Chapter 43 #2
Zyphoro returns from the clearing, and she and Orios round up the remaining Legion, hunting them down, those too slow, too broken to flee. They’ve locked them in the underground den we built long ago, a sanctuary meant to protect the Tenders. Now it has become a cage.
I watch Daed huddled with the others, their heads bowed close in urgent conversation. There’s something different about him now. He is reborn, as I am, his magic changed, tempered, heavier. It hums beneath his skin, and yet, beneath that new power, I sense something fragile.
Every so often, he glances over his shoulder, as if my gaze tugs on the golden thread between us.
When our eyes meet, he smiles, but only halfway.
The kind of smile meant to reassure, though it never quite reaches his eyes.
There is so much between us now, so many words left unsaid.
But when in all this madness, will we find the time to speak them?
My thoughts scatter when a soft voice reaches me.
“Jewel?”
Malana, a young Tender mother, barely older than me, stands a few paces away, her arms wrapped around a small bundle. The baby inside coos, tiny hands reaching for the air, as if trying to grasp the sunlight itself. So pure. So untouched by all this pain.
“How can I help you or your child?” I ask, stepping closer.
Malana shakes her head quickly. “No, no, Jewel. We’re well. I only…” She hesitates, cheeks pinking as she shifts her weight. “I hoped you might just hold her? Perhaps bless her?”
The request startles me. “Bless her?”
She nods, embarrassed. “A blessing from the Jewel of the Grove for a prosperous life.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I admit softly.
Her shoulders hunch. “Of course. Forgive me, Jewel. I didn’t mean to…”
“Malana,” I interrupt gently, reaching out to touch her arm. “It’s Amara. Just Amara. We used to chase chickens through the village together, remember? We made poor Elder Varin faint once.”
She laughs awkwardly, but fondly. “I remember.”
I open my arms. “Then let me try.”
Relief floods her face as she steps forward, carefully placing the baby into my waiting arms. I cradle the child close, breathing in that soft, powdery scent that belongs only to new life.
I pull back the blanket to see her face.
Warm brown skin, dark curls, a tiny, perfect mouth. A little girl. So small, so beautiful.
She grips my finger with both her hands, giggling, a sound so pure it cuts straight through me. It’s comforting. It’s familiar. It’s too familiar.
The world tilts.
A memory flares.
A baby in a crib, small mouth at my breast, tiny feet kicking against my palm. Black curls brushing her brow. Eyes the color of a gathering storm.
A girl.
My girl.
The haze in my mind fractures. My throat tightens, breath catching as a tremor racks me. My arms go slack, and the baby slips. Malana screams, but I clutch the child back to my chest, heart racing.
The baby wails now, startled by my shaking. Malana quickly takes her, whispering comfort, her eyes wide with concern.
“Amara? What’s wrong?”
I can’t answer. The ache blooming in my chest is a chasm. It devours my breath, my strength, my calm.
I rise unsteadily, legs trembling. “Daed,” I call, my voice cracking like glass.
He turns immediately, eyes wide, alert.
My breath trembles as the truth claws its way out of me, raw and desperate.
“Where,” I whisper, then louder, “Where is our daughter?”
I don’t want his hand on my shoulder, comforting me.
I don’t want to walk beside him, to leave the village, to be led somewhere quiet so he can explain.
I want the truth. Now.
But still, I go.
Daed’s hand wraps around mine, his grip so tight I can feel the thrum of his pulse. It matches my own.
We walk in silence until the sound of the river reaches us, the steady rush of water tripping over stone.
He leads me to the bank, the ground soft and cool beneath my bare feet.
I sink down, and he crouches beside me, his hand still locked in mine as though letting go might shatter us both.
His face, once carved from battle and rage, looks different now, frayed at the edges, vulnerable in ways I’ve never seen.
“First,” he begins, voice low, “know that I love you, Amara. Because everything that follows breaks me to speak.”
And so he tells me.
He tells me of my sacrifice. My bravery. My death and how even that was not enough.
He tells me that when I thought I had saved our daughter, she was taken anyway, dragged into An’kel, into the hands of Gygarth.
The words tear through me. My knees give out and I fall against him, my body shaking as though the ground has opened beneath me. His arms wrap around me, but they bring no warmth, nothing could. The pain steals everything.
He tells me how Reon held me in a loop of time, trying to keep me alive, how they laid me beneath the earth to heal, to wait, to hope. But the only thing waiting was silence.
I cry until I am emptied of sound, until my grief has burned through me and what remains is fury.
I strike him. My fists find his chest and he does not move, does not defend himself. I hit him harder, desperate to make him feel.
“Why?” I choke out. “Why didn’t you bring her back? Why didn’t you do something?”
My strikes grow wilder, my voice hoarse with the effort of breaking him. He does not break.
So I call the vines.
They burst from the moss at our feet, curling up his legs and around his torso, tightening until they bite into his skin. But he summons his smoke, dark and violent, and the two collide, ash falling around us like snow.
“I wanted to,” he says, his voice raw as his hand finds my cheek. “I tried, Amara. Every day, I walked the void searching for her. But I cannot open the gate to An’kel. Only you can.”
Memories stir. Driftspire, the trials, the void, the demon at the threshold of An’kel.
I shake my head, my breath trembling. “The demon…he guards the gate.”
Daed presses his palm to his chest. “That demon will not be waiting for us this time, but there will be others.” He exhales, gathering me close until my ear rests over his heart. “This will be unlike anything we’ve faced, Amara. We may not come back.”
My fingers slide into his. The warmth that left me begins to return.
