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“And what don’t you understand about yours?”
“I am in the middle,” she said. “Each of my siblings has their purpose, and I have always thought my purpose was to take care of them.”
“Noble.”
“I resented it,” she confessed. “I never felt like more than the one who keeps the peace.”
“Is that not a purpose?” he asked.
With a sigh, she turned away from him. “It feels like a function rather than a purpose.”
“I’m not the god of light and day anymore,” he said. “Does that mean I have no purpose?”
Brinna turned to look at him. “That doesn’t define you, Lucian, just as serving as a bridge doesn’t define me.”
24
At Brinna’s observation, Luc’s breath crashed into his lungs as if he’d run into a wall. He’d been wondering the same thing about himself, grappling with his own purpose. His worthiness. Even when he’d had his powers, he hadn’t felt he’d deserved them, and now without them, who was he?
He’d never been tied to his identity as the god of day and light. He liked the role and the perks of his power, but he’d spent more time Roaming than seated at Sol. But until his father had asked him to commit to ascending in his place as god of the Vasmost, Luc hadn’t truly had to commit to anything. He’d been mulling over why he’d been so opposed to making that commitment, and he didn’t like the answer.
Because he was afraid. Terrified of letting someone down, just like he’d let down Nix.
Stay, Lucian. Stay with me.
He looked at Brinna and watched her meander around the space, inspecting trinkets, leaning to look at carvings. He’d come back to her time and again. Though they dreamed together, and Brinna was walking his dreams with him, ultimately, he was the dreamer. Old Luc wouldn’t have entertained it. Old Luc would have bolted from his feelings for her, from the idea of a god-yoke, afraid.
But he was here—and where he wanted to be.
Because of her.
Even before he’d known the god-yoke existed between them.
Brinna crouched down to inspect something at the center of the room.
His chest squeezed with awareness watching her. His god-yoke. He couldn’t fathom it, but knew it was true. From the very first. He didn’t know when the bond awakened, but it was as if his heart had known the first time he’d seen her.
The pain inside him had been gone the moment he’d returned to her in his dreams. The realness of her walking in the dreamworld was somehow enough to keep away the effects Nix was feeling at his separation from Auri.
“I came to understand something,” she said, her fingers gently touching a stone where greenery had sprouted.
“What is that?” he asked, slowly closing the distance between them.
“Perhaps that function—the bridge—is as important as Jessamine’s healing or Tarley’s hunting.” She stood and wiped at her clothing, looking down at them, as if just realizing she was wearing gray trousers and an ivory linen shirt rather than the earlier dress. “Oh,” she breathed and looked up at him with a grin. “You dress me so nicely.”
It made him return her effervescent smile. “And?”
“And what?”
“The bridge?”
“Oh. Right. Maybe my purpose was always to be a bridge between the dreamworld and the real one. To save them. That this” –she waved her hands about–“is fate somehow.”
“You are incredible,” he said, rubbing his chest, his heart contracting inside him with awareness—the bright heat tightening his insides—of his feelings for her. Only he wasn’t sure it was the god-yoke but rather something even more.
She looked up at him as he stopped before her.
Stars, he felt hot, and it didn’t have anything to do with the heat of the jungle.
