I took it from him, quickly deciding it might be easier to open if I put it down. I placed it gently on the coffee table, and scooted forward onto the edge of the couch, looking from the gift to Alex. He moved back against the overstuffed chair next to the couch and watched with bright eyes. “Open it.”
I lifted the gift, gently pulling the tape from the folded paper on the back. It came undone easily. I repeated the same thing on the other side. The paper fell away, revealing a beautiful painting of a lake, the bright blues and pinks of the sunset reflected in the water and the lake surrounded by hills and mountains in the background. I’d seen this painting before. I’d been particularly enamored of it on Alex’s wall in his house. “Alex,” I said, a little breathless. “It’s beautiful!” I stared at it and the same familiar feeling that had hit me the first time I looked at it hit me again, but I couldn’t place it. I glanced up. Alex was watching me carefully. “I remember it from your collection.”
He nodded slowly, studying me for a few seconds longer. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but knew he hadn’t found it when his face fell almost imperceptibly. He gave the ghost of a smile. “It’s by Richard Wilson. It’s one of my favorites.”
I could tell the painting meant a lot to him. “I can’t take this, Alex. It’s too special.”
He smiled again. “Yes, it is. And that’s why I gave it to you.”
I shook my head, prepared to protest. He put a finger to my lips silencing me. “Nothing could be more special than you.” He kissed me lightly and I put my arms around him, kissing him back. Thanking him for the painting, the day, and for all the years he’d spent taking care of me and making sure I was safe. Even if we didn’t always get along, sometimes he had moments of flawlessness. Today had been one of them.
I pulled back from the kiss, worried about ending up in the same position as the barn again. “Will you help me hang it?” I asked.
He nodded and stood, pulling me up from the couch with him. We settled on a spot next to the dining room table. It was visible from any part of the room and far enough from the fireplace that we wouldn’t have to worry about the heat affecting the paint. He had also brought a protective glass cover for it. We ended the night cuddled on the couch under a throw blanket, watching the flames of the fire, content.
I was getting ready for class when I heard a loud banging on the front door. I threw on my robe, pulling my hair into a ponytail as I went down the stairs. Alex made it to the door before me. I stood on the stairs and watched as Emil and Tate came into the house. Tate had a bruise around his eye. I furrowed my brow, wondering what had happened. Alex locked the door behind them.
Emil walked into the room with so much focus he didn’t even see me. No one did. Something was clearly on his mind. He took a deep breath, about to say something, but stopped, frozen, when he saw the wall. He stared at the painting for several beats, a vein near his temple pulsing. He was not happy. He turned, staring straight at Alex. Alex crossed his arms over his chest like he was standing his ground and preparing for a fight. “Really?” Emil said in a brooding tone with narrowed eyes. “Lake Avernus?”
Alex shrugged unapologetically. “You gave her the necklace and earrings.”
I looked from Alex to Emil. Obviously, the painting had something to do with my past, but I hadn’t remembered it yet. I really wished they would stop having conversations about our history together and not cluing me in.
“Spending Valentine’s Day with her wasn’t enough, you had to give her that, too?”
Alex shrugged.
“What did you do last night?” Emil asked Alex, folding his arms across his chest and taking a wide, intimidating stance with his legs.
Alex held Emil’s stare. “We went on a date.”
“Must have been a pretty incredible date,” Emil mused. “My bond with her was barely noticeable.”
Alex’s smile was slow and full of insinuation. “Mine wasn’t,” he said. “In fact, it was burning up.”
Emil’s hands tightened into fists. He looked like he was about to launch himself across the room at Alex. I rarely saw Emil this upset. Tate stepped between them, attempting to stop an altercation.
I came down the remaining stairs. “What do you mean your bond with me was barely noticeable?”
Emil turned. “Evie.” His frustration melted away in layers, replaced by a soft smile. “Good morning.”
“Yeah, morning. So, what’s this about our bond?”
