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I adore it.
She spends many of her days in something called a ‘library’, which reminds me of the archives at the School of Mages. Her specialty is bound books, and I am pleased to see that we both share a fondness for the printed word when I drift through the door of her quarters, following her to her ‘job’.
As a Sombra demon—whether in my shadows or my skin—I couldn’t pass through structures before now. When I was in my faded shadow form, I could slip through any open gap, but there must be a gap. As a phantom, there is no limitation to where I can go. Still, that doesn’t mean much when no one in this realm can see me or hear me, but it made my search for the grimoire a little easier since I didn’t have to worry about breaking Duke Haures’s first law.
Of course, I had an unfamiliar world to search for the grimoire I lost when the matefinder spell brought me to Hope. None of the mortals would know I was among them, but that did not make it so simple to locate the Sombran spellbook while also watching over my mate, keeping her safe from any harm that might befall her.
My Hope is gentle. She is kind. She is also lonely in a way that I recognize. After all, I was, too, and though my loneliness led me to risk everything to find her, I’d sacrifice even more if it meant I could soothe her lonely heart.
Sometimes, when she glances behind her as though she caught sight of me out of her dull yet lovely human eyes, I wonder if she can see me. If she cansenseme. I try my best to catch her attention. At first, nothing worked. But about a cycle after I first found her, I discovered that—as a phantom—if I used some of my essence as a replacement for my missing magic, I could touch things.
Not Hope, which was a disappointment, but if I concentrated enough, I could maneuver items thatshehad previously had contact with.
It’s because we’re partially bonded. I gave her the mating promise when I read the manifestation spell, triggering a tie between us that I pray to the gods she feels even a little.
The more time I spend around her, the stronger it affects me.
The more I get to learn her—toloveher—the closer I feel to my sweet mortal.
When she sits in front of the box with the moving pictures, I hover behind her, seeing what it is that she likes. Slowly, over the last four cycles, I’ve begun to understand some of her human language. With that, I also find ways to show her that I am here. That I already consider her to be my mate.
And I do my best to show her that.
My Hope tends to misplace some of her trinkets. Once I’ve seen where she keeps them, I try to move them back. Those jingling bits of metal belong on the hook by the door to her home, while her favored foot coverings must stay together. And the ‘mote’ she’s always searching for… to see her smile when she finds it on the edge of her chair where I placed it for her makes my chest swell with pride.
If only it had been as simple for me to find theGrimoire du Sombra.
In between my fevered searched for the book, I devoted all of my attention to trying to reach Hope any way I could. And after I watched one of her ‘movies’ with her, learning exactly what a ‘kiss’ is… I do just that.
I’d heard the human word before from Susanna, Duke Haures’s formerly mortal mate. Though she knows Sombran as well as any demon in our realm, because of the essence exchange, the duke understands the human tongue as well. In Mavro, Susanna is the only human mate. Because of that, when she wants to say something to Duke Haures without any of his subjects knowing, she would slip into the human tongue instead.
She would often ask Duke Haures for a ‘kiss’, but because he would leave the throne room and join his mate in the garden oasis in the center of the capital to give her one, I never knew what exactly it was.
Until I saw from Hope’s ‘movie’ about a flying human child that a ‘kiss’ is one of those small nuts that fall from those verdant trees so different from the ash trees back in Sombra.
Humans are odd creatures. They must be to find pleasure in such a small nut—or why else would Susanna demand them from her male—but if Duke Haures pleases his mate by giving her a ‘kiss’, I will give my beloved Hope hundreds.
I spend hours gathering ‘kisses’ for Hope every evening, when the shadows fall and the brightness of the human sun doesn’t weaken me. I can only use my essence to move those that she’s stepped on as she leaves her quarters, but while I can pass through her door, the acorns cannot. So I leave them just outside, waiting for her to see them and know that it’s a sign of affection from her male.
And when that’s done, I follow any trace of Sombra in the human world I can find to continue to search for the grimoire.
There are two bonded pairs who live in the human realm. Neither Nox and his mate or Malphas and his sense me when I follow my instincts to their villages, but once I realized that they were the source of demonkind I sensed, I kept searching.
And then, two nights ago, I finally found it.
I worried that I wouldn’t be able to bring it back to Hope. Luckily, because it is still part of Sombra—part ofme—when I pick it up, the grimoire becomes as transparent and insubstantial as I am as a phantom. It also solidifies when I drop it, as I know because it did when I put it in the drawer at Hope’s ‘library’.
I wanted her to have it find her the same way that the charm led the grimoire to fall into the other human females’ claw-free hands. I rushed our mating by reading the spell instead of her, and I presented the book to her at her ‘work’ so that it could imprint on her now.
But, when it did, Hope didn’t recognize that the grimoire was fated to belong to her. After flipping through it, ignoring the true love spell inside, she put it with all the other bound books in her ‘library’.
Watching her from the shadows, I took the book back, bringing it to her home.
Unlike the ‘kisses’, I could carry the grimoire inside, placing it on the table that Hope often uses. She didn’t seem pleased that I returned it to her, though after I retrieved it again and again—not quite understanding why she would shout that one time when she saw that I had—she finally accepted that it belonged with her.
At least, she didn’t try to carry it back to her ‘library’ again. However, my mate refused to open it, no matter how often I moved it within her reach while she was distracted with the talking box, and I had to come up with another way to get her to understand.
I need her to read the true love spell. It seems like the only way I can return to a solid form would be if Hope summons me to her, but without getting her to understand that that’s what she must do, I’m stuck.
