Epilogue
Freya
I never understood why someone would want a Soul Mate. It seemed rather messy.
Objectively, I understood that most people who signed up for special services, signed up to find out if they were compatible with someone—enough so they could safely make a trip across worlds—had been spun a lie.
Someone spilled sweet, coaxing stories in their ear about lifetime companionship and great loves, and, hey, maybe you’ll walk away with a cool tattoo.
Maybe that was it. The tattoo I’d popped out of the womb with, a smattering of stars on my chest, my shoulders, my arms, one larger in the center, had always been treated as a curse.
Allegedly, my mother had screamed when she saw me, thinking something had gone horribly wrong in the womb and I was covered in black dots like a spotted dog.
My freckle pattern was a perfectly normal shade of orangey-tan. Exactly what would be expected of someone with my hair color and skin.
And yet, my mother’s screams set the tone. Immediately hidden away from prying eyes and gossips who would die at the chance to hold something over my parents, my father in particular, I’d been promptly shoved away into darkness.
I’d always thought the lie that I’d been stillborn was quite callous, but I didn’t have much of a say in anything in those early years. Still didn’t.
Though I didn’t really care to focus too much on the particulars, I’d been whipped around into unique torture after unique torture for twelve years, before the grand finale.
Having your parents willingly toss you through a rip between space and time was a formative experience, to say the least.
I figured it was that, along with other similar experiences, that gave me the skills to not freak out in my current situation.
Hands tied behind my back, mouth dry from dehydration likely caused by some poison or other. My body rustling around, shoving my shoulder painfully into whatever seat I was folded over.
Objectively, not very good.
Still, not even breaking the top ten.
It was the reason I was able to slowly blink my eyes open, finding Elijah sitting in front of me with arms rested on his thighs and hands clasped together, and didn’t promptly start crying.
“Hello,” I said, my throat scratching painfully. I didn’t even try to hide my wince. “Could I have some water, please?”
Elijah blinked at me like I was insane. I’d been told I was before, learned to not let it bother me. “Water?”
“Yes.” Clearly he’d heard me. You could hear it in my voice that I needed it. What was so confusing about that?
Even then, Elijah moved slowly as he reached into a bag next to him and withdrew a water bottle. As he did, I wrestled myself into a seated position, only taking passive notice of the fact that we were in the back of a van of some sorts, sitting on long benches built into the wall.
He passed it to me, stopping when he realized I didn’t have hands to take it from him. I half expected him to revoke the offer, but he unscrewed the top with a scowl on his face and shoved it toward me unceremoniously.
Only about half of the water that poured out of the bottle made it in my mouth, leaving the rest streaming down my chin.
I couldn’t care, not with my hands tied behind my back, and Elijah didn’t seem to either.
“Should I wait for you to start speaking or can I start asking questions?” I asked after several minutes of silence.
Elijah’s eyes narrowed into slits. “If you want to know why you’re sitting here, I’m afraid that’s a much longer conversation.”
“Well, we can certainly get started. We have a while to go on the drive, I assume.”
Though I had a healthy dose of fear tightening my stomach, I wasn’t as shaken up as I probably should have been. Certainly as much as Elijah expected me to be.
He leaned forward slowly, clearly trying to intimidate. Unfortunately for him, the nervous titter proximity to him caused was an old friend at this point. I’d gotten good at hiding it.
When he did nothing but stare and stare and stare, I took that as permission to keep speaking. “You wouldn’t be taking me back to Salona. Definitely deeper into Muli. So at least a couple more hours to go, right?”
Elijah nodded slowly. “I’m taking you to the capital.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said, and meant it.
Elijah blinked once. “Nice? Do you think I’m taking you on a vacation? You are very clearly my prisoner.”
“I know.” I wasn’t all that pleased that he was doubting my intellect. “Prisoner or not, it will still be cool to see it.”
“Right. Cool.” It took a few stiff nods and several seconds for Elijah to compose himself enough to speak again. Whatever he was going to say was lost as the van whipped to the side, sending me straight him, unable to catch myself with anything other than my face.
Despite the smarting in my nose, it wasn’t the worst, I realized. Actually oddly nice, a buzzing warmth from his chest to my cheek.
The hands that pushed me back to sitting were mechanical and cold.
So was Elijah’s expression, set in stone.
“What?” he barked, before the door even opened.
Anya—one of Elijah’s close company who had always looked at me with a too-observant expression that made me nervous—was standing there, somehow looking less pleased than him.
“I heard talking, your grace,” she said, sliding her gaze to me for no more than a second. “You told me that when she woke up, I needed to stop.”
Elijah certainly didn’t seem to remember telling her that. “Right,” he said again, very slowly.
“Whatever,” Anya said with a heavy eye roll. “Tom won’t stop bitching about having to take a piss. We’ll be back in a few.” This, with a deeply annoyed look in my direction.
“Well, she seems like a joy,” I said, as she closed the door behind her.
Elijah looked at me like I was crazy again. “Why are you so calm right now?”
I considered his question, hoping I’d find the mind to lie. I couldn’t. “I feel strangely comfortable around you.”
It was true, but, clearly, markedly, the wrong thing to say.
Elijah jerked back, all but plastering himself to the far wall of the van.
“Maybe comfortable wasn’t the right word,” I hedged. “I just don’t think I’m in all that much danger.”
Elijah dropped his head into his hands, groaning loudly. He said something, but I couldn’t hear it.
When I said so, he looked up at me under dark brows. “I said, how long have you known?”
“Known what?”
