44. Violette
VIOLETTE
What can I do to fix it? Levi doesn’t ask me what’s wrong, or demand that I tell him what I can’t reasonably explain: that all it took was an ounce of his tenderness to trigger an all-consuming fear that it would one day be ripped away from me.
The fact that he doesn’t make me explain myself, but instead simply asks how to fix it, only further disintegrates the barrier encompassing my heart.
A heart that I once thought dead, but now realize is far too alive.
Too soft.
Too vulnerable.
Somnus’s voice is so loud in my head I can practically hear it reverberate against the walls of my bathroom.
Let go.
The reminder has my body sinking further into Levi’s arms.
The hardened, warrior-honed muscle of his body feels like heaven against the softness of mine—like all the protection I’ve ever needed and desired, cocooning me in safety.
Memories of my father and mother—of all the loathsome men I’ve spent almost two decades pleasing—creep in, but I shove them away, refusing to sacrifice this comfort to the ghosts of my past.
At my silence, Levi’s nose nudges my neck, and despite my still being nude, his touch seeks only to offer comfort. “Hm? What can I do? I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you, or did something wrong..."
This sweet, sweet man.
My eyes flick up to his, an apology in them as my hands unconsciously begin to roam over the broad, muscled expanse of his chest.
“You didn’t overwhelm me. I just... I haven’t experienced anything like this before, and it made me emotional.” My gaze drops. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
A small smile tilts his lips as his brows pinch with pity—the kind of expression one makes when seeing a tiny, helpless, albeit adorable, animal.
“Like what, princess? Perfect? Beautiful? Vulnerable?”
Princess?
My brows knit together as wariness creeps in.
Surely, he doesn’t know who I am.
There’s no way my father found my soulbound before...
I shake my head, trying to dispel the thought.
Impossible.
Emotion rises in my throat. “Do not say such things.”
“What? The truth?”
“No... Sweet things that... that are just words. Things you don’t mean. You hardly know me. I just kidnapped you for Akash’s sake. You should be plotting my murder. Planning your escape.”
Levi smirks, tapping the collar on his throat.
“Is that what this is for?”
My lips twitch with amusement as I admire the many pearls and jewels I adorned it with—a complete contrast to his over-the-top masculinity.
I love it.
Rotating him to face the full-length mirror across from the bathing pool, he huffs a laugh.
“It’s bedazzled.”
I can’t help but grin. “Fit for a king.”
“But it’s so... pretty.”
My expression turns saccharine as I boop his nose. “Just like you.”
Levi’s expression softens. Something like guilt seems to darken his gaze, causing my stomach to knot.
“What does it do?”
I draw in a deep breath to quell the tendril of anxiety winding through me.
“Prevents you from escaping me, suppresses magic, while enhancing a few other things…”
“Magic? I don’t have any magic.”
I arch a brow. “You will after I bite you.”
His brow tenses with an unreadable look. Summoning my most innocent grin, I bat my eyelashes. “Don’t try to remove it. You won’t enjoy what happens if you do.”
His brow peaks. “Will you tie me up again with your special ropes?”
Ha.
“Worse. Much, much worse.”
Levi’s expression remains unreadable, lost in thought as he stares at his new accoutrement.
“It also protects you.”
His eyes dip to meet mine in the mirror. Brows pinching slightly.
“Protects me?”
“You are my property.”
Levi’s features tense as he drops my gaze before turning to face me again. There’s a discernible pain etching his features, the sight of which makes my heart pound in anticipation of fight or flight—like it wants to escape whatever terrible news he’s about to give me.
“I need to tell you something.”
Oh, fuck. I knew it.
My expression darkens. The subtle guilt in his eyes turns palpable.
“My parents loved each other more than anything. So much so that when my dad died, my mom didn’t last long afterwards.”
My lips part in shock at his admission.
“Humans can die of a broken heart?”
Levi huffs a sad laugh. “If that’s what you call suicide, then yes.”
An emotion that isn’t my own has my eyes burning again.
“It destroyed her. ”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
I bite my cheek to try and keep the tears at bay.
Beneath the water, my hand reaches for his. Our fingers twine together so naturally that—despite my intuition pricking with impending doom—it feels like this first time could be the millionth time.
Heaving a sigh, Levi shakes his head. “I watched her succumb to a despair unlike anything I could have thought possible, and there was nothing I could do about it. She couldn’t function. I could barely convince her to do more than get out of bed.”
My chest burns with sorrow for him and his mother. At least with my own mother, there was always the promise of his return.
