Chapter 275

Nima

I can’t believe this is my life now.

The thought isn’t fearful, or even particularly awed. It’s a quiet, daily astonishment. A soft hum of disbelief that sits beneath everything, like the drone of bees in the Nyxclaw gardens.

All I have to do, is sit here, and be alive.

I’m curled in the wide window seat of her solar, sunlight painting warm stripes across the open sketchbook in my lap. From here, I can see the wild, dark beauty of the eastern forests rolling to the horizon, and I can see her.

Daphne stands before a large canvas, in a simple, paint-splattered white linen shirt and loose trousers. Her hair is a messy dark cap, her panther ears flicking occasionally as if listening to the rhythm of her own thoughts.

She’s so beautiful and handsome and perfect.

Arguably, this is when she’s most attractive. Not when she’s terrifying a council or lounging with predatory grace, but like this: utterly absorbed, creating something from nothing.

I still can’t believe the whole past lives thing. The idea that my soul is ancient, that it has loved hers across lifetimes—as an actress, a duchess, an assassin—it feels like a story too grand, too strange, to be mine.

My life was supposed to be small. Quiet. A bookstore, maybe.

But I know, deep down, with a certainty that feels older than my bones, that I would always have fallen in with her. In any world, any life.

I look down at the sketches in my notebook, the ones drawn from the fragments of my dreams. A grassy plain under a vast sky. A stage illuminated by a single spotlight.

A person’s smile, half-hidden in shadow. Then I look at the paintings leaning against the stone walls of the solar—Daphne’s paintings of those same scenes, but painted with the clarity of memory, not dream. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The coincidence is too much to ignore.

I can’t believe she loves me.

"Would you really love me, no matter what form I took?" I ask the question before I can stop myself, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes." Her answer is immediate, effortless. She doesn’t even turn around, her brush continuing its smooth arc across the canvas.

The confidence in that single syllable makes my chest ache.

"What if I had a missing limb?" I press, the macabre hypothetical feeling silly even as I say it.

A soft chuckle rumbles in her chest. "I’m not so fickle, my beloved."

"What if it’s not a limb, but I couldn’t see, or hear, or maybe couldn’t walk." The words tumble out, painting a picture of vulnerability that makes my own ears droop slightly.

Her brush finally stills. She doesn’t turn, but her posture shifts, the playful tension leaving her shoulders, replaced by something utterly solemn.

"Then," she says, her voice low and sure, each word a vow spoken to the painting, to the room, to me, "I would be your eyes if you couldn’t see, your ears if you couldn’t hear, your voice if you couldn’t speak."

She pauses, and I can almost see the fierce, protective light in her golden eyes even from behind.

"Your legs, if you couldn’t walk. I would carry you, my beloved. To the ends of every world we find ourselves in."

I’m dumbfounded. The shyness floods in, a warm, overwhelming tide that makes my cheeks burn and my fingers tighten on my sketchbook.

Even though she’s not looking at me, I feel utterly seen, completely known, and loved with a ferocity that steals my breath. I can’t help the nagging feeling, the old, dusty whisper from a life of being ordinary: I don’t deserve this.

"What if in our next lives," I say, my voice barely a thread of sound, "we’re blood related? Would you still fall in love with me?"

For the first time, she pauses.

Not a thoughtful pause.The brush in her hand freezes mid-air. Her back, always so fluid and sure, goes rigid.

She turns to face me slowly, and the look on her face complete and utter devastation. And horror.

"Don’t say that," she whispers,as if she’s already lived through the whole, terrible scenario.

A good couple of minutes pass in silence.

"I don’t know what I would do," she finally says.

She takes a slow, deep breath, as if pulling herself back from a ledge. Her eyes finally focus on me again, but the horror is still there, banked like embers.

"I never want to find out," she states.

"I guess your love has limits," I say, the words leaving my mouth despite knowing full well how unreasonable it is.

She sets aside her brush with deliberate calm.Then she walks toward me. Not with her usual predatory glide, but with a purpose that makes my breath hitch.

"Why such a question, hmm, my little bunny?" she murmurs, stopping before me.

Her hands come up to grasp my waist. She pulls me to my feet in one smooth motion, her arm wrapping around me, holding me firmly against her. There’s no escape in her embrace, it’s so safe and thrilling in her arms.

"Is this a hidden desire of yours?" she asks, her voice dropping to a velvet purr directly against my ear.

"Worry not. I’ll indulge your... curiosities."

She bends her head, and her lips find the sensitive spot where my neck meets my shoulder.

"What shall our relationship be, then?" she continues, her voice a wicked, teasing whisper against my skin as her other hand comes up to cradle my jaw, tilting my head back.

"Cousins? Sharing family reunions, stolen glances across the dinner table?" Her teeth graze my earlobe.

"Or sisters? Sharing a room, secrets in the dark, a bond no one else could ever understand..."

Each scenario is painted with a dark, thrilling intimacy that makes my face flame and my knees weaken.

Do I really have such desires?

But I don’t have time to think, to examine the shadowy corners of my own heart. Her lips are on mine.