Chapter 26 The Veil Remembers #3
Then the bell above the café door jingled and a couple of students bustled in, shattering the intimacy of the moment.
“I should get to the hospital.” Heat bloomed in my cheeks as I reluctantly rose to my feet. “To check on Amy.”
“I can walk you,” Kian said, standing and smoothing his coat with elegant precision, a flicker of boyish uncertainty softening the lines of his face. “If you’d like. It’s not far, and I have time before office hours. To ensure you get there safely.”
Something in my chest ached at the contrast; this god who could command shadows and rule the dead, offering his company like it was a small favor he hoped I’d accept. And given how many times I’d been followed and attacked in the past few weeks, walking alone seemed less than appealing.
I nodded, my cheeks burning brighter. “I’d like that.”
We stepped into the morning. The city moved around us; cars groaning at traffic lights, conversations half-caught in the wind, the whisper of dead leaves brushing across the pavement. But between us thrummed a frequency only we could hear, vibrating in the space between our bodies.
The quiet swelled, full of everything I couldn’t put into words. I found my gaze drawn to his hand swinging as he walked. So close to mine. It would be nothing to close that gap, to see if touching him would ease the constant pull or make it worse.
As if sensing my thoughts, his hand twitched toward mine. Not quite touching, but the intention was there.
My gaze slid to his wrist, where his sleeve had ridden up slightly. And there, barely visible but unmistakable once you knew to look, six small dots. Dark as the vow we’d made.
“You remember it too, don’t you?” My voice was almost lost to the wind. “The pomegranate? The vow we made?”
He faltered mid-step, his eyes finding mine.
“I’ve never forgotten,” he said quietly. “Even when I tried.”
His fingers traced over the marks on his wrist. “Six seeds that made you Queen and me—” He stopped, swallowed hard. “less alone than I’d been for a millennium.”
“Did you know?” I asked the question that had been burning in me since I’d learned about the curse. “When I ate them… did you know it would bind me?”
He winced. “I knew what the seeds would do,” he said, and there was no regret in his voice.
“Binding your soul to mine, to the Underworld. That was intentional. That was—” His voice softened.
“That was the most beautiful thing I could think to offer you. Eternity together. A tether that death itself couldn’t sever. ”
He stopped, a flicker of pain in his eyes. “What I didn’t know was how Cyrus would weaponize it.”
My eyes stung with unshed tears at the thought.
“What was it like?” I asked. “Those thousand years? Before everything fell apart?”
His expression transformed, grief shifting into something bittersweet. “Beautiful. You made the Underworld a place of rest instead of punishment. You gave the forgotten a voice. And you gave me—” His voice went rough. “—hope that I could be loved for myself, not just feared.”
He cleared his throat. “We had a millennium of happiness, building a life together, making the Underworld into something more than just a realm of death. I thought we had eternity.”
Words failed me, and we settled back into a charged silence. We reached the corner. The hospital loomed just down the block, trees whispering against the wrought-iron fence marking its boundary. We both stopped, as though invisible hands had pulled us to a halt.
We turned towards each other, and the world narrowed to just the space between our bodies, the desire that had been building.
His fingers brushed mine, the whisper of touch. A question asked in the language of skin.
My breath hitched. “This is insane, right?”
“Completely.” His thumb traced over my knuckles with infinite gentleness. He leaned closer. His hand came up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing beneath my cheekbone. His eyes dipped toward my mouth, flicked back to meet my gaze.
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” he murmured, voice strained.
I bit my lip, heart skipping a beat. “I know.”
His smile was soft enough to break me. “Worth it, though.”
The air around us trembled with restraint. We would have thrown caution to the wind if not for the squeak of shoes on pavement. A faculty member I vaguely recognized from campus rounded the corner, saw us standing too close, and gave a polite nod as she passed.
We stepped apart instinctively, though our hands still brushed like magnets refusing to release.
“I should go in,” I said, trying to steady my racing heart.
“I’ll wait for your update,” he replied, his voice rough around the edges.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For not rushing me. For seeing me. For… everything.”
His gaze held mine. “I’ve waited three thousand years for you. I can wait a little longer.”
The words lodged in me like a promise carved into something more permanent than stone.
I turned toward the hospital doors, but the tether between us thrummed with every step I took, pulsing like a heartbeat in my bones.