I nodded, licking a tear off my lip, and took his hand in both of mine, smoothing my thumbs over the veins. I once loved him as the human he pretended to be, but now, seeing those clear veins there under his immortal skin, I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than the impure soul I now knew he was.
I hooked his ring over my pinky for a second to hold it, and leaned down to kiss the soft warmth of his palm. He gently cupped my cheek again and I rolled my face into it, closing my eyes.
Outside, a small bird sung a high-pitched song on the balcony, and I knew it was Lilith—watching on, just waiting for me to cement my fate as I slipped that ring onto his finger.
“Are you okay, Ara?” he asked softly.
“I am now,” I said, as I opened my eyes and looked up into his, watching the green brighten as I slid the wedding band down the length of his finger, pushing it gently over the knuckle until it landed back where it should never have left.
“And now,” he said softly, reaching down to touch my belly, “we are complete.”
I leaned my brow against his collarbones, my fingertips wrapping his, both of us swaying softly to a song no one else could hear, and the baby kicked against her daddy’s hand, as if, without a soul, she maybe still had a heart—still knew what love was. But that couldn’t be true. She was just an empty vessel, comprised of instinct and reflex actions.
“David?” I started.
“Shh,” he whispered into my hair. “Let’s just have this moment.”
My heart sunk into my belly, barely keeping me alive as I once again buried the secrets I promised I’d never again keep. “But there’s so much I need to tell you.”
“And I give you permission to leave it until tomorrow,” he said, his deep, smooth voice so low and so soothing against my face that I couldn’t possibly argue.
He bent slightly then and scooped my legs off the ground, carrying me like a child to the bed.
“What are you doing?” I put one hand out to steady myself if I fell.
“Something I’ve needed to do for a long time.”
The feathered quilt rose up comfortably around my neck and shoulders as David laid us sideways, our heads to the balcony, feet to the bedroom door, and parted my legs with his knee, bringing himself lower into his hands on either side of my arms.
He smiled affectionately down at my little round belly. “Can’t get quite as close as I used to.”
“It won’t be that way forever,” I said, realising suddenly that it would. I would be gone after the baby was born—this soul no longer mine. We’d never lay chest to chest, stomach to stomach, heart to heart, ever again.
David traced a soft tickly line around my lip, moving his hand down to straighten the talisman between my breasts. “Why do you look so sad?”
“No confessions today, remember?” I tried to smile. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
I could see it in his eyes that he wanted to ask, but the heat in his body wanted something else. He brushed it all aside and got on his hands and knees above me, his hair falling over his brows. “You know you don’t need to worry, right? We can beat any odds—as long as we’re together.”
Those few simple words wrapped around me completely, giving me true hope for the first time in so long. He was right. Nothing ever was what it seemed be. There
had
to be a way to save me and our daughter; after everything we suffered, death couldn’t be what tore us apart.
As David bent to kiss me, I phased out, hearing Lilith’s words enter my mind—from a warning she gave me long ago:
Jason would save the…
and that was all I heard.
Jason
. He had to be the answer.
“Where are you right now?” David leaned back a little and squinted down into my eyes.
“This is going to sound really bad, but…” I shot him a toothy grin. “I was thinking about Jason.”
He laughed, folding down to his hand so he could wipe his brow on his thumb. “You’re right. That does sound bad.”
I laughed too. “I was just thinking about what Lilith told me.”
“About you being fated to him?”
I nodded.
He pressed his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat, looking back at nothing with a changed expression. “Can we forget about all of that for one minute so I can make love to you?”
“Just
one
minute, huh?” I teased.
“After how long it’s been—” He rested himself on top of me, softly moving my hair off my face. “I wouldn't expect it to be much longer than that.”
I sunk my back into the bed to give Bump more room under him, and wrapped my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck. “I don’t care if it only lasts ten seconds. I’ve waited way too long for this.”
“Being this close to you—” He motioned down to the hardness beneath his jeans resting right against my warmth. “I can almost
feel
you already—like my body knows exactly what’s coming.”
My hands and wrists heated up like a shot of fire in my veins, and the sudden blue glow in my eyes showed in the reflection of David’s.
“Wow,” he said. “I have
definitely
missed that.”
“I miss it when your eyes glow blue, too.”
He bent to kiss my eyelid with the sweetest, softest lips, leaving a small wet spot behind. “You are amazing in so many ways, Ara-Rose. And I no longer wonder now, I
know
I am the luckiest guy in the world.”
So many parts of my heart wanted to just accept that compliment and then take my underpants off, but if he was the luckiest guy in the world, then he shouldn't have a wife that keeps secrets. Not even if he gave me permission. It just didn’t feel right.
“Ara?” David crawled off me until he knelt back on the edge of the bed. “What’s going on, sweetheart? You’re halfway across the world.”
“Country, actually.”
“Huh?”
“I was thinking about Jason again.” I planted my elbows into the mattress and rolled up a little. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this, David.”
It wasn’t often he showed emotion, but he just looked really hurt then.
“Not for the reasons you’re thinking.” I sat up fully and skidded to the edge of the bed, brushing my hair back with both hands.
He turned around and sat down next to me, his bare feet touching the floor, mine about an inch off the ground beside them. “So I guess that secret can’t wait until tomorrow?”
I shook my head slowly. “It’s eating me up.”
He laid a hand very softly to my back. “Tell me then, my love.”
