Chapter 62 #2
I watched that water responding to my touch, warmth unfurling inside me as my fingers danced across the surface. I felt it all around me.
“I want a life with Kaeleron, King of the Shadow Court. I want a life with my mate… in a place that has become my home. A city I love. A kingdom that has stolen my heart.”
Gold flared on my fingertips and I turned my hand over, the water glistening and glittering on my skin. The markings that tracked down my fingers flared brightly, shining at me as they formed, as if the magic of the water affected them.
This was what I was meant to do.
“Great Mother,” I plunged my hands into the water, cupping them together and lifting them before me, staring at the water that puddled in them as it shone as bright as sunlight.
I focused on what I wanted as I brought the water up to my lips.
“Give me the missing unseelie part of my heart, so I might be whole.”
Something slammed into me, sending the water flying before it could touch my lips, and seized hold of me, keeping me from sinking into it.
The scent of wild winter storm wrapped around me.
Kaeleron.
He growled as he lifted me from the water, as he scooped me up into his arms and flashed fangs in my face as he turned towards the shore. “Have you lost your mind?”
His chest heaved against me and sweat rolled down his brow as he kept hold of me despite my struggles, that wild and frantic look in his eyes begging me to be still, to not do this.
“I saw it in my dream, Kael. I saw myself here, with the water in my hands. I just came here to see it, and to get answers. She gave them to me. The water responded to me, and my markings appeared. I’m meant to drink the water.
I’m meant to drift in the dark. I’m not just seelie.
I’m a wolf. It might not kill me. It might not kill me if I choose to drink it.
Neve says it can grant anyone who drinks it their wish.
” I pushed against the iron cage of his arms.
“Might not kill you?” he barked and then shot Neve a dark and terrible look. “And I will deal with Neve later.”
The dragon shifter was quick to shift and take flight.
“It’s my choice to make.” I shoved at his chest.
He husked, “It might be your choice to make, but I am the one who has to live with the consequences. I cannot lose you, Saphira. I have only just found you. I do not care that you are seelie. I only care that you are mine. The other half of my soul. The female I had been born to protect… to love.”
All my fight left me as those words cleaved great gashes in my heart, as that look on his face ripped at my will and courage.
I softly laid my hand on his chest. “I can’t lose you either. Not when I only just found you and what I have been missing all my life—waiting for without ever realising it. But this feels right, Kael. This feels… like this is where I’m meant to be.”
I pressed my lips to his.
And teleported.
Landing further into the lake, beyond his reach.
“Do not do this,” he croaked as he stood knee-deep in the water.
“In my dream, I’m drawn here… to the Forge that beats in time with my heart.
The heart that is feeling more and more as if it’s missing something.
I think this is the something I’m missing.
I’m not whole. Not yet. Lucia guided me here, Kael.
From the moment I set foot in her realm, she’s been with me…
leading me to this moment.” I wasn’t sure those words were as reassuring as I wanted them to be, so I took a step towards him and opened my heart to him, holding nothing back as I lifted my right hand.
The markings shone on it, glittering brightly like sunlight playing across water, and his eyes widened at the sight of them and how they responded to the Sacred Milk.
“Kael… Tonight… the dream showed me standing here in the water. It showed me holding it in my hands. I think I’m meant to drink it.
I choose to believe I’m meant to drink it.
Why else would the goddess show me that?
I don’t think she put all this effort into bringing me here to kill me. ”
His expression softened and he took a step towards me, and then another, wading into the water to reach me as he murmured, “The goddess blessed you more than once. I was wrong about your magic. It awakened in my court, when you came to it, when Lucia reached out to you to wake that slumbering part of you—the fae part of you.”
“Do you feel unseelie?” I whispered, feeling as if I was losing my mind as the water slowly moved around me, threads of brilliant light rippling across its surface, and I noticed it didn’t do the same to him.
It didn’t respond to him.
“Yes. I think so.” He frowned at me and lifted his hands, letting his darker side rise to the fore, revealing black-tipped fingers and those ancient fae markings that tracked down the underside of his fingers but didn’t reach the centre of his palms. He looked from them to me. “What do you feel?”
I flinched as my left hand hurt and swiftly twisted it towards me as shadow wrapped around it, slithering over the surface and curling around my fingers. “It did that before. On Dagger Overlook. What does it mean?”
I cast a panicked look at him, my heart rising into my throat.
He gently took hold of my hand, calm as the water that stilled around me as we made contact, and unfurled my clenched fingers one by one, revealing my palm.
We both stared wide-eyed at my palm as markings appeared on it, gold daubing my fingertips before the ancient fae tracked down the underside of my fingers, and as it had with my right hand during the battle, it didn’t stop where it had before.
Kaeleron started at my index finger. “Rising starlight. Sacred dawn. Fiery heart. Hallowed night.”
The other words that had appeared had guided me to the ones that would summon a more powerful connection between me and the land.
“What do they mean?” I lifted my gaze to his face as he stroked his fingers over them.
“Fae.” He frowned at my palm.
“Fae? I suppose so. The Starlight and how the seelie believe Lucia had sat upon Star Rise. The dawn… which I suppose is the light. The fiery heart must be the Forge, and hallowed night must be the shadows. The two sides of Lucia. The two parts of the hearts of her children.”
“No. Fae.” He pressed a finger to the centre of my palm.
I looked there, my brows rising as I saw what he had. There, in the centre of a circle of ancient fae that matched the one on my other hand, was another single word.
“Fae,” I murmured, a feeling solidifying inside me.
“Not seelie. Not unseelie,” he said as he stroked his thumb over the symbol that shimmered in response to his touch. “Just fae.”
“Not divided. Not one heart split into two. Just one heart.” My gaze flitted between his fascinated face and the markings.
“Before you arrived, I called out to the goddess. I asked her to show me this was the path I needed to walk to become whole and no longer divided by my blood. No longer torn between light and shadow. I said… I said her children were born of one heart and asked her to let my fractured heart become whole—the two parts reunited as one.”
His thumb paused over the mark as his silver eyes sought mine. “I think she answered you.”
Fear danced in his eyes and in my heart, but I closed my fingers over his, holding them tightly, aware of what I needed to do. Just as that look on his beautiful face told me he knew what he needed to do.
He slipped his hands from mine and backed away a step, resolve settling on his features as he trusted me once more.
“I love you, Kaeleron the Wrathful. My king. My mate.” I cupped my hands and lowered them into the Sacred Milk.
Rather than moving to stop me this time, he said, “I love you too, Saphira Harper. My queen. My little mate.”
I smiled at him, tears in my eyes and a wish in my heart.
And drank.