Bind Our Loving Souls (14 page)

“Get back to your bed,” Demora hissed.

Helena looked horrified as she nodded and
retreated to her room.

Demora looked down at her husband with
disgust. It was obvious there was no affection between them. Then
she bent down and took his hand, her eyes becoming bright.

Enock took my hand as we waited, still
staring at me in astonishment.

No one moved or made a sound until Demora
dropped Paul’s hand and stood up. Her lips quivered, but not like
she was going to cry. Instead, she screeched and kicked him hard in
the side.
“Fifteen years!”
she screamed.

Some life seemed to return to Paul as he
lifted himself against his hands and rubbed the back of his head.
“What?” he mumbled, sitting up and looking around. “Demora?”

The whizzing sound of her hand slicing
through the air was followed by howls of pain as she stabbed him
through the neck. Everyone gasped, and the men in the room backed
up against the wall.

“I’ve wasted fifteen years by your side, and
all that time you were running around making love to these humans!”
She pulled her claws out and let him crumple against the floor,
where he gasped for a few seconds before he became still. I stared
at Demora, wide-eyed, wondering why no one had tried to help
him.

She lowered her head and said, “They will all
die,” before she crossed the room, dove out of the window, and
disappeared.

“I didn’t mean to get them killed,” I said to
Enock desperately. “I just didn’t want her to kill me. It’s not
their fault.” I started to cry. “He forced them to. He would have
forced me to.”

Enock turned to Kristoffer. “It is
murder.”

Kristoffer looked down at the floor,
unwilling to care.

“I’ll do it, then,” Enock said. “Do not let
anything happen to her, Kristoff. She saved my life.” Then he left
through the window as well.

“Wait,” Mattias said, chasing after him,
along with two others.

“You wouldn’t have had to save him if he
hadn’t healed you,” Kristoffer said, glaring at me.

He couldn’t imagine what I was going through
or how I felt when Enock did that for me. My anger boiled over,
because he had absolutely no clue. “I begged him not to,
Kristoffer. I would die for your brother if I had to.”

He snorted in obvious disbelief. “You may
very well have to for what you’ve done.”

The anger I was feeling wasn’t like anything
I’d ever experienced before. As it continued to grow stronger, it
became more of a feeling of dominance. A strange new sense of
supremacy poured through my veins with the new blood they carried,
and suddenly I was filled with a resolve never to back down or let
anyone push me around again. So I took his hand without really
thinking and showed him exactly what I’d been through.

The room went black, but I could feel myself
standing.

How dare you,
Kristoffer’s voice
echoed through my head.
Free me of this at once.

Not until you are aware of what your
brother and I share,
my voice came out in a snarl.

I focused on how deeply I had felt Enock’s
love for me and the way I loved him, amazed at how showing him
these memories came so naturally to me.

No,
Kristoffer thought
,
it isn’t right.

Ignoring him, I showed him the tender moments
we’d shared, dancing in the forest and gazing at the nearby
village. A couple of times, I saw pieces of his memories pressing
against my consciousness, but made no effort to let them in.

How could he love a human so
much?

And then I conveyed the events of the night,
beginning with Paul climbing into my room. It was when Kristoffer
sensed how badly I didn’t want Enock to offer himself for me, how I
would have done anything to stop him, that the walls he’d built
against me began to crumble. He felt a trace of guilt. And when he
heard his brother swear to take his own life if I was to lose mine,
he really felt remorse. He still wasn’t fond of me, I sensed, but
he was finally able to accept me for his brother’s sake. I showed
him once more how much Enock and I loved each other before I pulled
myself from this profound reverie.

It must have taken longer than it felt like
it had, because when I opened my eyes, the room was empty except
for Kristoffer and me. We stared at each other as our hands fell to
our sides, his eyes misty and full of emotion.

“Do you understand now?” I flinched when
Enock asked the question from behind me.

