Chapter 35 #2
“I did find someone,” he growled, taking a deliberate step closer, crowding her.
“You—”
“I found you and I fell in love with you, and you have the fucking nerve to stand there and tell me what I feel for you isn’t real?
After everything—” he shook his head, looking back at her with his heart in his eye and his hand at his chest. “You think what I feel, here,” he thumped his chest hard enough for her to wince.
“You think it’s not real? That I don’t really fucking love you? ”
Terena shook her head, which was the exact wrong thing to do.
His face changed, a mask so dark, so filled with violence, it did not belong to him. Daris was a warrior, aye. Through and through. Yet whenever there was battle, whenever he’d had to fight, he’d never been this.
Terena’s temper flared to match his wrath.
How dare he? she thought as she stared him down. Did he not realize how difficult this was for her as well?
“I know you believe it, Daris,” she fumed, no longer willing to back up as he neared, his chest pressed against hers aggressively. “But it is only an enchantment. Magic. The Fates. Before you were even born, our bond was decided. You had no choice—”
“I don’t need a fucking choice!”
His shout reverberated throughout her body, drawing a deep shudder as she willed her heart to stop responding to him. Her chest throbbed with the pain of not being with him, of saying these words to him, of denying the very thing that made her heart soar.
“I do!” Terena screamed back at him, her chest heaving against the pain, against the torment of saying things denying their bond. She took a step back. Nearby, soldiers stopped to stare at them.
Daris stilled at her words, blinking his good eye as he stared at her for endless moments after her words stopped echoing between them.
The expression on his face was as if she’d plunged her hand into his chest and yanked out his still-beating heart. He looked at her as if she’d betrayed him; she feared that, aye, she might have.
Hardening herself against the expression that threatened to break her, she squared her shoulders and stepped back.
“Believe me,” she said, hoping to placate him. “I do not take pleasure in your pain. It is my pain, too. But I won’t—I can’t—believe it’s real unless we make the choice. Without the bond. Without the Fates pushing us toward each other.”
“Do you love me?”
Gods. Terena closed her eyes against the agony his words speared through her, cutting more cleanly than the sharpest of blades.
“Of course I love you, Daris,” Terena whispered, finally looking at him. “That’s my point.”
“Your point?”
“Aye,” she breathed, putting out her hand.
When she realized she’d meant to touch him again, she pulled it back sharply, holding it to her chest as if burned.
“I love you. I love you so much I ache when I’m not near you.
I dream of you. I am formless without you. But is that me? Or is that the bond?”
“That is love!” Daris bellowed, his arms stretched out.
“It is the bond!”
“Why does it matter?” Daris’s question was so plaintive, tears sprang once more to her eyes and she ruthlessly blinked them back.
“I want the choice,” Terena begged. “I want to choose you. And I want you to choose me. I want to have found you because I—” Terena pounded her chest—“cannot live without you.”
“I truly do not understand,” Daris said with a frustrated swipe of his hand through his short hair. “I love you. I don’t care why. You are… everything to me.”
“Daris—”
“You want me to defy the Fates? Is that it? You want me to spit in the faces of the gods and tell them I do not want this gift—”
He stopped to scoff, and the way he swallowed, Terena was certain he was holding back tears of his own.
Daris straightened and looked down at her with defiance.
“I will not. I will not be the one to tell the Fates I do not want this… this treasure they have seen fit to give me. I fucking love you. And you want me to tell the gods I do not want the bond they have given us, to love each other, to be everything to each other and for each other, because what, you didn’t get to choose? You are choosing right now!”
He shook his head at her, his face a mix of love and hate so powerful she gasped and stepped back.
“No,” he whispered, tilting his head as he watched her.
“Do it if you must. But I will not be the one to break this bond. I’ve been given a gift more valuable than any god has ever given a human, a gift I will spend the rest of my life doing my best to earn, to be worthy of: you.
There’s no power strong enough to make me willingly break this bond with you. I don’t want to. Ever.”
“Not even for me?”
Daris’s face crumpled for an instant. It was gone so quick she thought she’d imagined it, and yet the answering stab to her heart at his hurt made her knees buckle. She reached out to steady herself, but he stepped away, looking at her as if she was a monster.