“It’s nothing,” Alex answered.
I raised my brows.
Emil took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I can feel when you’re getting closer to someone else. Alex can too.”
I glanced at Alex for confirmation. He sliced his head down once.
“It’s always been like this?” I asked.
They both nodded.
“Can you feel anything else through the bond?”
They both shook their heads. It didn’t make me the least bit comfortable. Not only did I already feel guilty about my feelings for them both, but now I knew I couldn’t even hide my liaisons. They were both completely aware when something sexy was going on. “What do you mean you can “feel” it?”
Emil licked his lips, thinking. “It’s hard to explain. I can feel our bond, and when someone else is encroaching on it, I feel that too. It’s like our bond weakens for a moment. When you stop—” he paused, a host of thoughts playing across his face, “—doing whatever it is you’re doing, it goes back to normal.”
I was a little concerned about what he’d been able to discern about my make out session with Alex. And about what Alex had felt when Emil had me braced against the house on the porch…but Alex had seen that firsthand, so it probably didn’t matter. Emil noticed my worried expression. “It’s not like we can tell what you’re doing. We just know the bond has weakened temporarily.”
“And my face would appreciate some warning next time,” Tate said.
I looked from Tate to Emil. “We spar when I’m frustrated,” Emil said.
That explained Tate’s black eye. The barn incident definitely would have caused a diminished bond, and probably made Emil pretty darn frustrated.
“You all need to get laid,” Tate said. “You’d get along a lot better if you did.”
Alex clenched his jaw, smoothed it, and clenched it again. “What about you, Tate?” His eyes glinted as he flashed an unfriendly smile. “How long has it been for you?”
Tate held Alex’s stare and they had a battle with their eyes before he looked away without answering. Emil shot Tate a worried glance, then looked at Alex like Alex had done something wrong.
I watched a quick, non-verbal exchange between Tate and Emil. They sure had a lot of those silent conversations. Spending that many years together was bound to foster a close relationship, but it made me feel like I was being left out of an important part of the conversation. From the looks they’d shared though, it seemed like Tate had asked if he should knock some sense into Alex. Emil had responded with a resigned frown that said: we still have to work with him. Tate had smiled slowly, indicating the sense-knocking could wait—at least for a while.
Emil shook his head. “This is all beside the point. We came over because Tate has some information.”
I tilted my head, wondering what Tate had to say that had Emil storming over here with the sunrise.
Alex looked at them both warily. “What about?”
Tate motioned to the living room couches. “A theory. I think we should sit down.”
Tate brushed by me, and paused. I felt movement in my hair and looked back to see Tate holding a piece of straw. I immediately started to blush. “Straw, huh? Been rolling around in a barn lately?” My blush deepened. Profusely. The corner of Alex’s mouth lifted slightly. Emil was not amused.
Tate and Emil sat on the couch, while Alex braced his back against the armrest of the loveseat, stretching his long legs out across the length of it. I sat in the overstuffed chair, pulling my knees up
to my chest, and covered myself with the throw blanket Alex and I had cuddled under last night.
When we were settled, Tate started, “I’ve been thinking about Evie’s powers.” He looked at each of us. “Based on what happened in the cave, we know she has more power than the average Tracker.” We all nodded in agreement. “And Emil tells me her soulmark is changing even though her powers haven’t been activated by another Tracker yet.”
Alex and Emil exchanged a glance. I’d wondered if Emil had told Alex about my evolving soulmark. Apparently he had. How nice—the two of them had been sharing stories.
“Really, we don’t know the extent of her powers, and we have no clue what’s going on,” Tate said.
“We’re trying to figure it out,” Alex offered.
Tate nodded. “I know, Emil told me. But I think the problem is you’re asking the wrong question.”
Alex pushed his brows together. “What do you mean?”
“You’re asking what Evie’s powers mean,” Tate said. “I think you should be asking who, and what, Evie is.”
