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I looked down at my wedding ring that’d turned thin from years of spinning. The inscription was faded. The diamond chipped in one corner. But nestled beside it was another gold band. A second troth. A second wedding.
“I remarried, yes.”
“What?” Margot shot upward and stumbled to her chair. Betrayal covered her pretty face as if I’d personally cheated on Aslan. “But you said—”
“I said Aslan Avci was dead.”
“So how could you—?”
“I could because everything that I accepted that night on the beach was a lie.”
“I-I don’t understand.” Her nose wrinkled.
“That night, I believed my heart issues came from my own inability to move on. But three months later, I had scientific proof that soulmates do exist.”
“Wait...I don’t follow.” Dylan scowled. “What proof?”
I held his incredulous stare. “I’ve been written about in medical journals and studied by sceptical physicians. I’ve been poked and prodded and questioned by all manner of professionals, but in the end...their evidence was conclusive.” I smiled, my chest growing warm. “Thanks to my heart diaries. Thanks to my diligently nervous notetaking, time stamping, and durations of palpitating episodes, I had concrete proof of the moments I was afflicted with A-fib. All those pains, all those flutters, all of those fears vindicated because...it proved that I wasn’t suffering a unique event...I was sensing another’s.”
Dylan and Margot shared a look.
They glanced at me as if I’d lost my mind. Questions filled their faces that perhaps I’d been a few screws loose all along and this entire interview had been an utter waste of their time.
A complete fabrication.
Nothing more than ramblings from a madwoman.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
This was real.
I was real.
I hadn’t just found a way for humans to dwell under the sea like my childhood dreams, but I’d also irrefutably proven that love could transcend time, distance, and common sense. There were no instruments in our modern world to test the power of true love. No exams or machines capable of learning how strong that love could be.
The cor was still a mystery.
Our amare still nothing more than fantasy.
Until me.
Until my diary of dates and times...a diary that correlated to every day and time of someone else’s pain.
“The night I said goodbye was the night the world shifted, the universe answered, and all the wishes that I’d given up on, all the hopes that I’d had to slay all rose up, knitted together, and somehow brought me my heart’s desire.”
“Nerida, I think we should stop,” Margot whispered.
“I agree.” Dylan nodded sternly. “I think we’re all overtired and—”
I laughed out loud.
I gave into the bright white light glowing inside me. “Aslan Avci was dead. Cem Kara told the truth about that. I never saw that eager-eyed, math-loving boy again.”
“Then why are you smiling? A-Are you quite well?” Dylan scowled.
My shoulders drew back, my heart grew wings, and I confessed the words I’d been hoarding since we began this tale. “Over five long years. Sixty-three awful months. Almost two thousand days, my darling Aslan suffered. And I felt him. Through all of it. I heard him summoning me. I endured his torture. I let others tell me I was mad. I believed it most days. But then...one night...he returned to me. I never saw Aslan Avci again, but Aslan Kara appeared on my front lawn, just like I’d foreseen. Broken and in pieces, dangerous and crucified...but alive.
“Alive.
“Breathing.
“And mine.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
*
Aslan
*
(Heart in Greek: ?a?d??)
*
Present...
I STOOD BESIDE MY FATHER, ACCEPTING praise and welcome just like I’d been taught. I had no thoughts. No feelings. Those had long since died inside me. I only lived to obey. Only lived to be what I was told to be. To serve my legacy and take my rightful place as his heir.
Glancing around the stunning smoking room with its hexagon-shaped floors, pastel-plastered walls, intricately painted ceilings of the cosmos, and gold-gilded fireplace, I braced my shoulders and tried to be like him.
Like my mentor, saviour, and kin.
Our black suits were the same.
Our tall height almost identical.
Our faces cut from the same dark marble, our hair sleek and styled. He wore age, while I wore youth. He wore experience, while I wore scars. He wore dangerous power, all while I wore every night he’d held me sobbing at his feet.
The things he’d done. The bones he’d broken. The screams he’d wrung.
Sweat beaded on my spine, proving that for all my conditioning, I was still afraid. All my years of persecution, he hadn’t quite robbed me of my primal instincts to fear.
I feared.
Fuck, I reeked of it.
Yet I kept my shoulders back and chin tipped up.
I caped myself in arrogance so I might finally be free.
Cem laughed with a man he shook hands with. Soft ribbons of smoke curled from those indulging in nargile. Low timbres of conversation flowed around the room, swirling around the clustered men, singling out a few as they shot looks my way and wondered.