Kristoffer nodded. “It is as if you are bound
already…” he said, sounding drained. “I am sorry, brother. If I
knew…I would never sentence you to the death of your living
spirit.”

“I know. Why don’t you go to the sitting
room? Everyone has gathered there, and Mattias will explain
everything.”

Kristoffer nodded again and left the
room.

I stared at Enock, all the fear returning.
“Are they going to kill me?”

“Not if you will do one thing. It is asking a
lot, and I cannot promise it will go better than before, but if you
agree to do it the new head of this manor will let you live.” He
looked happy, but still very intense.

“Demora?”

“No, she has been laid to rest. It was not
only humans her husband has been having an affair with, and we
caught her trying to kill a Halvandor. She would have killed more
if we had not stopped her.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You said
Anvilayans don’t become intimate until after they’re bound.”

“They don’t, but it seems the ones who are
born and raised here on earth tend to behave more as humans do than
I realized. They develop human habits and desires. Apparently, Paul
was sterile and he took full advantage of what he considered as
freedom.”

I looked down, thinking about what he’d just
said, and noticed the scars on his chest along with the soft light
shining on them. “My eyes,” I said, “they’re Anvilayan too.” It was
a scary, out-of-control feeling to take this in, just as everything
else had been.

“Mostly,” Enock said. “They’re sort of a
honey-colored brown, the rarest of all colors of Anvilayan eyes.
They’re still partly human, I believe. And beautiful, of
course.”

I wanted a mirror, but I felt this deep sense
of grief for the scars on Enock’s chest, the ones I blamed myself
for. It was strange to feel so much pain and emotion for someone
else, and I wondered if the exchange of so much flesh and blood
between us was like being bound together. The feeling was so
powerful.

Instinctively, I leaned forward to lick the
scars, knowing that that was how I showed him I cared. I didn’t
have to wonder if my saliva had the same effect on him that his
always had on me, because he shut his eyes and his lips puckered
like he might whistle as he let out a long breath.

“Thank you for saving me,” I whispered.

Eyes still shut, he leaned against me. “Thank
you for saving me, too.”

We clung to each other for a few precious
minutes, grateful to be together again, past the horrors of the
night before and of watching each other die.

“I never want to spend another day without
you,” I broke the silence. “When I thought I would die, before you
came, I realized that dying without you knowing how sorry I was and
how much I love you was worse than the pain of death. I will never
let fear or anything else come between us again, I promise.”

“Never?” He licked my brow and smiled at me
hopefully.

“Never.” I meant it with all my heart. I felt
older and more certain of this than I ever had about anything else
before, like every doubt and uncertainty didn’t even exist, the way
an Anvilayan regards love.

“Then will you bind yourself to me and return
to Cyron with us?”

The first part of the question was easy to
answer, but the second part…

“It’s the only way they’ll spare your life.
After sharing everything, we’ve realized just how human Halvandors
on earth have become and it was decided that we must return home.
There can be no exception made, but I will not leave without you.
And if we’re bound, we must remain together. To separate two people
whose souls are joined is considered to my people as murder is to
yours, though it is a far crueler fate to inflict on someone
else.”

I just kept staring at him, because I
couldn’t even imagine leaving my friends and family and entire
planet behind forever. The change from Nevada to Norway would be
nothing compared to the one from earth to Cyron. But I
was
part Anvilayan now, and I didn’t seem to have any control over it,
so going home wasn’t even an option now. Tears stung my eyes and
trickled over my cheeks as the reality that I could never return
home began to sink in.

“But won’t I be executed if you bring me back
to your planet?”

He shook his head and let a couple of tears
fall as well. “No one will ever know. I can teach you to control
this, so you will always be Anvilayan. Everyone in that room has
sworn an oath never to tell another living soul about you.”

“Why?” I wouldn’t have pictured them wanting
to risk their lives to get me onto their planet, or caring about me
at all really.

“Because we’re family. And they don’t want to
watch me die.”

