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“I dream that you are taken from me. That you are raped. Brutally. Repeatedly. That I’m forced to watch. That there is nothing I can do to save you. Until I wish that you were dead, just to spare you the violation.”
Her eyes flared wide—glistening. Fuck.
A second, and then she was blinking back the tears.
Her hands didn’t flinch away from mine, her body still slotted in tightly against me. She looked me straight in the eyes as she spoke.
“If we are ever in that situation, I give you permission to kill me,” she said gravely.
I shook my head. “I would never be able to.”
That was the truly devastating part of the dreams—the part that tortured me the most. That I would not be able to save her.
She pressed her head down to my shoulder. “I used to dream of the water gardens,” she said softly. “Of what happened to me. I’d relive it, again and again. It was only after you came… that the nightmares stopped.”
Her sigh was heavy enough to rock us both.
“It seems so unfair. Why should you ease my nightmares while I make yours worse?”
I slid one hand free, wrapping it around her shoulders, plastering her tight against me. I couldn’t look her in the eyes as I said the words, but if I held her tight, maybe I’d be able to get them out. “Because of my mother.”
“My birth was foretold, just like yours. After my mother came of age, received her Talisman… a priestess foretold that she would bear a powerful son. The most powerful male to be born in millennia. She didn’t last a week after that.”
Veyka’s hand lifted to my back, stroking down the bare expanse of skin repeatedly over the tight muscles. Urging me on with quiet comfort.
“She was stolen. And passed around. For years. Every terrestrial fae male wanted to be the one to sire that powerful child upon her.”
I expected her to shiver or cry or buck away.
The agony and torture I described was so horribly close to her own. But Veyka was steady. She held me through it, her hand turned warm by the repetitive circles she rubbed on my back.
She gave me the strength to continue. “After my brother was born—not weak, but not remarkable—she was discarded. She returned to her ancestral home.”
“Eilean Gayl?”
I nodded, my chin digging into the soft flesh of her shoulder. I could have sunk into her and stayed there forever. But I forced myself to finish the tale. “My father followed her to Eilean Gayl. It took him a hundred years, but he convinced her of his love. They were Joined. And eventually, I was born.
“She was raped. Again and again and again. Because of me.”
I waited for her to realize the truth that I’d known for months now—loving me was too dangerous. I’d failed to protect her—would continue to fail. She’d never admitted that she loved me, to begin with. But there had been times when I thought I saw it flash in her eyes.
But now, I’d never hear those words from her.
I was the cause of my mother’s pain. I’d been unable to protect her, shield her. Just like I had been when Veyka was ripped from my side by an ancient, unknowable power.
She rocked back in my lap, putting just enough space between us so that she could look into my eyes. It was dark in the tent, not even a sliver of moonlight through the tightly laced flap. But I could see her nonetheless—some strange, extra sense.
The mating bond.
I felt her reaching down it, reaching for me.
Embracing me—not just with her arms, but with her soul.
The very essence of Veyka wrapping around me—twining us together.
Until we were one soul in two bodies.
I felt her words, rather than heard them.
