Chapter 39
One good thing about being dead was that she didn’t have to hold her breath under water.
She could trash and kick and dive as much as she wanted without ever having to come up for air.
The bad thing about death was that she still grew tired.
Her legs still ached, the muscles in her arms burned from over-exertion, and her stomach was starting to cramp.
Nevertheless, Nymiria pushed against the current as hard as she could, eyes focused on the blot of darkness on the eastern horizon.
Other souls passed her by as she went, their tired eyes paying her no mind.
Perhaps they couldn’t see her. If they did, they would surely find it humorous to see someone trying to fight against the river of souls like a mad woman.
Well into the second hour of her struggling, Nymiria had half the mind to try and conjure her powers—tried to see if there was something that she could do to bring herself back from the dead, but when she remembered Aziel’s warning about using one’s powers for selfish reasons, she firmly decided against it.
If there was someone on the corporeal plane that brought her back to life, she did not want to return in bad graces with Fate.
Fate.
There was a brief flash of memory, pain pulsing sharply through the front of her head like a lightning bolt.
Her hand shot to her forehead, causing her to ultimately lose her battle with the water.
Her feet slipped on the surface underneath her, a small yelp escaping her before she was carried under the surface.
When her back collided with the hard surface of a boulder, she felt those familiar strong hands close around her arm and jerk her upright.
“Had enough yet?” Owen asked, a smirk toying at the corner of his mouth.
Nymiria shot him the most venomous glare she could muster, even though she was the one who probably looked like a drowned rat in the river.
Owen chuckled. “Laugh all you want, but I am not staying here.” She pulled herself onto the bank, not even bothering to look at him as she headed towards the cabin.
“Trust me, I do believe you, but could we at least enjoy the time we have together while you wait?” He called out after her.
She wanted to be angry with him, if only to have someone to be angry with, but those words made her brisk movements loosen—her hands unfurled, her shoulders sagged in defeat.
Because he was right. For the last four years, Nymiria harboured guilt over what she’d done to him.
Even if it had been his idea all along, his wish for her to kill him instead of herself, it did nothing to soothe the ache in her chest. It didn’t make her regrets any easier to carry.
And while she did not want to be here—not now—she also did not want to leave this man believing that he’d never mattered to her at all. Because he had.
He’d loved her when she didn’t believe that love existed. He’d listened to her stories, soothed away the dark terror of her past. He’d kissed her and held her and lulled her to sleep when she didn’t want to be alone.
Owen had loved her. And before Aziel, he’d been her whole world.
For years, she wished that he’d known that.
“Was it really you?” She asked suddenly, her voice feeling disconnected from her being.
“Every time I was preparing to do something incredibly foolish, I would hear your voice or see your eyes. Sometimes, it was as if you were there in the room with me.” She turned to him, not surprised to see the solemn look weighing at his face, his eyes fixed elsewhere.
“Was it really you or had I truly lost my mind?”
“It was really me.” He said softly, his voice barely audible over the sound of the river.
When he looked at her and spoke again, he was louder.
More certain of what to say. “Before I met you, Aziel and I were good friends. Aside from Trio and Desi, I was one of the only people in the entire kingdom that he trusted. When he discovered that he was being sent away, he made Desi and I promise to watch over you and protect you—he said that you were special. That you were a princess.” He paused for a moment, as if contemplating what he wanted to say next.
“I never meant to fall in love with you, Nymiria. I’d damned myself from the moment I kissed you, because I always knew that you were his. You were never mine to keep—”
“How did you know?” She pressed, inching closer to him. “How did you know about me—about Aziel and what we were?”
He lifted one shoulder, that sheepish grin slipping onto his face.
“Aziel gave me a key to his room in the tower. Stable hands were required to sleep in the lofts at the stables and we had nowhere to safely light fires to keep warm, so he allowed me to use his tower if it got too cold. But,” he chuckled.
“I stumbled across the trunk of his mother’s things.
I found her journal when I was sixteen, two months after we met.
