28. Nahomie
Nahomie
“I rotting knew it.” Tassarion Everthorn raised an arched brow, his angular face looking at me intently. “Of course I would bond for eternity to a ticking time bomb.”
My jaw dropped. I blinked, baffled. The king looked calm. Relaxed. Wholly unbothered.
As if he knew this about me all along and he really didn’t give a rot.
I tossed my head back and outright cackled.
“Tassarion...” I was at a loss for words. “You have to be the most unserious angel...”
I leaned back, not even sure of how to process what had just transpired between us.
I wasn’t completely certain that the Nebulari legends were true.
Let alone certain if I was one of these cataclysmically powerful angels.
All I knew was that the Empyrean believed Nebulari to be real.
They’d somehow concluded I was one of them, and they were hèls-bent on capturing me.
“Competitive phantom you are,” Tassarion continued. “I promised I could give you games and danger. Here you come, trying to one-up me.” He raised his other eyebrow. “Rude.”
I could not stop laughing. Tears leaked from my eyes as I fell over, howling.
A levity seeped into my chest that made me feel light. Feel... normal. For the first time in my life I’d spoken the truth, and I didn’t feel like some oddity. Instead, telling the truth of who I was seemed almost mundane to the Everthorn King.
“I think something is seriously wrong with you,” I laughed, wiping the tears from my eyes.
“You are a walking explosive, but something is wrong with me?”
Tassarion pointed at his scarred chest with the talon of a wing. He looked incredulous, eyes wide as if I’d said the most ridiculous statement he’d ever heard. I laughed so hard I snorted before my chest tightened and I began wheezing.
The villagers of Okapi Village had given Manmi and Papi endless grief because of their fear of me.
Fear of my powers. Fear of the Empyrean.
Manmi and Papi had me living in isolation for centuries because of what legends said I was.
What the Empyrean thought I could be in their possession.
The Farasee Order desired me. The Ivory Rain hunted me.
The Dyabèssa nearly killed me. I was a pariah. A terror. A Lougawès. A witch.
But to Tassarion...
The tears were falling before I could stop them. I was completely overwhelmed. The king saw me, knew me, and wasn’t fazed at all. My powers didn’t scare him. The target on my head from the Empyrean didn’t shake him. I was protected. Cared for. Accepted for who I was.
The arrangement of our bond had initially given me an impenetrable shield through the form of the Monster King and Everthorn Manor. It hadn’t factored in that there would come closeness. Intimacy.
Stars.
Love.
Was this not what this was? What I felt? I’d only been able to observe Manmi and Papi throughout my life, and even then, from a distance. But what I saw between them is what I now felt with Tassarion. Yet...
I couldn’t know the Vainyen King felt the same.
“How in the rot do you know that?”
I turned to the king, eyes wide. I turned my body towards him fully, looking up into his bright blue eyes, my shoulders trembling despite the warm heat of the island suns.
“What are you saying, Tassarion?”
“You don’t have the right to manipulate yourself into believing something false without giving me the chance to say or prove otherwise.”
“Okay,” I whispered aloud. “No more assumptions.”
The barrier I kept firmly placed around my seven hearts broke.
Crumbled. Disintegrated. I never thought I would experience this kind of attraction.
Let alone love. Of the truest kind. Not just to be desired, but to be seen.
Understood. Known for the truth of who you are and to be chosen, anyway.
Not with the king of an island in outright rebellion against the Empyrean, no less.
“Tassarion... what does this mean?” My voice was small. Shaken. This was all so new for me, and I didn’t know what to do with all the colliding emotions warring for dominance in the center of my hearts.
“It means Zuriathelle was right. Our wingmate bond is very real.” Tassarion took my hands in his.
He released a few souls from his palms. The diaphanous beings immediately floated to me, cooing, before they curled into my body as if wanting a hug.
They were small and ghostly and ethereal, and my hearts swelled with love and goodness for them.
I felt them in my hearts. In my own soul.
In my spirit. I felt them the same way I felt Tassarion.
Like he was ever-present. “And this is real, too.”
I looked up into Tassarion’s eyes. Then I smirked at him.
“So what I’m hearing is, you’re stuck with me.”
Tassarion grinned wide, making my seven hearts skip three beats.
“In every lifetime, I’m stuck on you like monkeys on bananas.”
I exploded with laughter, my voice ringing like bells in the open air.
Then Tassarion bowed over me, his eyes lingering on my lips.
They were dark. Ravenous. I hitched a breath.
Then the Monster King seized my face in his hands and kissed me with a hunger, a passion, that stole the air from my lungs and left me shaking.
I melted into my king, wrapping my arms around his neck.
His wings curled around our heated bodies, blocking the view of the onlooking gargoyles, giving us privacy.
Tassarion kissed me slow, deliberate. My pulse skipped as I drank his passion. His need.