My lip quivered. I pictured my daughter on the day of her birth, being placed in my arms, like on those birthing videos I’d seen, but instead of feeling that ultimate moment of joy radiate between us as we see each other for the first time, all I could feel was dread and a tightening in my throat. “Every time, David,” I said, and burst into tears, hiding my crumpled-up face in my hands.
“Hey,” he hummed sweetly, trying to move my hands. “Sweetheart, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“We just can’t catch a break. Every time anything good happens to us, something awful has to counteract it.”
He cleared his throat. When I looked at him, he was smiling, scratching just beside his eye. “You do realise that’s because we’re not supposed to be together, right?” he said.
I frowned at him.
“Lilith warned me that, when you play against fate, the universe reacts like two negative ends of a magnet. There are consequences.”
“And this is one of them?” I asked, motioning to my belly.
And that was it. When he realised my tears were for something concerning our baby, he dropped slowly onto the ground and knelt by my legs, one hand on my thigh, the other on Bump. “What’s wrong with her?”
I couldn’t speak the words calmly. My chest shook so hard my teeth chattered and, with a gusty cough I spattered out, “She’s soulless.”
He didn’t move at all, but it felt like he leaned back, his hands coming off my body for a second as that sunk in.
“Arthur and I figured it out,” I sobbed loudly. “You weren’t the firstborn.”
“Ara.” He scooped up my hand. “How do you know that?”
“Your mother wanted to protect you from the life of ridicule she knew the impure one would have,” I said, and went on to explain how I’d surmised that she knew the odds of living through a multiple birth and planned accordingly, protecting the impure soul from a harsh life that might further blacken it, in her last loving act as a mother.
David knelt back on his thighs, his hands falling loosely in his lap.
“Our daughter is not the contracted being, David. She’ll be just like me—born without a soul.”
He blew out a long, soft breath, as if trying to whistle, then opened his eyes. “It’s okay.”
“How can you say that? Our daughter will—”
“Be fine,” he said, swiftly jumping up to wrap his arms around me, tipping the bed a little when he sat. He rubbed my arms and back, squeezing me tight every second rub. “Everything will be okay. We’re not going to let this destroy us.”
“But you know what it means, right?” I looked up at him, my eyes so full of tears I could hardly see.
He smiled sweetly, swiping his thumb down the corner of my lip, and drew me close again. “I do. It means she’ll have a very different birth to other babies. And it means Drake has absolutely no claim to her.”
“But he’ll take her, David—when we put my soul in her, he’ll—”
“That won’t be happening,” he said simply.
I shoved out from his chest. “Yes, it will! If you think for a second that I’ll let her die, you—”
“Calm down, sweetheart.” He laughed, taking both my hands tightly and resting them on my lap. “She doesn’t need to die either.”
I bit down on my tongue, stoned with confusion. “Why are you so calm about this?”
“Because it just so happens that I was sitting in the study the other day, drinking Sherry with your father, and I got to thinking what might have been.” He looked down at my hands while he drew a careful breath—the kind people draw before they say something awkward. “I asked him what would become of the child if she actually turned out to be Jason’s, or rather—the impure one’s.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that, if the child is conceived with the second born—the impure soul—there are three options. One: let her die and end this. Two: insert the soul of Lilith, as he has done these past centuries, or three: insert the soul of the father.”
A hundred layers of happiness and sadness fell down on top of me, crushing my lungs. “So she can live, but you’ll die?”
“No, sweetheart.” He tucked his hand under my hair at the back of my neck and brought his face in line with mine. “We talked some more about hypotheticals, and he seemed quite eager to discuss it, actually,” he added, looking away in deep thought for a second. “He told me that, in the past, there had not been the option of the father’s soul, because an immortal being must have an immortal soul, and the fathers chosen by his daughters were completely mortal. But this time it’s different. And this time, there is more than just one immortal soul.”
I cocked my head to one side, envisioning his face as a question mark.
“Ara.” He moved a little closer. “Jason is an
exact
biological copy of me, with an immortal soul—the other half of my soul, to be precise.”
Lilith’s words rang through my ears then as my eyes rounded. “Jason will save the baby.”
David nodded. “That’s it—that’s what Lilith was trying to tell you that day.”
“But she said I had to love him to—”
“And you do love him.” He squeezed my face, his eager eyes alive with excitement. “This doesn't have to have a sad ending, Ara. Not for any of us.”
“Except for Jason. He’ll—”
“He won’t be dead. Don’t you see? He will live eternally in the body of our daughter—forever loved by
you
.” His gentle voice glided with persuasion. “How can he have any happier an end than that?”
I knocked his hands away and stood up. “How can you say that? He
deserves
a life, David! After everything he suffered, he deserves better than to—”
“Than to save our daughter’s life?” He stood too. “I disagree. And I think, if given the chance to argue this, he would disagree too.”
I shook my head. “No. He just got everything he wanted. Why would he give that up now?”
David’s hands dropped slowly to his sides and he just rolled his head to one side, smiling. “Because he loves you. Because you and him are soul mates—fated. You were always meant to be together, and every day that goes by that you’re not, is a day of suffering for him. Can’t you see that?”
I bit my lip. “Why don’t I feel that way then?”
“Because I’m also your soul mate.” He took a step toward me, hesitated, then picked up my hand. “Just … not the better one.”
I squeezed his fingertips. “Matter of opinion.”
He grinned sheepishly, and I swear his cheeks flushed pink.
“So—” I started. “My dad told you all this?”