Lifting her dagger, Nora brought it across her unmarked left palm.
She pointed her weapon at Matteo and he repeated her movement, cutting a line across his entire palm.
“At the same time, we will lift our bloody hands and repeat the celestial wordbhòid,and you will split your soul and will it into my body.”
Nora held up three fingers and slowly brought down each one.
“Bhòid,” they said at the same time.
Matteo had been cut many times in training. After one injury, he’d even spent an entire week in the infirmary. But nothing in his whole life had prepared him for the pain that seared through his body and severed his soul from his blood. Involuntarily, his eyes closed and he gasped for breath. Struggling to stay on his feet, he swayed from side to side. But there was no escaping the tearing of his soul. He felt it in every pore of his skin and drop of his blood. With the last of his strength, he opened his eyes and willed the torn piece of his soul to go to Nora.
She was on her hands and knees, her long violet hair touching the floor. He heard her moan and then something inside him began to burn. Unlike the pain, this fire filled him with hope and love. He felt both the darkness and the light of Nora’s soul. Her love for him. It was greater than he had known—than he had ever guessed. Her love for him covered and encompassed every part of her soul. His soul. Their shared souls.
Next, he felt her loyalty to Elea and to her goddess. The connection between them was full of love and hatred, loyalty and neglect, pain and joy. Their bond had begun at birth and continued until Sania. Nora’s love for him had nearly destroyed it. He experienced her guilt for loving the man meant for her cousin. Her shame. Her resolve to fulfill the prophecy and to restore her cousin as the true Queen of Urka.
Her ambitions became his.
His morphed into hers.
Matteo glanced at Nora, who was stumbling to her feet, a smile on her face. Like him, she now knew his innermost thoughts, fears, and hopes. Even though they were not touching, he could feel her warmth through their connection.
She stepped out of the trigon and he could no longer feel the goosebumps on his arms. The diagram on the floor was simply soap and not sacred. Matteo took a tentative step toward her. Nora threw herself into his arms. They squeezed each other tightly as if to get as close to each other as humanly possible. But their closeness was not human; it was celestial. They shared each other’s souls.
How long they held on to each other, Matteo could not say. Holding Nora felt impossibly right.
Nora lifted a hand from his neck and slowly traced his jawline. Matteo took a swift intake of breath. She leaned in and retraced the line with feathering kisses—soft and sweet. When she reached his ear, she nuzzled it with her nose. She continued to kiss his neck, his cheek, his eyes, everywhere but his lips.
It was sweet torture. And when he could wait no longer, he took her face between his hands and kissed her lips so hard that it hurt.
They were one heart.
One soul.
Nora was the light in his darkness.
The joy in his misery.
Her love had taught him to believe.
To dream.
30
GERARD
Gerard woke up with his nose snuggled into violet hair and his arm wrapped around Elea’s waist. Her body had molded to his and he felt deliciously warm. Perhaps a littletoowarm. He carefully lifted his arm and scooted away from her. She shivered and opened her eyes. The swelling of her cheek had gone down, but it was replaced with a purple bruise that matched her hair.
“Is it morning already?” she asked, sitting up, her violet hair a tangled mess. Unfairly, she looked beautiful.
“Yes,” Gerard said, pulling up his trousers and letting the smock hang over them. “We’d best get an early start. We have a long way to travel.”
“We need to get horses,” Elea said. “It will take too long on foot.”
“We don’t have enough money,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “We barely had enough for room and board.”
Elea’s stomach groaned. “I think we should go and eat breakfast. I’m so hungry that I could even eat a board.”
Gerard lips went up slightly at her jest, but he couldn’t allow himself to fall again to her wiles.