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Selene laughed too. “Private matters, friend,” she answered. “Let’s go home, sweetheart,” she said, grazing my nose with hers.
We were closer to the castle than I knew. The drive back was over too quick. I curled myself as tightly to Selene as I could, and I didn’t want to let go. Lucky for me, when I groaned in protest, Selene had managed to exit the car with me remaining securely in her arms.
“I’ll have to put you down eventually,” she told me, and I could feel her walking smoothly through the castle, taking familiar turns to her wing.
“No, you don’t,” I argued.
“Maybe not for a little while longer,” she replied and kissed my sore temple. “But pet, you smell foul,” she told me.
I lifted my head surprised by her words. “I thought you liked how I smell?” I asked and couldn’t help my pout.
“I like how you smell, true, but I hate when your scent is contaminated with others,” she explained.
“Will you have a bath with me?” I asked her in defeat. Her smile was answer enough.
It isn’t easy to bathe when your arm’s bandaged up and you can’t get it wet. Selene’s help was needed, but I thought she’d have taken care to wash every inch of me either way.
It was only the afternoon, but the drugs were wearing off and I was finding it difficult to keep my head up by the time Selene had dried and dressed us for bed. I was asleep as soon as I felt her arms pull me back against her.
I awoke panicked. The room was dark and Selene no longer held me. She was tossing side to side, the bed sheets ripped in her tight fists. A nightmare, I realised when I calmed. I reached for her, shaking her shoulder slightly.
“Ma’am,” I called softly, I didn’t want to startle her awake, but she didn’t respond. I tried shaking her again and called louder, “Selene.”
The breath in my lungs left me and my shoulder screamed as I found myself pressed down against the mattress by Selene’s weight on me.
Her eyes were open and wild, glowing brightly in the darkness and she looked at me for a moment as if unseeing before recognition filled her. I was silent beneath her.
“Percy?” she asked quietly.
“It’s me,” I whispered and blinked hard when a wet drop hit my cheek. I reached my good hand up to feel the moisture as another drop landed. I reached for her then, my thumb swiping under her eye, drying her tears. “It’s okay,” I told her as she closed her eyes and more hot tears cascaded down her cheeks to me. “Don’t cry. What’s wrong?” I asked carefully.
She wrapped her arms under me, dropping her head to my chest and cried against me, her breaths ragged. I held her as best I could, with my one free arm, cradling her head. “Don’t ever leave me,” she said, her voice croaking and loud in the room.
“I won’t,” I reassured her. “Never.”
“I couldn’t live without you. I’d go insane,” she told me.
“You’ve got me. I’m here,” I told her.
“But what if you weren’t? I could have lost you and it would have been my own doing,” she gripped me tighter. I could feel my top wet against my skin with her tears and it was an effort not to cry myself. I’d never seen Selene like this, there were times when I knew she was upset or scared but she’d never cried in front of me. She’d never held me desperately.
“But I am here. You haven’t lost me. And nothing was your doing,” I said.
She shook her head, “I could have prevented it. I should have. I’ve not been myself. I love you, Percy. And this soul match, loving you, it’s made me weak in new ways. In ways I can’t afford, not when the price of my failure could be your life.”
My heart pounded so hard in my chest that it hurt, and I was sure Selene felt it.
“You love me?” I questioned quietly, unbelievingly.
“Painfully so,” she replied and I heard the anguish in her voice, how small she sounded with her confession. I held her head tighter to my chest and craned my neck to kiss her hair. I imagined that hearing her confess her love to me would be different. I thought I’d be elated. But with Selene clinging to me, broken, I regretted having hurt her.
“You’re the strongest person I know,” I told her, hoping to remind her of her strength, of who she was.
“Not with you, Percy,” she said, lifting her head from my chest to meet my eyes with hers. “I care about you, your happiness, what you think of me. I’ve never truly cared about such things before you.
“If I had simply killed that mutt after he kissed you,” she growled low, dangerously, “or if I had refused my father’s demands to court Halvorsen, Valen would not have gotten his hands on you. Yet I didn’t kill a mutt that repeatedly tried to have you, for fear that you would be upset, that you would hate me. I didn’t challenge my father, as I should have, for fear that he would punish me by taking you from me. I’ve never known such fear as that of losing you.”
“Selene, I could never hate you.” I was sure of it. Nothing she could ever do would change how I felt about her. Sometimes, I worried that I had become a bad person. That in loving her without condition, in accepting every part of her, I was condoning cruelness, behaviour that I would have openly condemned only a season ago. “I think I’ve proved that I’m not that easy to keep captive. No one could keep me from getting back to you,” I told her lightly, trying to make her smile and when her lips twitched upward, I felt a small surge of victory. “We’re in this together. The soul match is ours. You can talk to me. You don’t have to keep your fears from me. I can be strong too. You’re everything to me, my whole being. My soul belongs to you. I love you, Selene.”
