31. Daphne The Undying Lands
thirty-one
Daphne: The Undying Lands
"I don't want you to leave," I pouted, crawling to the edge of the sand where Thay sat looking out into the glittering distance. His muscles were tense, and the way he kept flexing his fingers told me his mind was moving. "Can't you take me with you? I know Wolfe said to wait, but…?"
Thay glanced over his shoulder and pulled me onto his lap, wrapping me in his body until we melted together.
The day had been perfectly still. My lips felt swollen, and my heartbeat was steady.
How did I go a lifetime without kissing this man, when all I wanted was to shut my eyes and fall into him forever?
"We need to make sure all the Lyla shit has blown over before you move back into the house," he explained, squeezing me tight. "But I am not doing last week again. So give me a day or two to get shit sorted out, and then…" He exhaled. "You're all fucking mine."
"I have always been yours."
Thay dropped his mouth to my neck in a playful suck.
"Speaking of which," he said quietly, brushing my hair to one side. "Will you hand me my bag?"
I yawned into his arm, reaching for the backpack and sliding it toward us.
"Front pocket," he ordered, smirking against my cheek.
I dipped my hand in and pulled out a pen and two pieces of paper folded into fours.
"What is this?" I looked up at him as I unfolded them in the dark. "Thay?"
It was a pre-filled marriage application, and Nathem had already signed the marriage certificate.
"Only if you want to make it official," he steadied his voice. "I mean, it's enough that my name is on your skin."
"Nathem officiated our fake ceremony, and Blade and Wolfe were our witnesses?" I laughed softly, peering at the way his name felt like forever. Like something that wouldn't go away if I shut my eyes too hard or not enough.
"We'll have a real one," he said. "Go to that spot on Second Beach you love so much and say all the shit."
"Say it now." I turned in his arms, loving the way the cold air made everything feel alive.
"What?" he laughed.
"If this is our wedding day, why wait?" I slid closer, wanting to take him in fully. "Why not just say the words now?"
Thay blinked, a rare, faint blush rising in his cheeks before he cracked a smile.
"There's something else in there," he said, nodding toward the bag.
I reached down, shifting my hand until my fingers caught on something smooth and thin before I pulled it free.
A ring.
"It's the sea glass," he said, searching my face in the dark, "from the winter we spent in Joyce, right before my naming ceremony.
And the dandelion wisp folded into its center is from the wish you made for home that night under the bridge," his voice quieted.
"You didn't know, but I caught it. Because the universe is a piece of shit and I figured I could do better. "
Something warm cracked open in my chest.
"I know it's not a diamond," he added, a little rougher now, "and it sure as hell isn't home. But I don't know…" He swallowed. "I thought this was better."
My vision blurred as I turned the ring in my fingers, my breath catching when he slid it onto my hand.
A perfect fit.
"You know you are my home, right?" I said, finding his eyes in the quiet. "That when I wished for safety, roots, and something to hold me… I was wishing for you. You are what I wanted everything to feel like."
Thay stilled, clearing his throat before he spoke.
"Have you ever heard of the Undying Lands?" he asked, his voice so steady it made the world go silent.
"Like from Lord of the Rings?" I laughed softly, trying to follow. Of the five novels he has ever read, this was his favorite.
"When the hobbit gets back from Mordor, he realizes the Shire isn't the same. That the world took too much from him, and there's no going home after that kind of darkness, that kind of weight. You can't go back. Not to life. Not in the same way."
I blinked.
"So he gets on a boat with a white wizard and a bunch of elves and sails to a place where nothing dies… but nothing really lives either. It's peace. It's rest. It's permission to be done."
His hand tightened on mine.
"That's what you feel like to me, Daphne."
A beat. A shiver.
"You're my Undying Lands."
The air tasted of salt; the ocean pressing itself into every single breath. I didn't mean to cry, and yet somehow I did.
Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew I would never get a white dress and a clean altar; it was always going to come down to him and me staring into each other's eyes in the darkness, making promises only we knew how to keep.
It was a messy theology, but it was ours.
He was my home on earth, and I was his eternity.
"I hate that your life is Mordor," I leaned my forehead to his, feeling the way his fingertips fell to the back of my thighs.
"I'd do it all again if it meant having you," he whispered. "Every. Fucking. Moment of it."
