“Then my mother was murdered in front of me. Do you know what that did to me? That tortured my very soul, and it was already hanging on by a fucking thread. There was barely anything left of me. I was supposed to be with her that night, but I wasn’t.” She laughed, but it was cold and hard. “Do you know where I was instead? I’d been fucking Damien down by the river.”
My stomach dropped, and I thought I was going to be sick. Obviously, I knew they had… Well, that they’d been intimate. But to hear it from her directly was like submerging my body into freezing water and letting the prick of the cold take hold of me.
“He’d asked me to meet him for a date,” she spat. “A fucking date. And I went, like the love-starved little fool that I was. He showered me with attention, and I thought it was love. But it wasn’t, not for me at least, and I lost my mother because of it. We’d heard the screams coming from the palace and I ran as hard as I could to stop it, to save her. But I was too late, and she died.” Her eyes were filled with rage-fueled tears. She let them spill over, refusing to wipe them away. She was allowing me to see every part of her. My beautiful queen.
“Do you know what I did after that? I watched my mother be sent away to the heavens, her body going up in smoke as we said our last goodbyes. There was a memorial, obviously. But I wasn’t there. I left immediately, and I hunted down every member of The Horde that I could find, and I gutted them. I showed them no mercy. If anyone stood in my way, I gutted them as well. For months I went off on my own and I was so damn good at hiding my tracks that they couldn’t find me. I hid in the trenches, slept in the dirt, hunted for my meals. I was a fucking mess. And you know what? None of it helped. I thought it would, but I only felt an emptiness that couldn’t be quenched.” She took a deep breath, and I could tell that she was fighting the urge to cry. She was strong though, so strong.
“I had to fix myself. I’ve come a long fucking way from the person who I was before. And so have you by the sound of it.” She bent forward and took my hand in hers.
“You’re not your family, Matthew. You’re good. I can sense it in your soul. You’re so good,” she broke away, bringing my lips to meet hers. She tasted sweet, like honey and hope. It’s silly really, thinking of hope as a taste, but it was there on her lips. She thought I wasgood. No one had ever thought like that of me before. And she made me want to be the man she thought I was. I wanted to be good for her. “Even if you’re not,” she shrugged. “I’m not the damsel that you think I am. I have red in my ledger too. Fuck the world and fuck what they think, Matthew. You and me, that’s what matters right now.”
We took our time, kissing each other slowly like we didn’t have a care in the world. A promise of what life could look like if it were different, if we weren’t the two people that we were.
The truth was that I worried about the future. I didn’t know if she saw me in hers, but by the gods, I saw her in mine. I wanted to wake up to her every morning and make love to her every evening.
I loved her.
The realization made my chest ache. But would my love ruin her? Would it condemn her? Being the son of Lachlan meant I came with more enemies than I could count, and if anyone found out about her… Not only that I loved her, but that she was also my mate? Fuck… I shuddered at the thought.
She pulled back gently and brought my head to her chest, cradling me. I could feel the thrumming of her heart beating in time with mine. She really should stay far away from me. I’d told her as much before, but she hadn’t listened to me. I needed to make her see who I was. She said I wasn’t my family, and part of me believed her… But she didn’t know the things I’d done. The things that I’d had to do to survive, to further my cause. I just held my queen in my arms and drifted into the most peaceful sleep I’d ever had.
* * *
I woke up with a start,realizing that Eva’s body was not next to mine. “Eva? Eva!” She didn’t know this island. What if she had gotten lost? Or worse… What if Trystan had caught up with us?
I stood up, sensing her magic lingering in the air. She had started a small fire at some point during the night to keep us warm, our bodies providing the rest of the heat we needed. I swirled around at the sound of footsteps behind me.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling sweetly. I gaped at her appearance; she was soaking wet from head to toe. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just thought I might go hunting for some breakfast,” she shrugged sheepishly. I looked around her back and saw she had caught some fish.
I let loose a breath I didn’t know I was holding. She was here. She wassafe. I returned her smile and moved to take the fish from her hands. “Thank you, darling.”
It felt easy, this routine we seemed to fall into. She gathered more wood for the fire, making sure that it kept ablaze with her powers, while I cleaned and prepared the fish for roasting. We laughed, talking about how she had initially fallen into the stream while fishing. I hadn’t even thought about food, how hungry she must have been from her time under Trystan’s so-called care. She was ravenous, devouring most of her breakfast and some of mine.
After we ate, we sat next to each other in companionable silence. I watched as the fire flowed freely through the air, a reminder of how powerful she was. She was the first one to break the quiet.
“So… What do we do from here?”
For the first time in my immortal life, I didn’t know how to answer the question. “I need to find Kalen,” I told her. “He was there, at Trystan’s palace. I know he made it out, but I don’t know where he went after all hell broke loose.” I pulled a piece of paper out of my small messenger bag and scribbled a message down.
“Matthew, how do you intend to get a message to him if you don’t know where he is?” She peered at me curiously.
I smirked. “Ah, that. Watch and you’ll see.” I stood up, backing away from the fire and whistled. I could hear the unmistakable flapping of wings on the wind from a mile away. I watched as her face gave way to a look of shock and then inquisitiveness as a stark black raven flew out of the trees and landed on my arm.
“How did you…?”
“Magic,” I laughed. “I rule over darkness, Eva. The ravens are at my will. Plus, Branwen is my familiar.”
Her eyebrow quirked up. “So, the raven that we used to communicate with when I was at Helia was yours?”
I lifted a finger and gently stroked the magnificent creature on my arm. “Yes, but the raven I sent to look after you was my own. Branwen is an extension of myself.”
She was amused, her eyes dancing with mischief as she laughed. “This is absolutely wonderful,” she said as she lifted her arm and the raven swooped over. She mimicked my movement, stroking the bird softly with her finger. The soft feathers playing against her skin.
She was at ease in my company and the company of my companions. This woman was magnificent, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen that she was my mate earlier. She was the light to my darkness.
It was amusing that I would fall in love with an elementalist; that I wouldmatewith one. Someone who was so incredibly full of life, while I was the exact opposite as a shadow-bringer. I held dominion over everything in the dark. We were associated with evil; the shadows typically demanded dark magic, but I fought against it growing up. I scoffed. A ‘good’ shadower. It was unheard of.
There was a reason that there weren’t many of us left. Like those with elemental power, bloodlines died out as they bred with other, less magically inclined, Fae. My family was one of the few that kept the bloodlines strong by breeding with other shadow-bringers, keeping the magic lineage pure. Beyond that, we were hunted for what we were. The kings and councils were terrified of our powers, particularly after my father rose and fell after The Great War. Seeing the power that the shadows held was too much, and extinction parties had set out within the week after Lachlan fell.
