But this is something else entirely, and those calming thoughts go out the window the moment her bi-colored eyes begin reading his soul.
He looks over his shoulder at Ignatius and Nimue, chatting Jamie up by the big SUV, and they don’t seem bothered by the delay at all. Even Rosie seems still and content in his arms, her gaze set on the stranger.
“Not at all, Nix Rhodes,” she intones, her melodious voice sending tingling sensations down his spine. “Not wrong so much as fascinating.”
“Fascinating?”
“Yes. You are different.”
“Different?” Nix supposes he is. He’s a father now, and he’s settling into this new life with his mates—loved, cared for…free.
“Mmm. When last we met, your soul was bright, but now, it is…”
Since Skye joined them, Nix has given much thought to the idea of dark and light and to how a person’s soul might be good yet still contain multitudes of life’s impacts. Like the surface of the Moon itself—marked with the debris of a million collisions, yet still shining brightly.
Nix knows his own soul is not without sin. He has been responsible for sending four lives back to The Plain, no matterthat they deserved it. He can never take a life without bearing the burden of it on his very core, and he prefers it that way.
While he doesn’t regret his actions in the protection of his family—or the world—it is important to acknowledge that it is a life lost.
Elysia hums as the words cross his mind, as if they alter what she is seeing. “Incredible,” she murmurs. After another moment, she shakes her head, the ebony beads at the end of her many braids clicking in the silence. “If I may say something about your soul?”
It’s a strange politeness to ask after the fact, when she has already said—and seen—so much, but Nix wouldn’t stop her even if he could. He doesn’t expect any surprises, knowing well who he is and having accepted that more easily in the last few months.
“Go ahead.”
“As I am sure you know, your mate Leo’s soul is a treasure. Virtually unmarred, so much so that I couldn’t believe my eyes. Truly a beautiful calm amongst the everyday souls in and out of the Guild. Normal souls, Nix. You must understand that every soul is beautiful, and every trial and deed is a spot on the miracle of life. Good and bad, light and dark. The essence of life. I don’t see the moments, just the…state of things. Does any of that make sense?”
It made perfect sense. Life was a series of choices, gifts, curses, and happenstance. Life and luck. It’s what you did with both that made you who you were—and what you carried with you in this life and into the next.
“And mine?” Nix can only imagine, by comparison to Leo’s, that his bears all its scars and dark places.
“Blinding. You are one half of a perfect whole. Unusual, certainly, and something I have only seen in Weres. Although some of us feel the bond, regardless.” She smiles and nodsher head toward her partner, whose purple-sneakered feet are floating six inches off the tarmac with excitement about something Jamie has said.
“Grayson’s soul is beautiful.” Nix would know this even without their soul bond. In fact, he’d know it about Leo or Gideon or Luca or Rowan or Finn—and especially Jamie.
He knows it because he can see it in his bonds.
The revelation hits him with the impact of a high-speed train.
“My bonds,” he whispers. All the colors of the rainbow now, with Skye’s peachy orange sunset and his daughters’ glimmers of silver and gold. “It’s their souls.”
Elysia nods. “Just so—or at least I am fairly certain. While Grayson is the other half of your soul, you also carry the light from all your mates and children within you. Your soul is a bright, clear, incandescent white. Ignatius once shared that you had a metaphor for your soul and Grayson’s magic, and I admit to being intrigued. It’s part of the reason I insisted on accompanying him.”
Oh…the prism.
The idea had come to him in Ignatius’ office, and it had felt right. He’d finally shared it with the kind man on his second visit, right before they’d come home. A visualization of pure white light that enters Nix and refracts every shade of the rainbow beyond. The prism doesn’t just channel the light. It also interprets, amplifies, and reshapes it.
But with Elysia’s explanation, he realizes he isn’t the prism in this metaphor—he is the light.
Holy shit.
Is this why, when they’re together, Grayson can channel all frequencies of The Plain? They are a manifestation of both the source and its execution.
Reeling, Nix catches Jamie’s eye across the open tarmac, and his inquiring eyebrow asks,Are you okay?—as he no doubt feels Nix’s intense surprise.
His epiphany.
He’d known he had been the Goddess’s vessel that day at Carnell’s fortress, no matter how strange it sounded. Their presence had been made tangible not just on that platform overlooking the sea, but since the very beginning when he’d been made Were—maybe before.
