It’s a similar story to the picture I’ve gotten of Kenneth’s home life in general. Could that pressure have made him an easy target for manipulation?
Daphne moves on to her main concern before I can decide if there’s anything else I should ask. “It’s been almost a week. Have you determined what your glim is?”
Of course that’d be her first priority. Everything in the upper tiers of lucent society comes down to how powerful you are.
I shake my head. “I guess I haven’t ended up in any situations that would provoke it.”
Her brow knits. “There are techniques for getting in touch with your innate magic. We could work through it together, see what we can?—”
With a twist of my gut, I give my head a sharper shake to cut her off. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. Not—not while I don’t want anyone else knowing I’ve even sparked with my matches.”
Not ever, but I leave that part unspoken.
Something in Daphne’s expression softens. Her gaze falls to the hand I’ve wrapped in a thin layer of ephemera to disguise my bond mark. “Are you sure you can tolerate hiding it for much longer? Forcing yourself apart from them… It’s putting a strain on you, isn’t it? I get a sense of it now and then in the energy around you.”
My pulse stutters. “You can tell I’ve sparked with them?”
Has anyone else noticed?
Daphne puts my worry to rest with a dismissive flick of her hand. “No, no. It’s just a general impression that you’reout of sorts, and only brief when it comes. I don’t think I’d attribute it to that cause if I didn’t already know.”
She waits for my explanation, pensive but patient. All the stress I’ve been bottling up starts to roil inside me.
She’s the only one in this world who knows where I came from. The only one I can reveal any of this anguish to who won’t think I’m crazy.
My voice still balks before I can propel the words from my throat. “It’s better if people don’t know. All the curiosity and the questions that’ll come up, when we still don’t know who might have it in for me… And I don’t know if I’ll stay with my matches anyway.”
Daphne frowns. “Why wouldn’t you? I can see you might have some qualms about some of the families involved?—”
My teeth grit instinctively hearing her go there first, exactly the way a Devine would. “It’s not that. It’s just… You know I already found my matches in my own reality. Even if I can’t go back…”
I look down at my hands, running my thumb over the starburst-like mark. “How can I really be a mate to my matches here? It doesn’t matter that they’re almost the same as the men back home—I’d still be betraying that first bond.”
“Oh, honey.” Daphne scoots forward and reaches toward me, but stops when I tense up. Her voice stays gentle. “I don’t think that’s how fate would see it.”
I grimace. “Well, fate is kind of fucked up, if you ask me. How elsecanI see it? I bonded with my original matches, gave them my love and my loyalty, and now I’m going to throw that away?”
“Do you dislike who they are in this reality?”
I have to pause before I can answer. “No. Not any more than I did before I matched with them in mine. We had a long way to go, both times… It’s not about that. If Ididn’twant them, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
One corner of Daphne’s mouth crooks upward to form aslanted smile. “This is the life you have now, as sorry as I am for how I disrupted the one you had. My Ellie isn’t here to be with them. Youcan’tgo back, Butterfly. This is where you fit.”
“It still doesn’t seemright.”
“Doesn’t it?” She cocks her head. “Do you really think that if you could lay out this situation for your original matches, if they knew you couldn’t return to them no matter how much you obviously wish you could, that they’d tell you they’d prefer for you to cut yourself off from love and affection for the rest of your life? For their counterparts here to have no true mate for the rest of theirs?”
When she puts it like that, it’s hard to say yes.
A lump rises in my throat. “It isn’t fair to them, though.”
Daphne’s smile tightens. “It isn’t fair to any of you, and that’s my fault. I’m so sorry.”
She appears to gather herself with a breath. “I can’t tell you how to feel or what your conscience will accept, but I do know this: You spent a lot of time with your original matches. You must be carrying currents of their ephemera inside you. Maybe you can’t talk to them directly, but you can reach out to them that way. It might lead you to a better understanding of how they’d want you to live now.”
I curl my fingers toward my legs. She’s right—I know she is.
Days ago, I tried to reach across the universes to my original matches with all my memories to guide me. I don’t know if they heard me.