“Oh, Levi... I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head. “We had a few good days... Where, for a few hours, the dark cloud of grief would dissipate, and we would walk along the beach together.”
My eyes water and my lips tremble hearing this—imagining a young Levi having to go through such a thing alone. There’s nothing I can say to make it better.
“You grew up near the sea?”
Levi shakes his head. “We only lived there for a year after my dad died. I was in Boston before that... A city.”
Judging by the cinched tension in his brow and the slight downward turn of his lips, there’s more to be said in regard to that era of his life, but he doesn’t elaborate, and I can’t bring myself to pry.
“In any case, the point of me telling you all that is after witnessing what my mother went through, having to take care of her because of it, and her deciding that taking her own life was favorable to a life without him... I promised myself that I would never become so vulnerable that my happiness, my sanity, my entire life hinged upon another; that I would never fall in love.”
My stomach does a slow, anguishing churn.
“... And you still intend to keep this promise to yourself?”
Levi hesitates, studying me for a moment before his throat dips.
“Yes.”
Akash almighty.
I swear I can hear the fissures spiderwebbing across my heart.
How senseless can I be?
How could I have ever had any hope that my heart would be safe in the hands of my soulbound when I have only ever witnessed the opposite?
Or thought that perhaps I was special enough to defy this logic?
My fingers curl against my palm as I unthread mine from his.
I dip under the water, relishing the heat of it. I don’t want to come back up. I want to stay here. My heart throbs with longing for the freedom of the sea. To escape this male, who has pledged a vow to never love another, but whom I have impulsively captured.
When the need for air burns my lungs, I resurface—shifting into my mer form feels far too intimate to reveal to him now. Especially considering no one, other than my mother, Somnus, and Azrael’s carriage driver, Oleander, has seen it.
Squeezing the water from my hair, I make my way up the steps of my bathing pool, giving him my back. My eyes burn even as I feel that ever-present anger and resentment rise like sickles from my flesh, ready to pierce and draw blood.
Just when I had opened up to the scarcest sliver of hope...
After all these years of forbidding myself from becoming romantically entangled with anyone—from ever potentially following in my mother’s footsteps or falling for someone who would shatter my heart in one way or another—I did it anyway.
The sensation of Levi’s gaze is searing as I walk along the edge of the pool towards the shelf of towels. There’s a tremor in my hands, my body. My knees threaten to buckle. I need him to leave. I need him to get out of here?—
“That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it, too, Violette.” Laying his palm over the center of his chest, his fingers ball into a tight fist. “Here. I feel it like a second heartbeat; a visceral need for you.”
His words bring my feet to a stop, eyes sliding to meet his.
“Clearly not enough to make you change your mind... But it’s a sensation that will not pass, no matter how we deny it.”
Levi’s face remains impassive, outside of the darkness lurking in his bright green eyes.
“So resistance is futile?”
“The more we deny it, the more painful it will become. And I refuse to live my life burdened by it. My mother died of a broken heart; wasted years waiting for a male who would never choose her.”
Us, I fail to say. Not over his ambitions.
“And I will not follow in her path.”
The emotion swelling in my chest is a bright, fiery, furious thing that has my jaw clenching to restrain the sob wanting to burst free as tears stream down my cheeks.
Akash, why am I so impulsive?
Levi’s passive expression morphs into one of pain as he witnesses my heartache.
Good. I fucking hope he’s miserable.
“Violette…”
I raise my hand. “Don’t.”
I want to fucking strangle him. Instead, I force the cogs and wheels of my mind to turn rapidly, nearly panicked with the need to muster some kind of solution.
I am confident that flueratheurgy will have a solution.
If I can create a potion to give sight to the blind, and even grant immortality to a mortal, surely I can create something to sever our bond.
Worst-case scenario, I could seek out Azrael...
Why does my stomach swoop at the mere idea of seeing him again?
“You may return to your home. I’ll summon you when I find a way to sever our bond.”
The ill pallor Levi’s face takes on gives me a dark sort of satisfaction.
As much as the spiteful part of me wants to torture Levi, endlessly—reveal to him just how powerless he would be against me if I chose to wield my power and influence over him through our bond, our bodies, our minds, and our spirits—the idea of trying to ingratiate myself into the arms of a man who does not truly desire me, like my mother did...
Well, I’d rather fucking die.
His voice turns to ice. “Sever it?”
“I see no other alternative.”
Silence hangs heavily between us. The fact that Levi vocalizes no protest against such a soul-altering solution makes my body tremble with the visceral need to scream, cry, and break something.
I will away his newly gifted collar as I open a portal at the foot of the bathing pool.
“You may leave.”