by Mia Downing
His smile broadened. “My mug was right.”
“What?”
“I have a mug downstairs that says, ‘If you love it, set it free. It will return.’ And here you are.” He stepped closer, his hands hovering over my elbows as if he were afraid to touch me, too.
He surprised me by crossing his arms over his chest and taking a step back. His brows furrowed in that serious way of his, the sadness more pronounced. “But before I accept your bond, I want to know why you chose me.”
Chapter twenty-one
Marek
“What?” Skye blinked, incredulous as she stared at me, unable to form words. Her hand skimmed over her black sweatshirt to wipe her palms on her jeans.
I couldn’t believe she’d taken the leap to show me her room of secret paintings—so many paintings scattered in neat stacks and piles all around her. Seeing the sheer volume of what she’d created made me rake a hand through my hair in dismay. So many, and each one represented a night she hadn’t slept. The biggest stack had dates on it from this new year, and the lump in my throat grew. No wonder she was an emotional wreck.
And she’d finally put her trust in me to show me this. It took some of the sting from her breaking the bond. Still, I had to know what tipped the scales in my favor.
I cocked my head, hiding all the hope under a cold mask of assessment. I hadn’t had to use that a lot in my new life. In the old one, I’d used it all the time. “The other Skye didn’t know me at all when she chose me. She had to believe in what her bond had wanted, that I’d be good for her. I didn’t give you that choice, and I’m sorry for that.”
She nodded.
“But I also told you severing the bond was a worse offense to me than divorce or whatever else you have in this time. She did it, and now you. But you know me better than she did when she chose me. We’ve had five months together. So I want to know why you’re choosing me now. I’m not doing this again. Ever.”
She opened her mouth and closed it a few times, distress etched into the tired planes of her beautiful face.
Was I an ass for demanding this? I wanted to cave, to just accept her into my heart and love her with everything I had. She deserved that. But she had also walked away, so no, I wasn’t an ass. I crossed my arms harder over my chest and waited.
Finally, she whispered, “I can’t say the words. If that’s what you want, I…can’t.”
I sighed. “You don’t have to say the ‘L’ word. I’m not looking to force you into an emotion you don’t feel. But I… It hurt when you didn’t want to choose me. I felt like a teen again, attending bonding ceremonies not to be chosen at all. Your actions hurt me, and even though I deserve a lot for dumping you here originally, I didn’t deserve that. I just want both of us to be sure before we take a step forward.”
She closed her eyes and dipped her gaze to stare at her feet. “I…I don’t know what I feel. I didn’t grow up in a loving family with relatives to dote on me. The first person to love me and admit it was Grace, and that’s not the same. You know that.”
I nodded sadly. I’d taken everything from her, but she still had the power to destroy me. Twice bitten by a broken bond… Now, I feared I was giving her the power again. “I understand that. But I need to know where I stand with you. Just tell me what made you choose me now.”
She shrugged as she drew in a ragged breath. “I know I like being with you. I like coming home to someone who makes me smile. I loved Christmas and having Grace and Jay and their significant others have dinner with us. Your smile warms me from the inside out, and I…” She stared at my jaw with wistful longing. “I really loved the beard, Marek. I can’t believe you shaved.”
The glint of joy returned, and I couldn’t hide it as I gave her a small smile. “You said the ‘L’ word.”
“Marek.” Her eyes widened.
“I’m teasing. I know you care for me.” She wouldn’t admit to feeling anything for me, but the teal on her bond hadn’t lied. And the fact that she’d tried to hide it told me she felt a lot more than she was willing to admit. I was just a needy ass.
She nodded and stared at the paintings at her feet. “I miss the bond. I didn’t like feeling all those emotions that you felt at first. It was hard, knowing you could read my emotions, too. It felt intrusive and…loud. Like I went from painful darkness to a deluge of happy, noisy, sunny, and yellow. It sounds pathetic not to want that happiness.” She shrugged. “It was easiest to bear during sex, but the thought of you knowing what I felt… No one had cared before. And anyone who had would have used that information against me.”