Elijah raised one eyebrow. “Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m not. Known what?”
His scoff ricocheted through the entire van. “Please. You’ve seen right through me from the day we met—”
“I don’t know if we were ever properly introduced. I just kind of saw you around one day.”
“—and are clearly committed to your secrets or you certainly would not have put that skinny kid in the middle of this shit.”
I wasn’t following all that well, but if I pointed it out, I was worried he’d call me dumb again. “Arthur?” I asked. I didn’t mean anything by it, but muscle definition was kind of a prerequisite to being a soldier and he looked emaciated compared to everyone else.
“Whatever,” Elijah barked, like the very mention of his name had sparked his temper. “You still haven’t answered my question. How long have you known?”
“Known what?!”
Oh, well, apparently Elijah was close to some sort of breakdown. I’d seen people in the throes of a panic attack start pulling at their clothes, overstimulated by everything around them.
Elijah seemed to be taking the same path, breathing out a frustrated growl then ripping his shirt over his head.
Then, it became apparent that I was the one experiencing psychosis.
A string of garbled sounds fell from my lips. I only passively noticed the sculpted planes of his chest, dusted with hair.
Instead, I was counting the stars inked into his skin, praying they wouldn’t add up to fifty.
The larger one in the center was damning enough, the point slicing down to the exact point where his ribs began to flare outwards. That would have been enough to get a priestess excited.
Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, all in a line under his right collarbone. The skin under my own started to buzz.
Forty-eight, over his pectoral.
Forty-nine, a little to the left.
“Can you turn to the side, please?” I asked in a hoarse voice.
Without me needing to prompt him, Elijah turned and lifted his arm so I could see it.
Fifty. Tucked right where his arm would fall to the side.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. I really, really didn’t.
I blinked up, finding Elijah’s eyes on me already. When our gazes caught and held, I felt the star in the center of my chest open, unfurling with light.
Hello, it seemed to say, spreading into each corner of my body without invitation.
I could tell Elijah felt it too, his eyes widening and nostrils flaring. Only for a second, before the anger returned.
“Well, this is very inconvenient,” I said, clenching my hands into fist where they were still tied behind my back.
“Oh, my paranima, you can’t even begin to understand how much.”
The problem was, for as cocky as Elijah sounded issuing that warning, it was him who had no idea how much.
?
Esme
In eight years, I’d never once seen Peter look as ghastly as he did right now.
His normally vibrant skin was dampened with a gray hue, his lips a little blue.
Ella was trying to talk to him, largely unsuccessfully.
He seemed to be waging a silent battle with himself, and I knew we’d only learn the contents of it when he was ready.
I waited. Ford waited. Bellamy and Soren, too.
Arthur, even. Shaking like a leaf, worried that he’d done something wrong even though Freya took off by herself without warning every day.
It was just different this time. Watching that little blinking dot on Peter’s tablet drift farther and farther away on the radar, glowing against a black screen.
The map had dropped off a while ago, Freya moving past what we’d been able to plot in our explorations into Muli.
It was probably only a matter of time before the tracker lost its signal.
The thought made me nauseous.
I fell backwards blindly, right into Ford’s waiting embrace. When his arms curled around my front, a small burst of faith lit up my chest. Maybe we’d be okay.
Then Peter’s head fell forward into his hands and that feeling vanished.
“Arthur, would you excuse us for a minute, son?” he said, voice muffled by his palms. Arthur’s face pinched with hurt before Peter added, “If I let you stay, you’re going to learn information that will keep you on the Empire’s watch list forever. I don’t think you want that.”
“No, sir,” Arthur said, scurrying away and shutting the door behind him.
No one protested, no one let out any smartass quips.
We all knew that the Empire had us in their clutches for the rest of our lives and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Peter included.
When we were alone, Peter sighed deeply, his shoulders dropping several inches with the exhale. “Ford, Esme, I will need you both to lead the search efforts. I haven’t decided whether or not I think it’s best to send you with a team. I’m open to your input on that point.”
Peter was a good leader, often looking for opinions and feedback, but I’d never heard him say so as bluntly.
“This will be a delicate situation, one I trust you can both handle.”
“So can we or can we not kill Elijah?” Ford asked. When that garnered a few wide-eyed looks he said, “What? We all know he has something to do with this.”
“Very likely,” Peter conceded. Another weary sigh. “I cannot let you kill Elijah. Your orders are to find and rescue Freya. Elijah will answer for his crimes eventually. If he wasn’t going to before, he will now.”
Before had been nearly killing a Royal. I wasn’t sure what was more criminal than that in the eyes of the Empire.
I was wise enough not to ask, letting Peter get his explanation out. If not because it looked physically painful for him to deliver.
“Bellamy, Soren,” Peter said, voice wavering noticeably. “When you return to Vir, I need you to find a way to get back to Florus. Yourselves, not through a messenger. I will need you to set up a private meeting with Henrik Astor.”
Bellamy, to her credit, barely moved a muscle as she replied, “Understood. Why him? Besides the obvious.”
The Astors were the Royal family in charge at the start of this whole thing, back when the Bridge was first discovered.
Before war had even officially started.
Henrik had been the leader who carried a world through the death of everything they’d previously held true with a quiet, steady strength. Even that young, I remember seeing people weep when he passed power to the Devereauxs.
He’d led with hope, promising a wave of technological developments and good fortune. Never wavering from that dream, even as the Royal family suffered an unimaginable loss in the form of a stillborn child.
“Because,” Peter said, before breaking off with a hoarse swallow. “Elijah just kidnapped his daughter.”