“So, he’s never seen what his soulmate’s spirit looks like? For all he knows, Lasarín could have died before him and that’s why he was never called to her. She-”
“He knows,” Tristan said softly, cutting her off as he swept a strand of her beautiful, dark brown hair behind her ear.
“How?” Marty asked, reaching up to take his hand in hers.
“He tried to go to her after he died, but he couldn’t. We can’t go to our soulmates after we die. We have to wait until they take their last breath before we’re called to them,” Tristan said, wrapping his hand around hers and brought it to his chest.
“But you were able to come to me when you died in the hospital. Maybe-”
“Only because they were keeping my body alive,” Tristan said, pressing her hand against his chest, right above his heart. “When he couldn’t go to her, he tried to go to Bécc only he couldn’t find him either. He wasn’t sure that he was alive until a few years later when he found himself going to the village just outside the land he’d given Bécc to save her.”
“Every time he tried to go to the land he’d given Bécc, he was met with a black fog, so he waited in the nearby village, desperate for a glimpse of them only to hear the villagers talk about Bécc and his beautiful wife with long blonde hair that looked like it had been touched by the sun and their children that looked so much like their mother,” Tristan said, watching as Marty swallowed hard.
“And Shayne’s soulmate?”
“Her name was Aileen. She was an orphan that his family took in when they were children and worked as a servant for his family, the one and only time he gave in to the pull,” Tristan explained. “He was in the same situation that I was in, he had no one to watch over him or protect him. He was terrified that she would find out about the ghosts, so he pushed her away and kept his distance, but she refused to listen to him.”
“What happened?” Marty asked, shifting carefully so that she could keep her hand over his heart as she lay down on him with her head resting against his shoulder.
“She died in his arms and he refused to go through that again, telling himself and anyone that would listen that she was a pain in the ass and that he didn’t want her, never mind love her.”
“And the truth?” Marty mumbled softly against his chest as he stared up at the ceiling.
“He never forgave himself for falling in love with her.”
CHAPTER 7
The Three King’s Inn
Boston, MA
1692
She’d waited long enough, Aileen decided as she pushed the extra blankets that she’d helped herself to from the guest linen closet aside and crawled off the small bed, careful of the slanted boards above her head.
Once she could stand up, she adjusted her nightgown, grabbed the lantern on the floor by her bed and carefully made her way across the cold floorboards to the stairs, knowing that the black dog that she’d been forced to lure up here with a piece of ham would follow. When she reached the stairs, Aileen glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Elizabeth and Mary were still fast asleep on their cots before she turned around and worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she raised her foot and carefully started making her way down the narrow steps.
She avoided the third step since Mr. Higgins hadn’t fixed it yet, and quietly made her way down the rest of the stairs only to pause by the attic door at the bottom. Slowly exhaling, sheplaced her ear against the door and listened to make sure that none of the guests were out of their beds before she carefully turned the key and unlocked the door.
As soon as the door was open, Aileen quickly stepped onto the cold floor below, moved aside for Shadow, and just as quickly, closed and locked the door before she made her way past the guest rooms and headed towards the small hallway that would take her to the family quarters. A minute later, she was making her way past Mr. and Mrs. Winter’s room, the nursery that had been turned into an office a few years ago, and made her way to the last door on her right.
In seconds, she was making her way inside with Shadow right behind her and just as quickly, she closed the door behind her and nearly groaned when the heat from the small fireplace quickly wrapped around her. It felt so good, Aileen thought as she stood there, savoring the heat before she shifted her focus to the large, comfortable bed to her right and took in everything from the thick feather mattress to the beautiful quilt covering it and decided that this was definitely worth the five lashings if she got caught.
Without a word, she quickly made her way across the room, climbed onto the bed, quickly crawled beneath the covers, and-
“You’re too old to still be doing this,” the large man who spent his days glaring at everything and everyone said as she pulled the covers up.
“You won’t even know that I’m here,” Aileen said, repeating the same line that she’d been using every night since she was six and came to live with his family.
“I always know,” Thomas said, but didn’t kick her out, she’d like to point out.
He never did.
Not even that first night after her uncle dropped her off at their doorstep and she decided to run away, which somehowresulted in her hiding in his room while the rest of the house was torn apart looking for her. He simply sat on the edge of his bed, glaring at anyone that made the mistake of coming into his room.
When it became late and everyone resigned themselves to searching for her in the morning, he blew out the candles in his room and went to bed. She waited until the house went quiet before she crawled out from underneath his bed and made her way to his door only to realize just how tired she was. Deciding that she would leave first thing in the morning, she made her way back to his bed, and after a slight hesitation, she crawled into his bed and quickly fell asleep.
After that, she couldn’t seem to stay away. Every night, she waited until all the servants went to bed for the night and the tavern went quiet before she made her way downstairs. The only time that she wasn’t able to sneak downstairs was when she was fifteen and twisted her ankle carrying firewood down the stairs.
