“Are you?” He flings the question back, slapping me with the truth: I’m every bit as vulnerable in this moment as he is.
The Phantom’s tragic face from last night intrudes on my mind’s eye. Seeing his disfigurement didn’t scare me, not like I would’ve expected. I pitied him and the life he must’ve known, but there was no fear or disgust. With Etalon, I’ve had weeks to prepare myself. No matter what’s on the other side of his mask, there will be no fear or pity. We’re linked through our music and our memories, and I’m grateful for all the years he played for me in my dreams. I don’t care what he looks like. I just want the obstacles gone and the isolation to end—for both of us.
“No,” I finally answer his question, then pull the cover away. A whimper snags in my throat and I drop the mask. It clatters outside of the cloak, its fragile surface cracking.
Neither of us stops to inspect the damage. We’re too busy watching each other. His impenetrable gaze tracks my every feature, taking measure of my reactions.
I was right . . . he is his own foil: two polar opposites, a contrast of masculine angles and elegant curves. Every delicate feature rests symmetrically atop a strong bone structure: rugged jaw line, shapely lips, straight nose, a falcon’s eyes—alert and piercing—buried in myriad lashes, and a flawless olive complexion almost celestial beneath the filmy lights.
I expected to be struck mute, but not by his beauty.
He takes my hand—that small contact colliding in a union of the senses: I feel, taste, smell, and hear only him.
“Rune.” My name claws free from his damaged vocal cords.
“Etalon,” I answer, mesmerized.
He grins at that, an arresting flash of white teeth.
“Why?” I ask. “Why the mask?”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “It is only behind the mask where I feel I belong.”
“No.” I squeeze his hand. “You belong up here, out in the open, with me.”
His mouth twitches. “Prove it.”
“How?”
“There are no more walls between us, neither man-made, nor cosmic.”
My heart pounds. “I know.”
“So . . . touch me.”
A wave of shyness heats my cheeks, but he’s done waiting. He cups my hands around his jaw on either side, holding them in place. Electric pleasure crackles between us like lightning.
He lets go as I take over, tracing the graceful curves of sinew and bone along his face then down his neck to his collarbone. Trails of light follow my fingertips, as if carving a path through his emotions. Arms at his sides, he closes his eyes in rapturous beauty, long lashes fanned across sculpted cheekbones.
I stop at the V of his neckline. We both catch a breath as the fine line of hair tickles my palm. I rest my hand just above his racing heartbeat, coaxing out a pulse of bright green in his chest. My heart answers with the same shimmering color.
His eyes snap open, coppery and glimmering: the eyes from my dreams.
As if he’s held back long enough, he sweeps away the tangles from my temple and caresses the shell of my ear. His other hand skims down, his thumb exploring the shape of my lips. Every touch feels new and remarkable, yet at the same time, familiar—an all-consuming sense of recognition.
When I look at him like this, unmasked and bared, I can see inside him—inside myself—even more clearly than the day in the chapel and all the nights we’ve danced together since.
“I know you,” I say, dreamily. “I was never able to see your face in the memories or visions. But somehow, I know you. You feel like home to me.”
Growing somber, he turns me loose and stands. His clothes tighten around his flexing form as he stretches to tug the tin can off the statue. The other can drags along the roof with a metallic scrape as he pulls the ribbon free from both.
He kneels in front of me. “You know my soul. Just as I knew yours before seeing you.” He curls the fingers of my left hand into a loose fist around one end of the ribbon, and brushes my knuckles along his smooth cheek, spurring jolts of sensation that wind through my arms and burrow deep into my chest. “We’re twin flames. Incarnations of the same soul, parted while reentering the world . . . predestined to find each other again. Everything we’ve ever experienced in our separate lives has been working to reunite the mirror pieces of ourselves we left within the other. Twin souls always come full circle, as natural and ineludible as the migration of birds or the alignment of planets. All of this has been set into motion in the past by our spirit, for our bodies to discover in the present. Now, at last, we’re here.”
I rake a fallen lock of hair from his otherworldly eyes and repeat his words: “We’re here.” The explanation should strike me as unbelievable, but instead, the rightness of it is undeniable.
All those nights we climbed the stars and rearranged the planets with our songs, we were complete and invincible when we stood together.