Blackfire exploded in my blood like firesparks.
Souls slipped out of Tassarion, tugging at our skin.
Tassarion branded my mouth with his. He slipped a hand beneath the short hem of my swimwear.
I burned beneath his touch. I let out a soft moan at the feel of his calluses pressing into my skin.
My hands were in his hair, gripping his braids as I straddled him, pressing our bodies together.
The king devoured me. His mouth claimed me like a beautiful catastrophe.
He was reverence and ruin, and he marked me by tongue and breath until I was left shaking in his arms, forever undone.
I pulled away first, my chest tight from lack of air.
Tassarion held onto me, his body completely relaxed in my embrace. He was quiet, also fighting to breathe in air.
“I love you, mi Nahomie Emélie.”
Tassarion spoke in a whisper down our bond, yet my mind rang as if the confession were crashing cymbals. Blackfire danced beneath my skin, drawing me evermore to the king. A giddiness filled me, and I broke out into a fit of giggles.
“That’s Nahomie Emélie Everthorn to you.”
Tassarion jerked back, gaping at me with wide eyes. Pearls of steel blue glimmered with the sheen of fresh tears. His throat bobbed as he leaned down, eyes brimming with shock.
“Say it again,” he whispered.
“What? Nahomie Emélie Everthorn?”
I batted my lashes. I said my newly accepted family name with pride.
I would always be a Namarielle. A fifi of the Seraphim who’d ruled for longer than an Age with honor and truth.
But I was an Everthorn now. Names among islanders mattered.
They had meaning. They held weight. It was time I claimed mine and stepped into my rightful place as bride. Mate. Queen.
“Say it again,” Tassarion whispered aloud, tears trailing down his velvet cheeks.
I lifted a hand to his face and caressed him.
“I said, that’s Nahomie Emélie Everthorn, Roièssa and Phantimèssa of Mortevain Island, to you.” I paused, letting the weight of my words, of my declaration, sink in. “And I love you. Inexplicably. Irrevocably. For all eternity.”
Tassarion crushed his lips against mine.
I tumbled backwards. Slid across the sand.
My arms were around Tassarion’s neck before our bodies sank into the beach floor.
We kissed like starved souls. He was my sanctuary.
My home. Our wingmate bond erupted in a golden rain.
Resplendent light bathed my soul. An endless rush of souls poured into my body.
Blackfire left me in waves, racing across the bond into Tassarion.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, dragging my nails down his skin.
Tassarion groaned against my mouth, biting my bottom lip.
An explosion in the distance yanked us out of the moment.
“What in the Six Hèls?”
I swung my head to the side. In the far distance, squinting hard enough, I spotted a tree so tall its height reached far into the clouds.
At the very base there was an opening, swirling with the atèmos—intergalactic starlight—within.
I gasped, bringing a hand to my mouth. Its location was obscure.
I’d never seen it before while roaming through Everthorn Manor.
Down here by the shoreline, I could barely make out the structure.
“Is that the...” The words died on my lips.
“Mhm.” Tassarion squeezed my waist, brushing his fingers down my exposed skin. “The Trumpet Gate.”
“Oh my stars,” I breathed.
I’d always known there could be a Realm Gate on one of these islands. After all, Sorellien had three. Never did I guess one of them would be here.
“I take it Empràr Zadkias has come for it?”
“His sixth attempt was three centuries ago.”
“Stars.”
“Mhm.”
“There’s no worry about a breach, is there?” I tried to keep the concern out of my voice.
I failed. Tassarion wrapped an arm around my shoulders, tugging me close.
“As long as I live, there won’t ever be a breach again.”
I looked up at him. And I trusted him.
I knew my Monster King would keep his word. Even if it could cost him his life.
“You keep your island safe... even when her angels have rejected you as their king?”
Tassarion gave me a sad smile.
“It’s the tax of being king.”
“Then your burden is also mine. I will do what I must for our islanders to remain safe.”
“Emélie,” Tassarion breathed, gently lowering his forehead to mine.
We sat in reverent quiet for some time, listening to the ocean waves.
Then Tassarion scooped me into his arms and ran with me towards the Ouanaviel Sea. I shrieked, laughing at the top of my lungs. Tassarion snapped open his wings, launched into the air until he passed the clouds, then pivoted, jerking back down.
As I playfully protested, the king yanked me down with him and dove into the ocean.
As we tumbled into the water, I squealed, water bubbles pouring out of my mouth as I laughed beneath the surface.
When I looked up, through the blurriness of the sea, I saw a thing of nightmares. Dread spilled into my blood.
Sinking beneath the surface of the sea, I watched as a flock of boneravens flew over Everthorn Manor. As they flew, they dropped a flood of ivory peonies with lavender stems down to the shores of the Ouanaviel Sea.