And then, one night while you were sleeping in the garden, a tear rolled out of your eye and fell to the ground.
A moonflower bloomed there immediately. And then, I just… knew.”
There was no reason for her to feel angry. She didn’t feel angry. In fact, she felt sad. Knowing that Owen had known, this whole time, that her soul was bound to another…
She couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for him to live with that truth all on his own, never being able to confide in anyone about how much it must have hurt.
“Anyhow,” he continued. “Dorid knew about us, Nym. He wasn’t daft—he knew that we were bedding one another and had for quite some time.
It was only a matter of when he chose to strike.
And when I overheard some of the other hands talking of how Dorid was preparing to be short another courtesan due to her infidelities, I took it upon myself to set us up to get caught.
I confessed to the crime, stated that I didn’t love you but that you loved me, and begged for Dorid to intervene because I was beside myself with guilt for betraying my king.
But, then, well. We all know what happened there—you killed me instead of yourself.
And when my name appeared on Aziel’s toll and he came to greet me here in the Otherworld, he gave me the same position I had when I was living. ”
“And what is that?” Nymiria’s chin quivered, her eyes hot with fresh tears.
Owen’s brilliant green eyes moved over her face, his smile wavering for just a moment when he saw the sadness in her eyes, the evidence of it spilling down her cheeks. “Being your nanny.”
A laugh bubbled up from her chest. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, overwhelmed with a strange softness.
“The most annoying nanny I’ve ever had.” He joined in on her laughter, but after a moment, it dwindled to a pained silence.
“I wish that you hadn’t wasted your time loving me.
” She confessed quietly. “I wish you would have found someone—”
“It wasn’t a waste of time, Nymiria. Not for me.
” His tone was finite, leaving no room for argument at all.
Nymiria stared at him, unsure of what to say next.
As if to save her from her own thoughts, Owen shook his head and shrugged.
“I believe in Fate. I believe that people meet for a reason. And while it doesn’t always seem fair, I know that the reason I met you was the same reason you met me—we needed someone to show us that love was possible in the world we lived in, we needed something to believe in.
For me, it was worth it.” He walked towards the cabin, then, his eyes twinkling with that same gleam that could make even the darkest of souls believe in joy.
“Besides, what else would I have to brag about? It’s earned me quite the reputation around here—that I was the first person to ever love The Goddess of Life.”
Nymiria chuckled, following him inside once again. “Oh, I’m certain that you are very highly revered here.”
“I am, actually.” He hummed, cutting a path towards the kitchen.
Nymiria lingered by the door, watching as he removed the boiling pot of tea from the woodstove.
He filled cups with the brew before retrieving two wooden plates from the shelves above the water pump, too focused to realize that Nymiria had gone so still.
She hoped that it was true—that everyone here loved him and that he was well-respected and well-known.
Because what hurt more than having him die was also having very few people in the world that were left to remember him with her.
She hoped that his name was known from one end of the Otherworld to another.
She hoped he felt the love and safety he deserved while he was living.
“I know that you can’t stay.” He was placing the tea and plates of bread and cheese on the table.
Three of them. As if someone else would be joining them.
The table, she just now realized, was littered with embroidery supplies—tambors with fitted cloths in them, already blooming with art.
Owen didn’t embroider. Nymiria had always been the one to fix his clothes when they needed hemming or if they ripped, as he always refused to even learn how to thread a needle.
“But I would like for you to meet someone.”
The door in the hall that had been closed earlier suddenly opened, a sleepy-eyed woman appearing, rubbing lazily at her eyes. Nymiria’s heart fluttered with hope, already smiling when the dark-haired woman lifted her gaze. “This is Eevyan. Eevyan, this is—”
“Nymiria.” The woman whispered, her rose-bud lips pulling back into a small grin before worry tugged at the center of her brow. She turned to Owen, lips parting in question. “She’s not supposed to be here.”
“It was Aziel—I’ll explain at a later time. Though I will start by informing you that she’s insisting upon going back, so there’s no need for us to make her a room.” Owen assured her.