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Only once the song ended did August open his eyes, wet his lips, and set his jaw. Instead of looking at me or demanding answers, he elbowed me and began to play. I snorted at the familiar notes of Clair de Lune. Something he knew I could play because he’d taught me himself.
Straightening, I sucked down a breath and joined him. And there we stayed—just the two souls who chased their queen from one life to the next. I felt Vesper hovering, of course, her emotions a knot of unsettled grief. But she didn’t come closer. Didn’t intrude. Just stayed to watch. With Cyrus’ new anal-retentive, overprotective bullshit, that was the best I could ask for.
August played from one song into the next, eyes closed, without a break between them.
His body swayed with each song as his hands moved from memory. The tension eased from his shoulders, the thrum of his pulse settling.
Finally, music softening, he asked, “Why are you here, Bug?”
“A girl can’t just come to lunch with her brother?”
He snorted. “Girl? Yes. You? Not so much. What do you need?”
“Rude.”
Even as he chuckled darkly, his fingers kept moving, the music slower and softer now. He still managed a speculative brow, glancing my way without missing a key.
Ally might be this man’s world—his… well, not mate. His other half. Literally. But music was his first love. I just had to remind him of that sometimes.
“Fine,” I huffed when he shoulder-checked me. “Do you remember how King Calloway died?”
“Allegedly torn in two. I don’t remember. We never made it back that far in the reading.”
“I don’t know that you can.”
His brow furrowed, this time his eyes staying glued on his hands. “Why’s that?”
“Because… you’re not King Calloway. Not on your own, at least.” For once, his fingers stumbled. When he started again, it was slower, softer, his eyes tracking me from the corner of his vision. “We found something, August.” I told him then. About the letters. The twin-flame theory. The history behind it. How it backed into their story—their eyes, the agony of star-crossed lovers, forever them against the world…
King Calloway being ripped into two powerful pieces.
All the while, he played.
Finally going still, August breathed, “Are we even Soul Bound, or…”
“Are you just one being?”
“It would make sense, but also… seems like an injustice. Isn’t it kinda odd to fall in love with the other half of your soul?”
“Who would be better?” I asked softly. Ma moitié—my other half. Stomach pitching, I breathed, “That’s the goal, right? To find the one Soul who completes you? Yours is just… literal.”
“So, Adrastos had me killed to keep me from her? From finding her in the first place?”
“Yes. You couldn’t reunite ascended.”
“But he didn’t kill me this time.”
“Tried to, didn’t he?”
August shook his head. “Nah, we just had a pack of crawlers after us. They’re drawn in by the power of it.”
I nodded, turning that over. “Cyrus thinks he was trying to keep us all apart until every piece of the prophecy was on the board—ascended at once.”
He sat quiet for a long moment, brows furrowed in concentration. “Mags, Blythe, and I are only months apart, with you a decade behind us. You shouldn’t have been able to ascend.”
“But I did. Besides, I’m glamoured against the bastard.”
“And yet we are torn apart—scattered.”