I took the marriage contract and pressed it to his chest, signing my name on every dotted line until the magic clicked into place. It meant something that Wolfe signed as my witness. Maybe this was him keeping me and letting me go at the same time.
"You'll submit it when you get back to Seattle?" I smiled, marveling at the way cold ink could mean so much.
"Fuck, Daph!" Thay's hands went into my hair, pulling me into a stormy kiss that burned into my lungs. I wanted to die inside him. Taste him. Feel him dirty and wipe him clean, the way he had done with me over and over again.
"Thay?" I rocked my hips when the heat of his tongue shifted to my earlobe. "I want you."
In a few hours, I would lose him to the rain. My body would be empty and my bedroom window open… I did not know how to stop time. Keep him locked inside my chest, where nothing could ever hurt him again. How to run away. All I knew was that this moment changed everything.
And change in our world wasn't just dangerous, it called for blood.
"You have me," he mouthed, groaning when my hand dropped low, running the length of his stomach until it met the band of his flannels. I reached in, taking him into my hands and gently stroking him. He moaned into a growl. "You fucking have me."
Thay's hand shot up, palming and squeezing the soft line of my throat, before he pulled me closer. His love was violent, like crimson flowers bleeding in a sea of purple. That strange patch of black in a winter storm. If he didn't push, he didn't feel. And I wanted him to feel everything.
But not because he was afraid.
It was one of the many lessons life had taught us: anything good meant something bad could follow.
You didn't trust it, whether it came from a person claiming to be your friend or meals that lasted more than a week.
Good things never stayed. So the moment I signed those papers and became his was the exact moment he knew he would lose me forever.
Not because it was true, but because it was too good to be true.
With my free hand, I tugged at his wrist, sliding his touch to the beat of my heart.
"Daphne." He swallowed, watching the rise and fall of my lungs between his fingers.
Some men look at your eyes, others your smile, most of them your ass, but it was always my heart he loved the most.
The sound of its tempo.
The way it beat just for him.
"I am not going anywhere," my voice cracked. "I'm all yours."
"The world won't let us have this, Daph. You know that, right?" he broke, the words tumbling in a jagged whisper. I shifted, falling closer against his chest. "You fucking know it."
Anger and something else slammed into me when I pressed his hand down harder until the sound of my body drummed inside his.
"You're wrong because the one thing life gave us was each other. The one fucking thing! It wouldn't take it back just because we believe in it."
"Babe. Daphne. Do you hear yourself? That's halo shit, and you know it," he grabbed my face, his eyes lighting up.
"Life is an evil fucking whore that takes EVERYTHING, Daphne.
Everything good. Everything that breathes.
All our parts and all of our time. It takes and takes and then cocks its gun and fucking TAKES some more! "
I trapped my fingers in his hair and pulled his head to mine.
"Only, I don't have more. I am so tired, Daphne. So fucking tired. All I have is you, and if it takes you… I will fucking…"
"Stop," I breathed against his lips, giving him my air in slow, steady pieces until it was something he could hold on to. "Breathe with me."
He shivered, the muscles in his chest going taut.
"Thay!"
I exhaled, and he inhaled.
He inhaled, and I exhaled.
I breathed him in, and he breathed in me.
"Daphne."
"We're married. It is done. And I promise life will never leave you without me, or me without you." His hands bruised deeply, holding onto some invisible thread with all his might. "I am yours, and you are mine."
Thay's warm tears slid down my cheek and into my mouth. Salt, pine, and forgotten ink stained everything when his fingers slid the edge of my panties to the side. I did not have time to breathe before he was inside me, filling up my stomach with a shadowy promise.
"Till death do us part?" he asked, licking the tears from my face and gulping them down.
"No, Thay," I rocked until his eyelids trembled, everything breaking and coming together in neon letters. "Not even then."
"Death can't have us," he moved my hips, faster, harder, making the stars cry.
"One body," I whispered my vows. Last night he had branded me, but now I was claiming him. "One soul."
"Forever!" he fucked, hollowed out and hungry for something real.
Words like love tumbled before me, falling, twisting… looking fate in the eye. And I couldn't catch it, my feet tripping, my body wanting to rain!
"For…" I cried, catching the sob in a whirl of purple thunder. "Always."
"For always," he repeated and then slammed his soul straight into my fucking heart.
The night was ours.
The fear was real.
And I had just married Thayor Milo Gavros.