“But they watched Paul die and no one did
anything.”

“That was a matter between Demora and
himself. Anvilayans never interfere with disputes between mates.
Oh, there’s so much I still haven’t shown you. I’m sorry, Sarafina.
I didn’t mean to drag you into all this; I only wanted to be with
you. In that moment when I first took your hand, I decided I could
never live without you. I couldn’t see how selfish or unfair it was
to you. I’m so, so sorry I did this to you.” He really broke down
then, crying heavily, and breaking my heart.

“It’s all right,” I murmured, running one
hand over his hair and pulling his head to rest on my shoulder. I
wasn’t angry or upset about anything he’d done. I was only
heartbroken to lose my family. But this new part of me made it all
right, because even that seemed insignificant in comparison to how
much I needed to be with Enock, to be bound to him.

In fact, as I cleared my mind and thought
only of him, everything I’d gone through in coming here and
everything that had occurred that very night seemed like a
blessing, because now I could bind myself to him. Somewhere deep
inside, I felt the undeniable surety that everything would be all
right if I only did this.

“I will bind myself to you,” I said.

“You will?” he asked hoarsely, lifting his
head.

“Yes, but first I need to know if you killed
that woman the day we met.” It was a terrible time to ask, but the
human part of me needed to know before I made this monumental
decision.

He blinked away his tears and stared out my
window, thinking. “I knew you would ask eventually. I had hoped we
would be bound already, though, so I wouldn’t have to fear losing
you.”

“Why would you lose me?”

He looked back at me. “Because to you,
killing someone else, even if it is necessary, is tremendously
disturbing. And I did kill her, but she would have killed you had I
not.”

A cool gentle breeze blew in through my
broken window, causing me to shiver. “But…why would she want to
kill me?”

“Because she saw us together, and she fell in
love with my soul long ago the way I fell in love with yours that
day. On our planet, it’s very easy to see inside of another if they
allow it. That woman, Eelura, was a very distant cousin of mine,
but we were close as children. When we were becoming something like
what you call a teenager, Eelura’s father died. In a moment of
consoling her, she saw very deep inside of me.

“Over the past three years, two women have
been brought into our clan by my uncle in an effort to find me a
wife. I didn’t care for either one, but each of their headless
bodies were found in bed the morning after their arrival. There has
never been any proof, but I have no doubt it was Eelura who killed
them.

“Since that day, her life has revolved around
mine, no matter how hard I’ve tried to dissuade her. She even
followed me here to earth, unwilling to let me out of her sight.
But once your heart chooses, there is no turning back. For a
lifetime, that person is the only one you will ever truly
love.”

Enock put a cautious hand on my cheek,
looking unsure as he leaned down to kiss me softly, placing the
sensation of lovely little pinpricks all over my lips. “And my
heart chose you. So I had to kill her, and I do not regret it. I
would kill anyone who threatens your life.”

“Oh, Enock, my heart chose you, too…and I can
certainly appreciate you saving my life that way.”

I saw the shadow of a smile pass over his
pain-stricken face, and felt my heart lift. “So, will you do it,
then?”

“Yes.”

He laughed through a sob as he wrapped his
arms around me tightly. “Thank you. I promise, I will love you
every day for the rest of our lives. Surely, you will live longer
as an Anvilayan and our souls will never have to part.”

“How long do Anvilayans live?” I’d assumed
they lived about as long as we did.

“My parents were hardly two hundred years old
when they died and still considered very young.”

My eyebrows rose. It felt like I’d just been
handed the Holy Grail, filled to the brim with the elixir of life.
Generations would pass away on earth before I would. “Really?” I
couldn’t help but smile.

“Yes.”

He took my hand, leading me to my bed and
setting us both down. “Are you certain you want to do this? You can
never take it back. There is no divorce or annulment when it is
done.”

“Absolutely certain,” I said firmly.

There was no life left for me here, anyway,
and with every passing minute, I felt more Anvilayan.