Something real.
It was only two words, but with those two words, the world froze around me. My body became ridged. I didn’t think I could move if I tried. I didn’t see Dramin anymore, even though he was only mere feet from me. I knew he was there, but I was seeing the beach. I was seeing Thom in his ugly hat. I was seeing life and love and remembering that moment so clearly—the feeling of another person inside of me, of tiny hands and legs pressing against me.
I had disposed of life for centuries before that moment, and every time I had thought nothing of it. People that, in some cruel way, had become nothing more than a pig on a slaughtering block. However, feeling my daughter, that child, a person, growing, moving, becoming inside of me, had made it real.
Life had become real.
It had become more than sprays of blood and hearts in boxes.
It had become something I wanted to protect.
Something worth protecting.
I could only nod in agreement, my mind numb as it tried to recover from the realization that I had been spoon-fed.
“Do you regret it?” My head snapped to him at the calm whisper. I hadn’t even realized I had looked away.
“Regret what?”
“What you have done,” he clarified, his eyes kind through the pain I could see behind them. “What you chose to do?”
“More than anything.” Once again, words were not enough to convey what I felt.
“Then you may ask your question.”
It wasn’t an act of forgiveness, for I wasn’t sure I would ever gain that from him, but it was an open door, some kind of acceptance I wasn’t sure I would ever understand. I wasn’t about to ignore the opportunity or abuse the privilege.
I took a step closer, wishing I could sit on the bed beside him, something about him seeming grandfatherly and kind, but I knew we weren’t there yet.
“I have been having dreams—”
“Of your mate?” he interrupted me, his voice shrouded with a hard edge that for the first time of all of my existence made me doubt myself.
I could only nod.
“Are they a T?uha?” he asked, the question I had come to ask him sounding fickle as it was sprouted back to me.
Anger erupted inside of me, but I trapped it inside, my shoulders stiffening as my magic heated into a flame. I squished my face together in concentration as I tried to understand what he was asking. How to rephrase my question.
“They feel like a T?uha. We are in the same place, and he’s there. It doesn’t feel like he’s gone … like he’s still somewhere in the world connecting with me. But I know he’s gone. I can feel his magic inside of me. I…” My words stumbled to a stop as the memory became too much, as the haunted cry rang through my memory again. I wished I had never come here. If it was just Talon ... if the T?uhas were real, I would need to find him. But Rosy … She was there, too.
I looked away from him, listening to his rattled breathing as I fought the need to run, feeling my muscles tense and pull as my jaw moved itself into a hard line, the same shield I had used to ignore the pain before sliding into place.
“I see my mate every night when I sleep.” I tensed at his voice, the calm admission one I hadn’t been expecting “I see her in the forest that we spent every one of our T?uhas walking through. We talk, she holds my hand. And, for years after her death, I was sure they were real. I was sure that it was really her.”
I couldn’t help looking at him. I couldn’t help hoping it was real, right up until the end when what little joy I had found burst in jagged shards of pain again.
“It wasn’t?” I could barely get the words out.
“No. I was too blind to see that it was only my memories replaying. It was only my mind pulling at what I knew to be there and creating a shadow.”
He looked at me from where he lay, the dim light from the lanterns flickering around us, and this little piece of what we were, this common ground, cemented itself between us in a thread whether we wanted it to or not.
“But, why…?” I asked the question, even though I knew the answer. Well, at least I thought I did.
His answer was nothing like I had been expecting. Nothing like what I had wanted to hear
“Because part of your soul is missing, and each night when you sleep, you search for it. You search so hard that you create something that is not there, if only to keep you going.”
My soul. For years, I had been searching for my soul. Even before Talon’s death, even before I regained my memories. My soul was still searching for what had been ripped from it in years of dreams and nightmares as I watched Thom and Rosaline move through my subconscious.