“I’ve already died,” I whisper, voice quiet but sure. “What more could the darkness possibly take from me that it hasn’t already?”
Daed cups my face and draws me close, not to kiss me, not even to speak, but simply to look.
His storm-lit eyes roam over me as though seeing me for the first time.
They are wide and reverent, filled with wonder, and he studies me in silence for so long I begin to think he is mapping every line of my face to keep with him always.
“I thought I lost you,” he murmurs at last, his thumb brushing slowly along my jaw. “Forever, this time.”
“If our time together has taught me anything, husband,” I say softly, “it is that we can be torn and broken, our destinies split, our fates sundered, but nothing in this life, or the next, will ever keep us apart.”
I watch the golden threads shimmer faintly beneath his skin, swirling over the steady beat of his heart. They drift down his arm, tracing glowing lines where his skin touches mine, binding us in soft light.
“I should have known then,” I whisper. “That day in the forest. The human who fell from a tree.” His eyes widen with sudden recognition.
“I saw the golden ribbons around you that day and didn’t understand what they were.
I saw them again when we made love in Pariseth.
I should have known we were never strangers.
That this…” I gesture between us, breath trembling “…was always meant to be. You and I.”
He bites his bottom lip as if holding something fragile inside him, and his eyes sheen with feeling.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “The fates always get their way, no matter how hard we fight them.”
“What do the fates say about our daughter?” I ask, my voice barely a breath.
His expression falters, softens. “I wish I knew.”
I exhale, steadying my heart. “Then we will make our own fate.”
That earns me a small, crooked grin. “Will we?”
I nod. “We will find our daughter. Be a family again. Build a new world, one free of war and hate, where she, half human and half Fae, can guide the Sundered Kingdom into something whole.”
Daed’s eyes warm as my words sink in, as belief takes root. “I named her, you know,” he says quietly.
I straighten, brows lifting. “You did? Seems like a discussion I should have been part of.”
He shrugs lightly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You were half dead. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
A laugh slips from me before I can stop it, small, but real. It startles even me, but it lifts something heavy from my chest, and suddenly I can breathe again.
“Well then, husband,” I say, smiling. “What is her name?”
He smiles back, softer now. “Estra. I named her Estra.”
The name carries with it a memory. Arax, brave, noble, infuriating Arax, my friend, my protector. A Fae who loved his daughter as fiercely as I love mine.
“That is a good name,” I whisper, and I lay my hand over his, still cupping my cheek. “It’s a warrior’s name.”
“With parents like us,” he says, his smile deepening, “the child had no chance of being anything else.”
“Then let us gather our forces, husband,” I say, rising, my voice clear and sure. “Let us bring Estra home.”
“Yes, wife,” he breathes, lifting my hand to his lips and pressing a kiss to my palm, light as wind, eternal as promise.
His eyes drift to the dirt crusted beneath my fingernails, to the smudges of soil painting every inch of my skin. He kisses my wrist.
“Let me take care of you.”
Before I can protest, Daed reaches over his shoulder, grips his shirt in one hand and pulls it off, casting it aside on the riverbank.
His body is as I remember it. Every plane and line etched into my memory by touch and hunger.
But now, those same planes are bruised and battered, the once-smooth skin streaked with blood and dust.
His hands find the edge of my robe, woven from vines and flowers, the garb of my rebirth, and slide beneath it. Slowly, reverently, he eases it from my shoulders. It slips away, falling soundlessly to the grass. I stand bare before him, heart pounding like war drums.
He dips his chin and kisses me, first the curve of my neck, then the hollow of my collarbone, then the space between my breasts. Each touch is a spark, each breath against my skin a vow of devotion. My nerves come alive, burning molten beneath his lips.
The river calls softly beside us, and when he takes my hand and leads me in, the water’s cool caress feels like a baptism.
His leathers creak as he lowers himself onto a submerged stone, the water reaching his waist. He pulls me down between his legs, my back pressed to the sculpted warmth of his chest. I feel his breath at my ear, his heartbeat steady against my spine, as he scoops handfuls of water and lets it run over me.
The dirt melts away beneath his touch. His hands move slowly, over my shoulders, down my arms, over my breasts and stomach, along the curve of my hips, down to my thighs and feather-light between my legs. His touch is tender, worshipful, and I feel myself unraveling with every pass of his fingers.
When he gathers water and runs it through my hair, his fingers massage my scalp until the river runs clear again. I close my eyes, lean into him, drowning in his gentleness.
But the need to touch him grows too sharp to ignore.
I turn, kneeling between his legs, water swirling around us.
Our eyes lock, his storm meeting my earth, and the air between us crackles.
I cup water in my palms and pour it over his chest, watching the rivulets trace down his ribs and abs, washing away blood and battle.
He winces when my fingers graze a bruise, hisses softly when I near a wound.
I dip my head and press a kiss to the bruised flesh, and his body shudders as the mark fades beneath my lips.
His hands tighten at my hips, his breath deep and ragged as I slide my body against his cock, his leathers creaking.
I move higher, my hands caress every inch of smooth skin, feeling the hard muscles flex beneath.
When my fingers reach his face, I wash away the grime, trace the lines I love so well. My hands tangle in his hair, slick and dark, gripping lightly at the roots and still, we do not break our gaze.
“I love you, Amara,” he breathes, voice rough and trembling. “I have always loved you. I loved you without wanting to. Without trying to. I loved you because I had no choice. Because you were already written into my soul.”
I smile through the ache in my chest, cradle his face between my hands, and kiss him, slow and deep and infinite, until time itself bends around us, and the world is nothing but the sound of our hearts finding each other again.