Chapter Twenty Four
MILA
Mila stood inside Pedr’s cabin, awash with smells, emotions that rolled like waves, and memories.
Oh, those powerful bittersweet little whirlpools, drawing her in.
Kissing Pedr in the cabin, the open window spilling sunshine.
Eating at the table. Perusing through books on the shelves while he snuggled her from behind.
Giggling late into the night, with the stars and the sea as their company.
Returning felt surreal, perhaps because it had been her greatest dream. How many nights had she brought herself to this place through her mind? Returned here in memories to survive the suffocating loneliness and ache?
Mila slipped over to Pedr’s side of the cabin, grateful the curtains were drawn.
A hot tub of water appeared off to the side.
Towels, round pink soaps, and a new dress stacked on the table, near a wide comb and a petite mirror.
Scents assaulted her at the same moment.
Fresh fruit, greens. Baked bread, flat as her hand, but steaming hot.
A sweating glass of water dripped onto the table.
She ignored them.
Outside, Draven’s low voice rumbled in an easy refrain. There was something soothing in the cadence and tone. Her thoughts flew to the moment she met him. The stirring magma in her chest, as if something awakened. The emotion of the moment, perhaps? Maybe, but she wasn’t certain that explained it.
There had been an arcane, sleepy side of her that aroused when she met Draven, and only now did she consider that it might be more than the shocking realization that her father had arrived in the flesh.
What if it had been something else?
If that was true, she couldn’t care less. Instead, she studied Pedr. The love of her life. They’d done it. They found each other. She studied him with abandon. Rather, this version of Pedr, for there must be dozens.
She didn’t know this one. Not really. Though he didn’t appear all that different. More stressed, perhaps. Aged . . . sort of. This Pedr had fifteen more years stacked behind him. Fifteen years she could not touch, nor share. Fifteen years she might have inhabited, enjoyed, thrived.
She wasn’t the same either, was she? He knew that Mila.
Not this Mila.
Could the two be so different?
Mila closed her eyes, drew in a breath. Pedr still smelled like the sea, though more potent with intensity and power.
Age advanced him in small ways, despite his Arcanist state.
His slightly-wrinkled eyes. The stamp of passing days around his thinner lips, still firm and steady and full.
Years apart locked him into someone far more haggard, wise.
This was not the boy she fell for.
This is the man he became.
Mila ran the back of her finger down his cheek, grateful to have him close.
His smell altered slightly. More fresh, less damp.
A good sign, she hoped. She peeled her filthy clothes off, shuddered away memories of groping through mountains and dark holes to chase his smell, and tossed them in a pile to send overboard.
For now, she sank into the blissful bath, dunked her head underwater, and stayed there until the cooling temperature brought her to the surface and her new life. They had done it.
Mila had returned home.