AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’d rather die then.”
For some reason, that made him feel panicked and insulted. He marched up to the bed and yanked the sheets off her. She rolled into a ball and wrapped her arms around herself, still trembling–no, shivering–with her skin looking even paler. In worry, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to look at him.
“You willnotdie, Mierna,” he growled. “I won’t allow it, so you might as well spit it out.”
“It shouldn’t have happened!” she yelled and shoved his chest, but he barely budged. If this was another day, Mierna might’ve escaped his grasp already. “This will complicateeverything!”
He shook her lightly by the shoulders. “Would you stop talking nonsense andtell mewhat’s going on?”
“No!”
It was then that the medic knocked on the room, and Travus grunted for them to come in. A small Elven woman of considerable age scurried in, dressed in gray and white robes. She went up to the bedside and was only tall enough to peep over the edge, but it was all she needed as her eyes glowed, and she blinked while scanning over Mierna’s body. Though the Nymph tried to hide away under the sheets, she couldn’t conceal whatever it was the medic saw, who gasped.
“What is it, Cassida?”
“She’s pregnant!”
Travus’s heart stopped momentarily. There was silence, and the medic’s eyes darted between the two of them in confusion.
“That’s impossible…” Travus breathed, which prompted Mierna to look at him curiously from under the sheets. He looked back at her in a daze. “You can’t be pregnant. As Eldorian royalty, we go through a coming-of-age ritual where reproducing with only a mate is possible.” He pointed to Cassida. “She was there. Shesawthat ritual. The child cannot be mine.”
“But your majesty…” the medic said with surprise, “the childisyours.”
“Impossible,” he growled as he rubbed his face. “My mate is dead, Cassida.”
“Only…” she said with a trembling voice, “Princess Miernaisyour mate, your majesty. It’s been centuries since Niette passed and…well, it’s not uncommon to have another mate if…”
“If what?”
Travus and Mierna both stared at her, both with demand and nervousness. Cassida’s resolve faltered under their gazes, and she looked like she was about to say something controversial.
“Your majesty, I come from older times where superstitions ran rampant, but I do believe that some of the tales and ancient scrolls are true to their word. We’re magical beings, after all. Incarnation is not impossible, even if it’s a rare case of returning as an intelligent being.”
“Then they would return, alive and well, having sipped from the River of Mortality to live anew,”he whispered,“and to die again, and then to live again once more.”
Mierna’s arm flew away as she sat up and looked at him with widened eyes. “Travus,no.”
“Yes…” he whispered; his gaze downcast as a sense of surrealism took over. “Yes, and this is proof. The Realm of the Dead, the Council Stones, the portal…”
Mierna grabbed his arm in panic. “Whatare you going on about?”
But he heard nothing over the stirring of his mind as everything fell into place. The Council Stones were one proof, and Mierna being his mate was another. He knew she loved him enough to come back for him. He had prayed deep in his heart that the Realm of Dead was real and that she’d do it so they could be together again.
He looked at her, taking in everything about her. The structure of her face, the texture of her hair, and the sound of her voice. Though her hair and eyes were a different color from Niette’s, and his late lover was more soft-spoken and innocent, he could see why Mierna felt so familiar to him.
“You reallyareher reincarnate,” he said breathlessly, a tremor passing through him as he put a hand on his chest. “No wonder you always felt so familiar.”
For some reason, Mierna didn’t look like she denied it, yet she still spoke against his statement. “Travus, please think logically. Do you not think I would’ve felt a sense of familiarity toward you too?”
“Have you not?” He challenged her. “Has your body yearned for anyone else besides me? Responded to anyone else’s touch the way it does to mine?”
Her mouth dropped open, blinking as she tried coming up with a response. But she failed. It satisfied him to see her speechless.
“And have you, for even a sliver of a moment, perhaps felt any warmth toward me despite my ruthlessness?”
Watching the soft pink spreading across her cheeks confirmed it despite her blinking in shock. “Um, I-I–” she shook her head, “whatever you’re suggesting, Travus, don’t let it fuel the delusion you’re trying to justify.”
He marched to the bedside as Cassida quickly left the room, and Mierna gasped as he grabbed her chin gently to make her look his way. “Then tell me I repulse you, Princess,” he said softly with his breath fanning her mouth, and he watched her lashes flutter as she sighed quietly. Her discreet gulp didn’t go undetected, and he knew that something about his presence mattered to her. His thumb, with newfound relief and adoration, swiped her bottom lip gently. “Tell me that you ran to get away from me. Because you hated me.”