Perhaps she was.
“Is this because of the prince?” Daris asked a long time later, his voice barely above a whisper, and yet they shouted through her brain like the bells at solstice. “Is… do you still love Prince Lerek?”
“What?”
“I know you’ve seen him,” Daris said, his voice a mix of desperation and defiance.
“I don’t know what he told you, Ren. But I did not betray you.
I kept the truth from you, aye. I gave my word to my king no one was to know he was alive.
I know it was wrong and I am sorry I kept it from you.
Don’t ruin us because of some misplaced guilt you have that you moved on!
” His lips parted and he looked at her, lost. “Unless… you haven’t. ”
Terena lifted a hand to her chest. It physically felt like her heart was cracking into a thousand pieces inside her ribcage.
“This is about us,” she gritted out, her throat tight. A part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him to forget everything she’d said.
Then Cassandra’s face flashed in her mind, and the consequences of not doing this filled her with dread.
“Do you think,” she said when she felt she could speak without crying, “do you think if we didn’t have this bond, you’d still love me?”
“Without doubt,” he snarled.
She nodded. “Then why won’t you let me have this? If you’ve no doubt, why do you fight me?”
“He doubts you.”
Daris’s head jerked up, instinctively putting his body in front of Terena as Hermes came into the clearing. Behind him, Daris heard Terena sigh and step to his side but Daris didn’t take his gaze off Hermes.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Hermes asked, leisurely strolling to a stop a few feet away, arms crossed at his chest. He lifted one hand to his lips, then pointed at both of them.
“He doesn’t believe you’d choose him, too.”
“Hermes—” Terena huffed, taking a step toward him.
“Incidentally,” Hermes said as he paced away, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I agree with him.”
“No one asked you,” she grumbled.
Daris did not respond. He stared back at the god, a riot of emotions warring inside him. He did not trust himself to speak.
“Believe me when I say, dear niece, your little tantrum about ‘choosing’ and ‘oh, is this real?’” Hermes laughed when they startled at how his voice had morphed into hers.
“—is pointless. If you go against the Fates to sever the bond, you risk incurring more than their wrath. The Furies will hunt you down for the affront, and then where will you be? Not in love with a fine warrior sent to help you with your destiny and certainly not fulfilling the prophecy.”
Daris knew the god was not helping him out of the goodness of his heart.
He wanted something. And yet Daris could not think of what it could be.
“Thank you so much for your sage counsel, Hermes,” Terena said insincerely as she fluttered her lashes at him. A second later, her face darkened and she glared at him.
“But stay the fuck out of our business.”
Daris lurched forward to grab her as she stomped off but Hermes stayed him, a hand pressed to his chest.
“Don’t mind her,” Hermes purred. “She’s just wrestling with the fact her free will has strings.”
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t realize they bonded you,” Hermes huffed, ignoring Daris’s question. He moved to block Daris’s view of Terena’s retreat. “Complicates things a little but…”
The god clapped his hands, startling Daris. “I have a solution to this little drama, if you’re interested.”
Daris flashed a frustrated look at Hermes as he tried to step around him. The god moved, blocking his attempt.
“I can make you immortal.”
Daris started. “What?”
Hermes splayed his hands. “Terena just asked you to prove your love for her. And she told you how. Soulmate bonds are not easily broken. And definitely not if you’re mortal.”
“I’m not—”
“Right now, aye. You’re not mortal. But in another week or so…”
Daris’s stomach dropped. He watched the calculating smile bloom on Hermes’s face.
“You know how to break the bond?”
Hermes tried to hide the triumph flashing in his eyes but Daris caught it before the god ducked his head.
Moving away, he sighed loudly as if this conversation was bothersome and not one of the most important of Daris’s life.
“As I said, you’ll need to be immortal for it to work, but aye. I know of a way to break such bonds.”
Daris knew the god too well by now to know he wouldn’t offer such a gift without something in return.
“What do you want?”
Hermes smiled in a way that made Daris regret asking.
“I want you, Daris. I want your allegiance. Your sword.”
Daris stood rooted as Hermes stepped closer, bending so his words growled in Daris’s ear and the words made his heart quake.
“I want your soul.”