“I’d never use that against you.” Finally, she’d said something that made sense to me. The other Skye had said about the same thing when we first bonded. She’d also been overwhelmed, and her life had been slightly better than this Skye’s. “But after seeing the paintings and what it took you to trust me, I think I understand. Between the nightmares and my bond, you were overwhelmed.”
She jerked her head toward me, her gaze pleading for me to understand. “Not all the time. At some point, I became accustomed to the ‘cheerful noise’ of your energy. That’s who you are, and I wouldn’t change that. But I had to take a step back—away—to understand what I had gained by meeting you.”
I nodded. “And?”
“I miss the bond. I have a lot to learn to accept all aspects fully…” Her blue eyes pleaded. “You said this is who you are, and it’s who I am. But you had training, right? To help you with what this feels like?”
“Yes, I did. I can help you with that if you’re honest with me.” My heart hammered in my chest as I sucked in a breath and held it. This was it. She’d choose me, or she wouldn’t.
Finally, her sure gaze met mine, and for once, I could see that she cared. That she wanted me. That I could make her feel complete. “I want to bond with you again, if you’ll have me.”
My breath whooshed out, and I folded her into my arms, burying my nose in her hair. “Sweetness.”
I wanted that, too. I sighed and gave in, my heart hammering in my chest as I savored how she fit into my arms. I stroked her hair and caressed her back, wanting to feel more of her.
She murmured into my chest, “And I want to go with you to take the necklace back.”
I froze, not expecting to hear that at all. “Are you sure?”
“No. But if I don’t, you can’t return. And I want more of this. More of you.”
I shuddered as I held her closer. I needed this. Her. It was all I ever wanted. I didn’t care if she couldn’t say she loved me yet. This was enough.
“I need to fix something,” she whispered.
Before I could ask, tendrils of her dark-blue energy wisped around mine, tangling and weaving, the yellow of mine brightening. It took no time for her to lace the two colors, the seam glowing an electric green that matched the trails she had painted of the space between. As she reached the end, I sighed, sagging against her with relief. My energy no longer churned with anxiety. I had her. I wasn’t going to let her go again.
“There.” She pulled away from my chest to smile up at me. “For the first time, I feel whole.”
“Thank you.” I kissed her, pouring my heart into every nibble of my lips and stroke of my tongue. But I couldn’t lose myself in her. We had a job to do. I broke the kiss and glanced at the clock on her artist’s desk—five after midnight.
She held my face and peppered my cheeks with little kisses. “Happy birthday, Marek. I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything.”
Laughing, I hugged her tight. “You just gave me the best gift you could ever give.”
Skye
Marek and I spent a half hour more going through my paintings. He had run down to the car and brought up the pizza, and we ate it as he filled in the gaps of what I didn’t understand. The dreams had been sporadic and focused only on aspects of certain events—like the carved vines from the bedpost. Few were fully evolved like the bookstore memory. Maybe as I started to believe in my past, t
he dreams would begin to fill in more of the blanks. If not, I could ask Marek what they meant, and that gave me peace.
The painting with the weird circle and the men’s boots was from his bonding ceremony when she’d chosen him. They’d had to stand on certain marks on the floor and wait. He’d told me that the minute she’d walked into the building, she had known he was there. I now understood how that could happen. His bond had beckoned to me just as strongly.
I finally handed him the canvas with the flowers, my eyes welling up with more tears. “Do you know what this is?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh.” I heaved a sigh of disappointment.
He touched my arm. “I don’t know what it means to you, but when they come to mark you as gifted, they give the family a bouquet of flowers much like this. Different counties use different flowers. I think we got roses, and I do remember them. She was from London, so those violets are probably that flower. They’re tied with a pink or blue ribbon—whatever the sex of the gifted child happened to be.”
