Chapter 32 Lavender and Ash #4
That sat heavy and comforting all at once in my chest, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I traced the scars along his ribs again.
“Did it hurt?” I asked. “When we… when I left the Underworld?”
He released a breath, going so quiet I could hear both our hearts beating.
“Yes,” he said at last, his voice carrying pain I could hardly fathom. “But not the way people think. I didn’t fall apart all at once. It was gradual, like watching spring retreat from the world one flower at a time.”
His arm tightened around me. “Every time you died in a mortal life, it was like losing color and sound. I never got used to it. Three thousand years and it never got easier.”
I offered him a weak smile, eyes burning with unshed tears. “And yet here we are, still terrible at keeping our hands off each other.”
He smirked, and the sight was pure sunshine cutting through storm clouds. “We’re cursed,” he said, brushing my hair back. “Blessed, tethered. Call it whatever you want, but it always leads us back here.”
“To your bed?” I teased.
“To each other.”
We lay in silence for a while longer, skin to skin. His fingers moved lazily through my hair, like he was confirming I was really his and not going to disappear.
I watched his face as he studied the strands between his fingers, his brows drawn.
“I can feel you thinking loudly now,” I murmured, dragging my fingertips across his sternum.
“Just reminiscing a bit,” he hummed, pressing his face into the crown of my head to breathe me in.
“You used to wear lavender in your hair,” he explained. “You told me it helped you sleep, kept the nightmares away. You’d weave the sprigs into your braids and the whole room would smell like summer.”
The memory came fast and vivid. Sitting in a garden, weaving purple blossoms into my hair. I remembered the feel of his hands sliding around my waist from behind, his lips brushing my neck.
I smiled against his skin. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything, Tealeaf,” he said. “You in London, in the 1800s. Those cold nights when I’d find you. You always had that ridiculous orange cat.”
“You mean Bastard?” The name slipped out with startling clarity, and with it came the memory: a scrawny orange tabby with one chewed ear, purring so loud I thought the windows would rattle.
He let out a soft laugh. “You named him that because he kept pissing on my shoes.”
“Well, he had excellent taste. Your shoes were ridiculous. Those pointy Victorian monstrosities.”
“They were fashionable!”
“They were ugly, and Bastard was a discerning critic.”
“You bribed him with anchovies,” he chuckled.
“He deserved those anchovies. He was the one good thing—” I stopped, the words catching, the memories and the dread of that lifetime flooding back.
His hand resumed its gentle movement through my hair, understanding in the silence.
“What else?” I asked, voice small. “What else do you remember?”
His chest expanded in a long breath. Then his hand traced up my spine.
“World War I,” he said after a moment, voice going distant. “Verdun, 1916. You were Claire then, a field nurse in the trenches. Your hands shook when you had to amputate that boy’s leg—” He stopped, swallowed hard. “But you kept going anyway. You always did.”
I remembered the mud, the blood, and shells falling. The boy’s face contorted in agony. “I swore like hell when the supplies ran out. Called the generals every name I knew in French and English both.”
“And I gave you my coat,” he hummed, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. “Standard-issue wool that swallowed you whole. You smelled of iodine and death, but you smiled at me like I was worth saving.”
My throat ached. “You kissed me in the rain. Against the supply tent. We could hear the battle raging maybe a mile away, and you kissed me anyway.”
“I wanted to take you far away from there,” he murmured. “If you’d have let me, I would have.”
The weight of another memory pressed against my mind.
“Salem,” I breathed. “1692. The gallows. I thought I saw you in the crowd.”
“You did.” His arms tightened around me. “I bribed the jailer. Offered him enough gold to buy a mansion. But Cyrus was a high-ranking church official, and he orchestrated everything. The cell was too heavily warded against me. I couldn’t break through.”
“But you were there,” I whispered.
“I was there when they brought you to the gallows,” he said.
“I tried to reach you, but the square itself was barred against me; I couldn’t cross the threshold.
I could see your face and I couldn’t—” He pressed his face into my hair.
“That was one of the worst. Watching you hang and being powerless to stop it.”
I pressed my face against his chest, holding him while he held me.
“There was Egypt too,” he continued, voice reverent as prayer. “Callista. Alexandria. You were a scholar at the great library, one of the few women they allowed to study there. You tried to save the scrolls when Caesar’s men set the fires.”
He paused, and something dark crossed his face. “I tried to stop you from going back in. Held you, begged you. But you slipped away. Caesar’s men surrounded us, trapping you inside. You pressed a book into my hands through the flames.”
My breath caught. “That book I found in the university library? The one with the note? ‘Seek the river. Seek the truth.’”
He nodded. “I hid it for centuries. Moved it from collection to collection, library to library. I knew—” His voice cracked. “I knew eventually you’d be drawn to libraries again. You always were. So I kept it moving, kept it hidden but findable. Hoping one day you’d find it.”
“You’ve been leaving me breadcrumbs,” I breathed, understanding blooming warm in my chest. “Across centuries, trying to help me remember.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “In every way I could, hoping you’d find your way back to me.”
I pressed my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. “Will you… Tell me more someday? About all of my past lives?”
He cupped my face in his hand, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
“I’ll tell you everything,” he promised. “Every life, every memory, every moment I’ve carried with me, until you understand that you’ve always been extraordinary, in every form and name.”
His thumbs brushed away tears I hadn’t realized were falling. “Until you see yourself the way I see you. Not just as Persephone, not just as Melanie, but as every fiercely beautiful and impossible version of yourself that has ever existed.”
I let out a shuddering breath, my heart swelling so full it almost hurt.
When I kissed him again, it wasn’t just Melanie kissing Kian.
It was Persephone kissing Hades, the nurse kissing the soldier, the scholar kissing the one who saved her book.
Every piece of me that had loved him, all of them present in this moment, all of them choosing him again.
We said nothing more after that. He reached for the blanket and tugged it over us, holding me close as the silence folded around us.
I listened to his breathing even out. For the first time in this life, in any of them that I could remember, I let myself believe that this wouldn’t end in flames or separation or death before we were ready.
Maybe this time we’d get to keep each other.
Maybe this time, we’d finally get our eternity.