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“Us?”
“I am of our old pantheon. I won’t say its name, for security. But that’s how I know you.”
The desire to tear up is overwhelming, thinking about how I just wanted a friend to talk to. “So he wants his little soulmate back that broke his heart,” I say, trying to refocus.
"You are his bind, his mate, his soulmate. He is broken without you."
"He should have thought of that first,” I quip, although frown when I don’t even remember what happened. That was odd. “I don’t want to ask again. What happened?”
She clears her throat. "Kallúm is a demon in love, and he tried to bottle the ocean, which he knows better than that. You are bound to him. He is bound to you. You will go back to him." Her voice is clipped, practical, but underneath it there's something that sounds almost like grief. "But I need you first."
I nod a few times, something in my soul settling at the request. “Then tell me how I left.”
“You, well… you took your life.”
My gaze hardens on her, the blood draining from my face. “Pardon me?”
“It was the only way you could truly escape. It wasn’t done out of melancholy, more like an annoyed duty. You knew that you’d reincarnate, even as a human. And like I said, it stormed for a decade the last time you left.”
There’s not much to reply when being told that my soul is mated to a demon king, or that my soul’s origin is of an oceanic deity, or that I once took my own life to leave the Underworld. Honestly, it just makes me further believe that I’m making this all up in my head.
We left the conversation there, because we needed more scones, and I genuinely had no reply to her. Something in me utterly trusts Judica-Bonhilda, and right now I just need to get through these next few days. I’m aware that trust could be manufactured by her to some degree or another, or that I might not even really be a goddess. But I genuinely don’t know what else to do.
It’s just… it’s all too much.
We are near the opening of the shop for the day when Judica sends me to the cellar when the sound of hooves reaches the street.
“Go,” she says, hurriedly, fear streaked across her face. “That’s him. Don't speak, don't move, don't breathe too loudly."
My heart flutters at the insinuation that the demonic overlord of this Realm is nearby, possibly seeking me out as his mate. The very one we had just been discussing, as if the conversation itself summoned him. I descend the narrow stairs into the dim cellar, lit only by a single candle and the thin slit of a window at street level. I crouch near the glass, pressing my temple against the cold stone to get a look.
The rain has stopped, although the skies are still gray. Gargoyles grab anyone who looks like me, and a procession of Reapers proceeds a man riding on a massive black steed.
This time, he’s not a painting. Not a statue.
It’s him.
He rides through the street on a horse that looks like death given muscle, an enormous beast with wings folded tight against its flanks that look like raw, skinless flesh.
Kallúm is not in his demon form. He looks human, wearing dark leather and armor that catches no light, black hair slicked back, and his eyes fascinate me. The whites are the color of night, and his irises are golden orange. He's larger than any human should be, and his gaze scans the street the way a predator scans a field. Not looking at things. Looking through them. Feeling for something.
Feeling for me…
Oh, shit. He’s real.
My hand drifts to my sternum. A hum is there, muffled by the ring but insistent. I press my lips together so hard they lose blood flow.
He stops.
Right in front of the bakery.
He doesn't look at the window I peer out. He doesn't look at anything. He tilts his head slightly, like a dog catching a scent on the wind, and slowly dismounts.
"This is a recent establishment," I hear him say. His voice is different in person, deeper and richer, with a resonance I can feel in the floorboards, in my teeth, in the base of my spine.
Judica's voice, steady as still water, “Yes, my liege. I am from a village over. Came here when the forests became too difficult."
A long silence. I can hear my own pulse… and also almost feel what he's about to do? My body tightens with a certainty that doesn't belong to me, or rather, belongs to a version of me that knew this man intimately. He's going to search the shop. I know this the way I know my own heartbeat.
