The Same Hour #2
“You have found an edge of the cage,” he says quietly. “There is a thing here, Little Reaper—right where you are standing—that I am bound from setting in your hands. And you have always been too clever not to feel the shadow of it.”
“What thing?”
“If I could tell you, it would not be a binding,” he murmurs. “But I cannot walk you to this door because this one has not quite opened yet. And until it does, all I can do is stand here and love you through it.”
My eyes snap to his. “Love? You love me?” My voice sounds so small, almost like a child’s. Therael’s face crumples.
“Little Reaper, there are a thousand things I am bound from telling you. Truths I would tear this cage apart to give you, but that is not one of them. That, I am free to say, and I will say it plainly, so you never have to wonder again.”
He leans down until his face is level with mine.
“I have watched over you across lifetimes. I held the thread of you when it nearly came undone. And somewhere in all those long years of guarding you from the dark… you became one of my own. Both halves of you. I could no more stop loving the shadow than I could stop loving the seed.”
A serpent slithers down his arm, scales shifting from deep emerald to bright jade. Its hood is half-flared, slitted golden eyes locking on me with predatory interest.
“You’re the one that hissed,” I say. “That night in the kitchen. Sage and Eden searched, but they couldn’t find you.”
His tongue flicks out. “Few do,” he rasps. “I am ssseen when I wissssh to be ssseen.” His golden eyes narrow. “And yet here you are, little ssshadow, looking sssstraight at me.”
“Arteus,” Therael says, a note of warning in his voice.
He slithers lazily from Therael’s arm onto mine, winding around my shadow.
Therael’s eyes widen.
“... He does not do that.”
“Thisss one tassstesss of the sssame ssseason as you, Rael,” Arteus murmurs, his head resting against my shadow. “I like him.”
“I still have questions.”
“Ask,” Therael murmurs.
“Before Micah, we were Therin, and we jumped after Naya?”
“Yes.” His voice softens. “Therin was the first turn of your thread. A man who thought he loved Naya.”
“But we didn’t love Naya.”
“No.”
“Then why would we jump after her?”
“Do you remember the riddle I gave Sage?”
“Yes.”
“Mm,” he hums. “Let us go over one of the lines: In every life, beneath the sun, the hunter’s chase was never done.
“You’re saying in our first life, we went after the wrong woman too? Please tell me that’s not what you’re saying.”
“In every life, beneath the sun,” he repeats. “Not some lives, Little Reaper. Not most. Every one.”
Arteus glides his scales over my shadow. “Therin never met Anya. Not once. She left on the scout’s path so Naya could stay safe in their village. Therin found the only sliver of Anya’s soul he could, which just so happened to be inside of Naya, and he locked onto it.”
“But why jump after her? Why did she jump?”
“She did not.”
The words knock the wind out of me. “What happened on that cliff, Therael?”
Arteus goes rigid against me.
“You have to understand what Therin was first,” he says quietly.
“What you were. There are only a handful of true bonds, like yours, in all of existence. They are not a fondness. They are not a man choosing a pretty face from a crowd. When a soul like yours brushes against even a fragment of its bond, it begins to come apart, every thread straining toward its missing piece. Completion is the only thing it was created to want.”
The cold thing in my chest goes still, listening to a description of itself.
“That is what Therin felt the day he met Naya—not a crush. Not love. His soul began to unravel toward the sliver of Anya Naya carried inside her.”
The cottage. Micah crawling through the snow, shredded, and still reaching. Not obsession. Unraveling.
“Therin met Naya first,” Therael continues, “before Caelen ever came home from the warrior’s road.
Therin and Naya worked side by side in the scribes’ temple.
They grew close, and she—” He pauses. “She cared for him, too. In the small, hopeful way of someone who does not yet know her own soul is spoken for. For a little while, Therin let himself believe the unraveling meant she was his.”
“And then Caelen came home…” I say.
“The moment he walked through the temple doors, Naya’s soul knew its true mate. Their bond sealed in an instant; there was no mistaking it, and no standing against it. Naya loved Therin, but she was bonded to his twin.
“He couldn’t let go,” I whisper. “Could he?”
“He couldn’t,” Therael says. “Not because he was weak, or cruel. But because his soul was still unraveling, and a soul mid-unravel cannot simply choose to stop. He watched the woman he loved fall into a bond with his own brother, and every thread of him kept reaching anyway. It simply did not know how to do anything else.” He exhales slowly.
“It came to a head on the cliff. The brothers fought—Therin unable to release her, Caelen unable to bear his mate being pulled on. Two souls in agony, grappling too close to an edge. And Naya, caught between them, was shoved by accident.”
My breath catches.
“And that is why he jumped. Therin saw what his wanting had done, and threw himself off after her. To beg the gods for a chance to take it back.”
Therael’s eyes find mine. “And before you ask, Little Reaper: no. Naya and Caelen no longer pay for that cliff. They are Andrik and Lumi now. They sealed their bond once Andrik figured out his own riddle. They are eternal and whole. Of all the souls tangled in this long sad knot, those two have already found their forever.” The faintest warmth emanates from him into the dark.
“Let that be the one thing tonight that does not hurt.”
“So who was Anna?” I ask. “You’ve mentioned that name several times. Anya, Anna, Eden—all one soul.”