Alex watched him closely, processing the statement. I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?” He’d said I was dangerous when I met him the other night, but there were so many things going on at the time that I hadn’t asked him to expand. Apparently I should have.
“I told you you’re the most dangerous of us all, Evie,” Tate said. “I wasn’t kidding.”
“Why is she dangerous?” Alex asked.
“Because,” Tate said, his eyes locking on me in suspicion, like he thought I might turn into some kind of monster. “I think Evie is really Callista in human form.”
I stared at him. Just stared. Because I was so dumbfounded, I couldn’t come up with a response and staring was the best I could do. The silence stretched on longer than it should have. I was expecting Alex and Emil—or at least one of them—to come to my defense. When no one else said anything, my mind finally started to work. “Callista?” I said, my voice rising as I went on, “The leader of the Daevos? The most evil Goddess in history? The one who came up with the idea to kill people’s soul mates because she was bitter about love and her own soul mate leaving, so she wanted everyone to be as miserable as she is? That Callista?”
Tate nodded. “She’s the one.”
Even the suggestion should have sent me into a fit of hyperventilating, but I was so irate and offended that I took a deep breath for the fight I was about to have instead. “That’s ridiculous!” I yelled. “If I’m Callista, I’d have more power. I’d remember spells. Or at least something about being a Goddess. And that’s another thing! She was a Goddess! How would she get reincarnated anyway?”
“Maybe it was an accident,” he suggested.
“Yeah, whoops! I accidentally tripped and fell into the reincarnation pot. Evil Goddess fail.”
“At least you’re coming to terms with who you are,” Tate said.
I’d recently said I was open to exploring every possible explanation for who I was. I’d meant every possible explanation but this one. Because this one was crazy. I held my jaw tight. “I. Am. Not. Callista.”
Tate looked at me reproachfully. “Her mate left her. She could have lost power because of that. Maybe they met too soon. That happens a lot with soul mates and reincarnation. You have to keep growing and searching for each other until you finally get to a life where you’re ready to be together. You could hate each other in one lifetime and end up taking the soulvows twenty lifetimes later. If you could see some of the people who are really soul mates,” he shook his head, “you’d never believe it.”
I threw my hands in the air. “How would she even get reincarnated? She’s a freaking Goddess!”
Tate shrugged. “Callista and her mate took the soulvows. That could have affected it.”
That was twice he’d mentioned soulvows. They must be pretty important. “What in hell are soulvows?”
Shock registered on Tate’s face as he looked from Alex to Emil. “You haven’t told her?”
Emil pursed his lips, leaning forward and steepling his hands in front of his face. Alex turned his head once to the right and back again slowly. “We said we’d tell her when she was ready to hear it.”
I pegged Alex with a hard stare, before shifting my gaze to Emil. He usually kept me informed about important things. Apparently this entry in the “Immortals for Dummies CliffsNotes” had slipped his mind. “You know I hate being kept in the dark. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Emil shifted his arms to his knees, and looked at me from under his brow. “You condemn anyone who gets married before thirty—and that’s just marriage, not an eternal commitment. I knew you weren’t ready. Maybe I would have told you in forty years, but not now.”
I looked at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”
Emil exhaled a long breath. “There’s a way for soul mates to be completely bound and no longer worry about their souls being taken. Taking the vow reunites the two halves of the soul and makes them stronger. But it requires a total commitment from both souls.”
I remembered them mentioning a way I could be with Alex or Emil and not have to worry about the Daevos taking my soul ever again. This must be it. Is this what Alex had meant when he said that once I chose, I’d lose one of them forever? Because I could only take the vows with one of them? “What do you mean?” I asked slowly.
“You can take the soulvows and be bound to each other. But once that happens, you can’t go back. Whomever you choose is your choice, your soul mate forever. Your souls are entwined and when you’re both ready to move on to the Bliss, you do it together. Once you take the soulvows, it can’t be undone.”