“Oh.” I blinked up at him in confusion. I never realized she wouldn’t be American. Or whatever they called their country now. Maybe that explained the cobblestones, too, if they went back to paving with them. “Is that why you mock me in a British accent?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t realize I did, but I guess.”
“Do you know anything about her family?”
He sighed and raked a hand through his neater, shorter hair. “Do you want the truth, or should we just skip this for another time?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wanted to skip it, but a part of me needed to know. “The truth.”
“I don’t know how to say this delicately.” He shifted in his seat on the floor, unable to look at me. “Her mother took in mending and whatever to earn money.”
“So she was poor.” I narrowed my eyes a little. He didn’t seem one to judge, but he’d come from money.
“That’s not—” He blew out a breath. “When they come to mark the gifted, the Association sometimes…pays a family and takes the child to raise. So that it survives. They took you to raise.”
It took a moment for me to read through his words and put together a picture. Her mother was poor, and the Association had probably paid her mother a fortune for what she had created—an elite gifted child.
“She sold her.” Pain knifed through me as the truth became crystal clear. No wonder she’d cried—I’d cried. Marek had given me away because he’d had no choice. But to be sold like baggage…
He nodded sadly. “I’ll be blunt. Her mother was a prostitute. They would make money sleeping with the gifted in hopes of gaining a gifted child to sell. If she hadn’t been gifted, she would have followed in her mother’s footsteps. I’m sorry. It was a common practice for that time.”
“Did she ever go back and find her mother?” I would have wanted answers.
“We tried a few years ago and couldn’t find her. I’m sorry. I’m sure she’s dead. They don’t keep records of the poor.”
“So…she basically grew up in government care.” Like me.
“Yes.” He gently touched my arm. “I think her mother giving her up bothered her more than she would ever admit. We never discussed it, but she had a certain sadness about her, and she hated violets.”
I stared at those violets, the sadness threatening to well up again. That was her origin story, what she remembered as a child. She’d buried that deep inside her and carried that despair through her life until the moment she’d fractured. Then I’d ended up with that baggage. As much as I hated her, I understood that depth of despair and what that would do to a girl. Damn it, I didn’t want a kinship with that bitch, but I understood her.
“Did she…” I swallowed as I tried to think of what I wanted to say. “Did she find it hard to fall for you?”
He quirked a smile. “She told me at our bonding that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. This would be a business-only arrangement.”
“Wow.” I hated to admit I liked her spunk. But that also explained his patience and understanding. “And how long did it take her to give in to your charm and sense of humor?”
“For sex? Less than a year, but as you know, the bond sort of demanded that. She didn’t admit she loved me until we were eighteen, and that wasn’t a willing admission. More of a ‘damn you, I love you’ sort of thing. I proposed on my nineteenth birthday. We married the year after.”
I nodded. “I still hate her.”
He gave me a small smile. “I’m sure you do.”
But that made me wonder how the stupid cursed necklace played into my origin story after I had fractured. “I thought the curse you believe in was supposed to bring opposites? Because her life was pretty much my life.”
“It is…and it isn’t.” He cleared his throat, and he flushed pink. “After I returned from Leah’s, Skye and I had a fight. She told me she wished she could go back to the beginning and live a different life, one where she wouldn’t meet me at sixteen and be bonded to me. And she hoped I’d remember everything, and it would hurt. And when you fractured, that’s what happened eventually. That’s sort of an opposite of what her life had been.”
“Ouch.” I winced. “But at sixteen, you set me free with a trust fund. And I did meet you and bond with you, and I hope you hurt less now. It breaks the curse.”
“Does it?” He smiled sadly. “I guess we won’t know until we put the necklace back.”
Skye
We had to return to Marek’s house for supplies and to find me an outfit. I had to blend enough with that era not to cause suspicion if we were seen.
