“I’ll do everything in my power to see to yer safety and mine, this I swear to you, my love.” It would have to do. He could not swear he’d take no risks. Were Abby to be in danger, he’d offer up his life without a second thought to save hers. He had no doubt, however, that this was not what she wanted to hear, so he left those words unspoken.
His declaration seemed to satisfy her. That, or she knew him too well to press for better. Either way, she bent to kiss his forehead before taking up her reins, staring out toward the forest.
“Which way to your friends this morning?”
It was the question she’d asked him each day at the start of their journey since he’d told her how he used his gift to locate the Soul aura surrounding his kinsmen to track them. It had become something of their own private little ritual.
With one last sideways glance at Abby’s lovely profile, he closed his eyes and lowered his defenses, opening himself to the onslaught of the other world of Faerie Magic, allowing his senses to seek the visions he needed to follow this day.
Nothing.
The sheer vast emptiness hit him like a physical assault. It wasn’t simply the blank comfort of no souls nearby; this was different. This was as if there were no people left in the world for him to find.
Frantically, his mind hunted for the signature auras associated with Dair and Simeon.
Nothing. Not them, not the armies they traveled with, and no one in between.
He concentrated, blocking out everything around him, searching. Not even Flynn’s black soul showed itself to him.
His chest tightened and his heart pounded. What had happened to all of them? Either they no longer lived or. . .
He opened his eyes and stared toward Abby, searching the air around her for her now-familiar golden aura.
Nothing.
After nearly a decade of agony, now that he’d come to depend on the Faerie Queen’s horrible curse, now that he actually needed it, it was gone.
Proof positive that he’d found his Soulmate.
***
As if her nerves weren’t already shot to hell this morning after Colin’s little speech about their having reached the dangerous part of this trip, now he was sitting there like some statue, frozen in time.
“Well? Which way?”
He opened his eyes and turned his face to her, but he wasn’t really looking at her. It was as if he were looking through her, around her, but not seeing her.
“Colin?”
He blinked. Once, twice, his face crumpling into a vision of horror. Whatever had happened to him had to be hideous beyond anything they’d experienced so far for him to allow her to see so much unbridled emotion. His mask was completely shattered.
“Oh, my God, Colin! What’s wrong?” She pulled her horse as close to his as possible, grabbing for the hand he held clenched around his reins.
“It’s left me.” His voice sounded so desolate, like a lost child. “I canna feel them. I canna feel any of them.”
“Your friends’ Souls? What do you mean you can’t feel them? I thought you were cursed with it. That the Faerie Queen had cursed you to feel everyone’s pain forever.”
He’d told her the whole story. He’d described the day it had happened in such detail, she’d felt as if she’d seen the entire event through his eyes, experiencing it along with him.
“Only by joining with your own Soulmate will you cease to feel the horror and pain of the great wanting.”
She recognized the words even as he spoke them. They were the ones the Faerie Queen had given him asa way out of the curse. Just before she’d snatched back all hope by informing him his match didn’t exist in this lifetime.
“Because I’m your Soulmate,” she said slowly, the realization weighing down on her. “Because I existed in the twenty-first century, not here. And we would never have been together had I not. . .”
“Had you not wished for me at your side,” he finished for her, his eyes haunted with the knowledge that his gift was gone forever. “It is gone because of our joining.”
Colin scrubbed his hands over his face, all expression wiped away when he finished, his mask back in place, firmly shutting her out. That lack of emotion frightened her almost as much as the horror she’d seen in his eyes only moments before.