I almost laughed, it sounded so ridiculous. Who could make that kind of a commitment? Eternity? With one person? No way out. Ever. I’d have to know the person for a hundred lifetimes first. I glanced up to find Alex and Emil both watching me closely. I squirmed in my seat. I knew they were trying to figure out how I was handling the news, and how I felt about soulvows in regard to both of them. I didn’t want to deal with their queries, and had more pressing questions on my mind. “What if you take the vows with the wrong person?”
Alex shook his head. “The vows don’t work if you try to take them with the wrong person. The vows have to be authorized by the Goddesses. They know who a person’s true soul mate is.”
I flung my hands in the air. “Perfect! Let’s get a Goddess down here to tell me which one of you I’m supposed to be with!”
“It doesn’t work that way with you, Evie.” Alex said. “You’re—”
“I know, I know. I’m different.” Sheesh, this was infuriating.
“The Goddesses wouldn’t do it anyway. The whole purpose of the soul growth process is to find your mate. You have to go through the experiences to get to that point.”
I was a little annoyed that the Goddesses could easily fix this problem for me, but wouldn’t. I turned to Emil. “Why didn’t I take the vows with you when we were married before?”
He looked up at me. “Because you didn’t know about them. In hindsight, it would have made things much easier if I’d told you and we’d taken them then.”
“Ya think?” Even if I’d known about the vows, I wasn’t sure I would have taken them as Cassandra. I couldn’t decide what to do after two hundred and fifty years; I doubted I could have decided then. I mean, cripes, I’d kissed Alex right before I’d married Emil! I turned my attention back to Tate’s Evil Evie theory. “How would soulvows affect Callista being reincarnated?”
Tate answered, “Once you take the soulvows, you’re tied together whether you leave your mate or not.”
“That alone is proof I’m not Callista. I don’t know which one of these yahoos,” I gestured toward Alex and Emil, “is my soul mate. If I’d taken the soulvows with one of them, I’d know.”
Tate shook his head. “Not necessarily. From what I’ve found, no one who has taken the soulvows and moved on to the Bliss has ever
been reincarnated again. We don’t know what the consequences of that would be. If Callista reincarnated herself and is back on the human plane, she could be suffering from memory loss.”
“Or she could know exactly who she is, and it’s not me!”
Tate ignored my comment. “After you take the soulvows, your power is connected to your soul mate’s power. Callista’s mate left her and because of that, they both lost some of their abilities. Over time, I imagine that power loss would be significant. Not gone, but not Goddess-level anymore either.”
“Then how do the Daevos maintain their power?” I asked. “They’re supposed to be getting it from Callista. If she’s not around, they have to be getting it from somewhere?”
He shrugged. “Maybe from the Trackers who join the Daevos?”
“So you’re saying Callista might have chosen to reincarnate herself to find her mate later in time and see if they’d be a better match in another life?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t make sense. She started the Daevos because she was upset about her mate leaving and she didn’t think anyone should be able to find love. Why would she go looking for it again herself?”
“Immortality gives you plenty of time to think,” Tate offered. “Maybe you missed him and wanted him back.”
I ground my teeth together. “I. Am. Not. Callista.”
Tate shrugged. “I think you are. Should we take a poll?”
I muttered under my breath about how crazy he was and scoffed, expecting to hear the same thing from Alex and Emil. I didn’t. I snapped my head up in time to see Alex and Emil exchange a knowing glance, like they weren’t surprised at Tate’s assumption, and had even thought of it themselves. “Are you kidding me?” I asked, absolutely stunned. I was also pretty mad, but the shock was over-riding my anger. “You two can’t actually believe this?”
Tate smiled like a cat that had just figured out how to work the can opener. “See,” he said, “I’m not the only one. It would definitely explain your developing powers.”
Eternal Echoes, Emblem of Eternity Trilogy Book 2 Page 23