25. Soulmate #2
Dain had a soulmate. Dain had a soulmate.
And Alluin had… Alluin had… Gods, Alluin had seen it happen, had been right there, had to see exactly what he’d lost forever by saving me.
Would he hate me now? Or would it be worse than that—would he slowly grow bitter through the years, realizing how much I’d cost him as he watched our prince with his soulmate, knowing that he could never have what Dain now had forever?
I couldn’t get it out of my head. Not as we crossed back into Faery, not as Dain commandeered horses from startled soldiers and led us at a gallop back to the garrison, and not as Alluin and I followed him to the garrison healer to ensure that nobody got thrown into a wall for not moving fast enough to suit our prince.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment of realization and wishing I’d had the foresight to be looking at Alluin instead of at a dying woman.
The healers threw Dain out of the healer ward, which was probably wise.
Ignoring Dain when he was emitting a nonstop growl and pacing back and forth wasn’t an easy task, and nobody (including Dain) wanted the healers to be distracted when dealing with a blood-poisoned mortal who happened to be the soulmate of the crown prince.
He stood in front of the door like an angry gargoyle for a few minutes before turning and stalking over to where Alluin and I were waiting. He didn’t meet our eyes, just turned a seat backwards and sat broodingly, staring at the door from further away.
Alluin dared the silence first. “Well, at least you get to miss the dinner.”
Dain barked out a harsh laugh. “So I do.” His tails lashed once and his ears turned down for a moment in an embarrassed pose. “I don’t want you to tell her. About what I…am.”
I looked sidelong at him.
His ears pinned back. “About what happens on the full moon,” he elaborated. “About what I turn into. I don’t want her to know.”
“Dain…” I started.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice going as cold as ice.
“She’s mortal, Zhiolas, and just look at me.
” Dain flexed his wing-arms and scratched his talons across the stone floor.
“Don’t you think it’s already going to be difficult enough for her to see me as anything other than a monster? As anything other than an animal?”
“She’s your soulmate,” Alluin said in a soothing voice. “Your body is as natural to her as her own. You won’t even be able to glamor away scars without her knowing, and she won’t enjoy seeing you do it.”
“Fine,” Dain snapped, swiping his thumb across his brow to bare the scar that split it, one of the few marks from Phazikai that stubbornly refused to heal.
“I can forgo glamor. But don’t tell her, alright?
” he asked, his expression going pleading for a raw moment, a glimpse of the man I so rarely got to see un-armored.
Alluin set his hand on Dain’s shoulder. “For a year and a day, I swear not to tell her of your birth form unless you give me leave to do so, my prince,” he said gently. “But remember that she’s your soulmate and her own person. Don’t hang the sins of the world on her shoulders.”
Dain’s ears dropped, but he nodded. “Zhiolas?” he asked, looking over at me with traces of that vulnerable expression still on his face.
“I swear the same,” I said with a sigh. “Though I think it’s a mistake.”
“That’s not your call,” Dain said. He returned to brooding. “Could you leave me alone, now?”
Alluin met my eyes over Dain’s shoulders and made a wry expression. I gave him an over-dramatic look of tedium, rolling my eyes and flicking my tongue out through my teeth, which got a raised lip from my prince.
“Alright, alright,” I said in a light tone. “C’mon, Alluin. Let’s go grab dinner.”
Alluin let me make it all the way out of the building and most of the way across the yard before he said, in his brooks-no-arguments voice, “Zhiolas.”
“Hmm?” I asked brightly, trying to move faster.
“Zhiolas. Stop,” Alluin said, and godsdammit if that didn’t always work on me. Begrudgingly, I stopped and turned to look at him.
“What?” I asked, trying to sound exasperated.
He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me his best you-know-better look. “Stop it, Zhi.”
My ears laid back at the annoyed tone of voice. “Stop what?”
“Stop being guilty,” Alluin said, baring his teeth. “You have no right to feel guilty about a decision that I made for you, as your commander, with full knowledge of the consequences, and you damn well shouldn’t feel guilty about it costing me something I didn’t even want.”
I hunched my shoulders in automatic defensiveness. Of all the times for Alluin to successfully divine my emotional state, he had to pick now? “She’s his soulmate.”
“So fucking what?” Alluin whipped back. He took a menacing step closer to me.
“I’m not jealous. I’m not wounded. I lived for forty-eight thousand years without a soulmate before I ever met you, and I don’t count them as wasted.
If you’re upset because you can’t have a soulmate unless I die and you heal, you’re welcome to yell at me for the decision I took from you, but don’t lay that sorrow at my feet as if it’s mine. ”
The very thought of Alluin dying made me snarl in defensive anger, my temper rising. “Don’t you dare die.”
Alluin let out a mirthless laugh. “Zhi. You know who I am. What I am—a born general. Cold. Calculating.” He tipped up my chin, holding me there as he examined me. “Can you imagine the world where I have a soulmated opponent? Or, gods forbid, a nemesis?”
My skin chilled as the words sank in. I’d seen Alluin on the battlefield—had watched with heated pride at the way he could reduce the whole world to maps and tokens, war measured in ells of land and tallies of numbers.
He was good at it. He loved it. The Armies were like an extension of his will, and he used them to devastating effect.
Alluin matched against a much greater force had saved our Court. But Alluin matched against another Alluin? Someone as clever and as ruthless?
“That’s the heart of who I am. That’s the monster I could become,” Alluin said, his eyes intense, the golden light of the sunset reflected in their hazel depths.
“I would surely love every second of it, as cities fell and soldiers died. Eternal war, Zhiolas. That’s the promise fate could have handed me.
It was a relief to know I would never have to face that future or become that man.
” He let me go and looked away, his expression going pensive.
“I’m not as noble as you imagine. I choose not to feed the creature who would make the world his gameboard, but it still lives inside me. ”
We stood in silence for a long moment, his words lying between us. He was wrong about himself, I thought, but my opinion wouldn’t change his bone-deep understanding of himself. Choosing to be kind and choosing to be loyal were as much a part of him as the lack of innate drive to do so.
“I wanted one,” I said softly.
Alluin winced, his ears laying back and brow creasing.
I stepped forward and hugged him, resting my face against his shoulder when he went stiff.
“I could never seem to manage to keep a friend,” I murmured against his familiar form, the scent and warmth of his body easing away the stress.
“My parents think the world of me, but they don’t really seem to see me, merely some image of a perfect son.
My sister resents me—or did, last I knew.
My many friendships and loves were only ever surface-deep.
” I sighed and turned my head so I had my cheek against his shoulder and my nose brushing his neck.
“I would have had a flirtmate, I think. It would surely have turned me into the worst version of myself. I’m not unhappy to never step into that future. ”
His arms went around me slowly until Alluin was embracing me, his body molded to mine. He nuzzled his face into place against my throat, nudging my wavy hair out of the way. “You have a friend now,” Alluin said, his voice rough.
“Two, even,” I said, reaching up to rub my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Three, maybe, now that Dain’s got a soulmate. She’ll probably be a riot.”
“You think she’ll like him?” Alluin asked, sounding hopeful.
“Lu,” I said with a laugh. “It’s Dain. I think she’s going to love him.”