In his bedroom, he helped me dress in one of her darker summer outfits from the period, complete with split drawers, a corset, a small bustle, and her boots. All were more comfortable than I’d have imagined. They’d been made in the future of better fabrics to blend in with the past. She had been a little thinner, but everything fit, which explained all the running Marek had been doing. His clothes were less forgiving.
And if wearing her clothes from the future to go to the past didn’t boggle my mind enough, his deftness at pulling my hair back and quickly adding some pins to be in fashion with the times tipped me over the edge. As I twirled for his assessment, his appreciative smile made my cheeks warm.
Though it was late, I texted Grace to let her know I had crawled, and I was going with him. I got a reminder back that she deserved a great present. I smiled at that.
“Pack your black leggings and a dark shirt just in case.” He tossed me the leather bag. “Do you know how to shoot?”
“No.” I gulped as he took a revolver out of the safe in his room and loaded it with the same deft level of skill he’d used on my hair.
I thought back to the man I read about in Marek’s book. He’d been…different. Harder. Trained. My Marek was bright and sunny yellow, an easy-going, gentle bookworm who ran and cooked and gardened.
As I watched him handle the gun with quiet precision honed by years of practice, I caught a glimpse of a side of a man I didn’t know except through the words he’d typed.
He tucked the gun behind him in the waistband of his trousers and went back to the safe. “What about a knife? I know you carry one often.”
“I’d feel more comfortable with that.”
Nodding, he handed me one smaller than his in a leather sheath. “This should fit around your waist, and you can access it through the pocket of your skirt. And this”—he handed me a smaller one—“fits into a special sheath in your boot.”
I loosened the waistband of my skirt to put on the bigger knife as instructed. I took the smaller one, wondering if that had been the one from my nightmare. “She used this?”
His head jerked up from tucking a different knife into his own boot to assess me. I have no clue what the bond told him, but he took the three steps to drop an encouraging kiss to my lips. “You won’t need any of this. We’re going in, doing a little snooping, then we’re taking that necklace
back to its final resting place.”
I didn’t want to be useless, though. I could hold my own. If she could, I could. “I took some self-defense classes.”
“That’s good.” He gave me his sweetest smile. “I want you safe.”
As he turned away with fluid grace, his boots barely making any sound on the shiny wood floor, my hand fluttered to my throat as fear made the lump grow. I’d never thought about how quiet he was, how he could sneak up on me if I weren’t accessing the bond. I could never sneak up on him, though. “I read the first book.”
His step faltered, his boot scuffing, and he glanced over his shoulder quickly. “And?”
“It’s a really good book. I was proud.”
His expression still didn’t change as he added the cursed necklace to our bag. “But?”
How easily he saw through me now. “But it was as if you were like someone different. The man I read on those pages…wasn’t you.”
Slowly, he raised his head to meet my gaze fully, his expression politely unreadable. “I’ve changed a lot since I’ve been here, since I wrote that.”
I nodded, unable to put into words what I needed to know. Could that man with a dangerous, ruthless streak love me, too? “But that was you, too.”
“Yes.” Thumbs resting in his suspenders, he cocked his head. “Does this realization change your mind about any of this?”
“No. I…just needed to know…” If he could love me, too.
“He’s not me. I have changed, thanks to this time off to discover myself, thanks to you. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. But the man you read about…he can keep you safe and get you through this. Okay? I have to play that role again.”
I nodded, grateful he was able to say what I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
Before we left for the cemetery, we stopped in the library, and he double-checked the coordinates he needed from the journal and set his watch. “I know I’ve showed you this before, but I’m going to go over it again. If something happens to me, but I’m still alive, you just need to set this dial here by turning it to the year”—he pointed to the largest face—“and press this button here.” He indicated the small, brass button he’d used before when he jumped. “We can’t go to a time we’ve already been, and the watch won’t let us jump too far. Just set it to this year and press it. Don’t worry about anything but getting us to safety. Okay?”