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This entire thing was absurd. Every bit. Being shoved into the Binding, being forced out of the Binding, having no memories, having no soul, having to find my soul and my memories which were apparently the same thing. And above all, especially absurd was the idea that not so long ago, I had been dragging Kalen through the heavily wooded areas of this gods-damned Continent. That I had chided him much of the same way he chided me now. Had refused him as he refused me.
I physically convulsed as the vision came back to me once more, less forcefully than before but enough to make my head spin. After all of my begging and pleading at the Sea and all of the strain in the veins of my forehead trying to remember on the Mountain, I knew now why some people lived their lives on the fringes of the truth. It was easier before. Before, I could wonder what Kalen and I would become without the burden of who we used to be to each other.
But now I did know and as much as I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t ignore it either. I was intolerably uncomfortable about the feelings that the vision had spawned. Hot, itching feelings causing a frenzy beneath the surface of my skin.
I sat up in bed and wrapped my arms around my legs just to keep myself from bursting open, wondering if Kalen was somewhere in this castle, curled around himself. I hadn’t seen him since I stormed out of the ball last night, and Kalen hadn’t sought me out even though he knew exactly where I was. I’d spent the entire day in bed, watching the sun cross the sky and trying not to think of the Light inside Kalen’s eyes. How it flared when I’d called his name, only to be snuffed out as I turned to run.
He had saved me. So many times. And once I knew the truth about him, I ran.
I rolled my body towards the window and was thankful to be met with the sickle moon. I didn’t think I could handle the pull of a full moon. The robust glow always tugged me into the past, where I’d already faced everything I wished to forget.
A soft scuff sounded against the back of my door giving away the presence of a silent voyeur to my confessional. I huffed. If it has to happen, why not now?
“Kalen...how long have you been standing at the door?”
“Long enough to feel strange about it,” he admitted.
“Just come in...please.” I cringed at the edge in my voice, butthere was nothing I could do to soften it.
I turned towards the door expectantly. His shadow moved first, breaking the space between us as he inched into my room. When Kalen’s face finally emerged from the darkness I had to steady my breathing. He was even more beautiful truly knowing him. Even frowning, he was devastatingly perfect.
His sleeping attire was slightly wrinkled, the pants hanging low on his hips and the shirt bunched up at one side like he had spent the entire day in bed, too. His hair was pulled from his face in that low bun I adored, the gold in his eyes slightly more platinum as they soaked in the violet hues of night. Cooler, almost blue like I remembered. His gaze held just below his lashes, not daring to look at me directly just yet. He was afraid. My stomach sank and burned.
I turned back to the window and pretended not to notice as his weight shifted the bed, tilting me at an awkward angle. I could feel the warmth of his body moving over me in subtle waves. My heart was stuttering already, just at his proximity. I was a gigantic fool. I had felt this before so many times since I’d come to this world. How did I miss this? We were so painfully and obviously connected.
After an eternity Kalen finally broke the tense silence.
“I’m sorry, Gwyn,” he said, and the way he said my name made my chest burn. I let the apology hang there in the air, too proud to admit that he was not the one who should have been apologizing and still too angry to do the right thing. He sighed and I could tell he was twiddling his thumbs back and forth like he always did when he was anxious. It was still so odd, to know what he was doing without looking. Not because he was predictable, but because he’d had these habits for most of his human life.
“Gwyn,” he tried again, “this journey that you are on...these stones, your soul...you’ve been apart from yourself just as long asyou have been apart from me. To have told you everything...” His hands flopped against his lap in defeat. “I didn’t know what that would do to you or how you would react. I couldn’t interfere. No matter how much I wanted to. You just...you have to understand—”
That is where he lost me.
I jerked my face towards him, trying not to lose hold of my anger completely.
“That’s just it Kal, I understand.”
He shifted back, bracing himself.
“I understand quite a few things, actually. Do you want to know what I understand?” I took his silence as a yes. “I understand that months ago, I was an ignorant and completely unhinged immortal who was living in a magical little hell hole, blissfully unaware of how awful I had it. And then, for no apparent reason at all, you came to pluck me out of the sky and throw me into a completely different but equally just as awful alternate dimension—to help you steal back power and hope for your people. I understand that you put your entire world on the shoulders of your ignorant best friend and left her to go it alone.”
Kalen gave up on his temporary vow of silence and shifted his entire body towards me, nostrils flaring. “That’s not fair! You’ve been anything but alone, Gwyn.”
“Do not tell me what is and is not fair!” I shouted, startling us both. “You may have been leading me around this Continent, helping me fight my battles and warming my bed, but I have been alone in this. You let me be alone when you kept the Truth from me.”
The words cracked from my chest and I felt desolation wash back over me. Kalen stared me down, expecting more brash insults and unfair accusations, but I had nothing left. I was angry and I had fed on that feeling until I felt nothing but the shame of it.
“I understand that you lied to me because you were in love with the girl who went into the Binding.” My voice came to a whisper. “I understand that you are terrified of the one who came out.”
So am I.
Kalen’s gaze dropped to his lap, and the Light in his eyes dimmed. There it was. Everything I had never said but had been there in Truth all along. My breathing was ragged and I tried to hold my breath so I wouldn’t cry.
Before the vision, I hadn’t fully understood how deep a cavity of doubt and loneliness that seventy-odd years inside the Binding had eroded into my soul. But I felt it now. How things that are lost, even suspended in time, can be changed by the people who move forward without them.And I was lost for so long. I felt like I had slipped from a mountain, pieces of my life falling around me, a loose rock that I could not hold onto.
No matter how many memories I pulled from my wracked mind, no matter how many stones I held in my hands. I would never know who I was supposed to be. All I had left was who I would become after it all.
My body shook as I cried, even as Kalen wrapped his arms around me. It was all too much. I couldn’t keep fighting with him and fighting with myself. I would have to pick my battles and the game against Kalen was a losing one.
