jaw. He mirrored her, maintaining the tether between their gazes.
“From blood we are one,” she whispered finally.
“From blood we are one,” he repeated.
Candles flickered their soft amber light across his face, highlighting the sharp angles and features of his jaw.
The ragged rise and fall of his chest matched her own.
Here and now, they were one. As they would be until the end of time.
Even death couldn’t fracture the bond now holding them together.
Somewhere in the heavens, a comet shot along the sky, propelled by flaming, glittering stardust. Its descent to the earth rumbled low in Tethys’s chest. He was hers, and she was his.
? ? ?
Sun beams filtered in from the crystal windows, sending rainbows dancing along the walls. Tethys welcomed the ache in her left palm as a reminder of the previous night. With her eyes still closed, she slid her hand across the mattress, expecting to find the solid warmth of her sleeping lieutenant.
The sheets were cold, however.
She jerked upright, her wild curls, still matted and unkempt, falling over her face. Araes’s bedchambers were silent, save for the roar of an impending rainstorm lurking over the seaside horizon. The packing table, once carrying the weight of his massive leather pack, was now vacant.
Her stomach roiled, and before she could register the utter heartbreak of Araes’s secret departure, she heaved over her bedside.
Barely reaching the washroom in time, her stomach emptied in violent waves of sickness.
With her body draped over the toilet, she expelled everything until nothing else could possibly remain.
Her heart pounded in her head, as if its beat jostled the very brain matter residing there.
She clung to the ceramic bowl and clawed her way back to standing.
The bedchamber remained empty when she finally found the strength to move. It was as if the room itself wiped every drop of Araes’s essence from its walls. She rubbed the scabbed-over slice across her palm, sending a jolting ache through her wrist. It was proof enough to stay grounded.
The vacancy was one like none she’d ever felt.
She tucked back under the duvet and pulled it to her nose, breathing in his residual scent.
Tethys never imagined a day when she’d have to say her goodbyes, but here it was.
Some part of her was grateful he left without waking her.
Watching him turn his back and walk through those doors would be agony unlike anything she’d felt before.
She sank into the mattress, letting the plush down curve around her body. In time, maybe she’d learn again to be alone. For now, however, she’d succumb to the loneliness, the frigid emptiness now hollowing her chest. Her hands traced the curve of her abdomen, resting just below her navel.
I will always find you.
She knew her lieutenant would, and now with the Elytheran bond tethering them together, she would always find him.
She closed her eyes, expanding her mind until its boundaries widened outside of her body, the palace, the estate.
It stretched further and further until it pinpointed a second heartbeat. One steady and laced with despair.
“I guess it’s just you and me now, little light,” she whispered. The tiny life tucked safely inside her body seemed to flutter in response. “We’ll be okay.”
She rolled to her side, pressing her face into a pillow now cold and forgotten beside her. His scent lingered on the cool silk, but it’d eventually fade. She prayed they’d be together again before that day came.
Her fingers brushed against something beneath his pillow. A scroll of parchment intended as an offering to the Ostarian flames so many weeks ago. Tethys sucked in a breath as she unrolled the simple note. In crisp, neat handwriting was Araes’s secret kept.
I’ve loved her since the moment we met.