“You’ve always found comfort in tea,” Thorne murmured. “Even when the world was crumbling around you.”
I moved to the next familiar object, the sword Alastor had given me. He’d said it was mine long before it was his. And here it was, its blade gleaming in the light. The moment my fingers touched the metal, something inside me shifted, like a lock turning. Levanya’s voice echoed in my mind.Still beautiful.
“I’m keeping that,” I said, taking it from its stand. “It’s mine and I want it back.”
His laugh was everything. “It’s yours.”
The objects blurred together as I moved among them, a tarnished locket, a worn leather-bound journal, a simple wooden flute, a bloodstained arrow, a tattered blanket, a silver spoon. With each item I touched, fragments of memories flickered through my mind, too fleeting to grasp but undeniablymine.Theirs.
Each brush of metal and scrap of fabric brought another woman to the forefront of my mind. Another life wasted.Another daughter, sister, aunt, friend, murdered. But also loved. Cherished.
Setting the sword aside, my fingers brushed over a simple gold band. “Were we truly married?”
“Nine times.”
The enormity of it staggered me, all those lives lived and lost, those loves and heartbreaks and triumphs and failures. I felt the weight of centuries pressing down on me, the echo of countless deaths, the breaking of his heart over and over again on a final breath.
“And this?” I asked, lifting a small glass vial filled with what looked like ash.
His expression darkened. “The remains of a letter. You wrote it to warn me about Ezra when you had no idea who he really was. He found it first.”
I moved on quickly, not wanting to linger on that particular horror. My eyes fell on a familiar object at the center of the arrangement, the worn book Elowen had given him, sitting on a small wooden pedestal.
“Why is this here?” I asked, touching the faded cover. “This isn’t from a past life.”
“No,” he agreed, moving to stand with me. “It’s from this one. The only one that matters now.”
I looked up at him, searching his face. “Tell me. All of it. I need the story.”
He drew a deep breath, his hand coming to rest beside mine on the book. “Ezra had a vision. He saw that a Huntress would be born, and she would break the balance of power.” His fingers tightened on the book. “After he warned me, we each made our own decision. I decided I wanted the Huntress to choose me, to give me more power. So I hunted you, found you?—”
“And accidentally fell in love,” I finished.
“No.” His voice was firm. “I hunted you with the intention of making you love me. The accident was that I truly fell in love with you instead. It changed everything.”
I swallowed hard. “And Ezra decided he would kill the Huntress, thus keeping the peace and the balance of power between you. I know this part.”
My stomach began to twist. He was building to something. Something I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear.
“Ezra has repeatedly been successful. You have died in my arms every single life. But the fabric of souls is delicate. After all of these lives, you have but one left to live. If you die by the hands of a god one more time, you are gone forever. A victory for Ezra and—” he faltered.
“The end of the cycle,” I whispered.
He didn’t deny it. “One day, I found you in Requiem, dancing on this stage. The diamond. But Ezra found you too. And when I tried to plead with him for your final life, he said that you were merely a mortal and mortals were predictable. He swore that you only fell in love with me because I was the option in front of you.’”
“And what did you say to that?”
“I told him he was wrong. That our souls were destined because you’re my Ever and I’m yours. I said you’d never fall in love with another. He argued.” His gaze dropped to our hands, still resting side by side on the book. “I said I would prove it to him.”
Something cold settled in my stomach. Ihadfallen in love with another. “What did you do?”
“I knew he could circumvent the immortality in Requiem easily. So, I made a bargain with my twin because if he didn’t kill you in this life, you would live one more. And then one more. And so on, until I could find a way to give you immortality. I told him I would give him this life cycle as a test. And if you werein love with him on your final day, then I would step away and the next time you were found, I would not stop him from killing you. And if you weren’t, he had to agree to let you live and stop hunting you forevermore.”
“You bargained with my final life?” The words were barely audible, choked by the lump in my throat.
His deep breath stole mine.
“I knew you could never love him. Not the way you loved me. It wasn’t possible. I had so much faith in our love, I thought I’d finally found the solution to restore the peace, the power. Us. All of it. And Ezra agreed. Seconds before he left, I broke an unspoken rule. We were never meant to use our power against each other. But I stole all of his memories,” Thorne admitted. “He no longer remembered that he was a god. He didn’t remember the bargain. He didn’t remember me.”
