What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(71)

I didn’t know what happened when she found him, or when the male searching for me found me. Would all previous attachments just disappear? Did it work that way, or was it strictly a physical bond that eclipsed all else? Did humans even feel it, or did they spend an eternity with someone they never loved?

Each possibility was just another reason why Caelum and I had to remain free. I didn’t want that for me, but even more so, I didn’t want that for him.

I was in so much trouble.

“Yes, Little One. I’ll tell you another story,” he said as he reached into the pack and pulled out the blanket he’d stolen. He lay near the fire, leaving the place directly next to it for me to claim. He tapped the ground beside him, and I eyed the spot nervously.

I hadn’t agreed to sleep curled up in his embrace the night before, but even that felt more innocent than doing it tonight. After he’d kissed me senseless, I couldn’t help but wonder exactly what would happen the moment I lay next to him.

But it was cold, even with the fire going at my side, and there was only one blanket.

Shoving down my nerves to a place where I hoped he couldn’t see them, I moved into the space he’d left for me and stretched out on my back, turning my head to face him. He rolled to his side, facing me and sliding an arm beneath my head to protect it from the packed dirt beneath us. “What kind of story would you like to hear?” he asked, draping his other hand across my belly.

I sucked in a breath, forcing words to come out when all I could do was fixate on the touch. “Do you know any about the Fae and their mates?”

“I do,” he said, his voice sounding surprised as he nodded slowly. “The mates came to be a very long time ago. The Fae were cursed by the witches who fought against them in endless wars, their souls fractured in two upon their birth and their other half planted into another person entirely. Some were human, others were Fae as well, but being without their other half was said to be a painful experience. Like being half a person.”

“This is more like a history book than a story,” I teased.

“Alright, Little One,” he laughed. “There once was a Fae who waited over three hundred years for his mate to be born into her first life. This wasn’t typical, anything over one hundred years tended to push even the most stable of Fae past their breaking point. A life without half your soul was unthinkably cruel. And then one night, he felt the moment she reached adulthood, and he wept with joy.”

“What happened?” I asked, sensing from the seriousness on his face that this was not a story with a happy ending. I’d need to give him that caveat in the future. All romantic stories needed to end with them spending their lives together.

Life was hard and brutal enough as it was. The last thing I needed was a reminder of my loneliness in my bedtime stories that were meant to distract me from my grief.

“The witches shielded her from his view so that he could not get to her. They wrapped her in a cloaking spell, disguising her location and keeping him from her for many life cycles. But the spell didn’t protect him from feeling her. It didn’t stop him from falling in love with the essence of her every time she reached adulthood. It didn’t stop him from feeling every time she died, her life fading away as he wept for another life wasted. On and on it went over centuries. Over thirteen lives, he waited and fought to find a way to get to his mate before she could die the true death and he would lose her forever.”

“Did he ever find her?” I asked, swallowing back the burn of tears in my throat. I shouldn’t have felt sorry for the nameless Fae male. I shouldn’t have felt anything for him, knowing that he would have taken that human woman from everything she’d known if given the chance.

I’d been taught we were nothing but property to them, a being whose desires didn’t matter in comparison to the needs of the Fae, but now sorrow pierced my gut at the thought of spending all those centuries alone. Of feeling the other half of my soul die repeatedly. To think that somewhere out there was a male who was supposedly the other half of me was unthinkable; impossible. How could the other half of me exist outside my body?

“He did. She was in her final life cycle when the witches’ protection broke and he finally found her. But in order to complete the bond, he had to get her back to Faerie soil so that her life could be linked to his. Without it, she would remain mortal and die the true death,” he said, leaning forward to touch his mouth to mine gently.

I drew back sharply, resisting the urge to growl my frustration at him. “Did they make it?”

He sighed, murmuring into the space between us. “I don’t know. The story was never completed. They could be living happily in Alfheimr, or they could both be gone. Her to the true death, him to the madness that would have consumed him after losing her.”

“Why would you tell me a story that you don’t even know the ending of?” I snapped, lifting his hand off my stomach in protest.

He chuckled, replacing it immediately and using it to turn my body to face him . “Because life isn’t always tidy. We don’t always have the answers we want, and love isn’t always pretty,” he said, his gaze pointed as I swallowed audibly. “It’s messy and painful, but it is always worthwhile. It is always the answer, my star, not the problem.”

“You’re saying I should love the Fae male who is supposedly my mate?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I thought about the inconsistency with what he’d said in the past. One more tick for the suspicion that we could only be temporary.