I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want me that strongly if they did know me, but he’d still basically just met me. I couldn’t mean that much to him.
“Because it’s a security I haven’t had in a long time,” he admitted. “After I lost my parents when I was eight, I only got five years with my grandparents before they too were gone. Then I was shipped off to my uncle Everett’s family, where I only stayed for a couple of years before joining up with King Ignatius’s army as soon as I turned eighteen, hoping to find a place to belong there. But they shipped me off to Donnelly when Princess Allera married Prince Brentley, and then I was assigned to be Nicolette’s personal bodyguard. And yes, she did grow to be my best friend, a sister of my heart, and the closest thing I have to family, so when she became the queen last moon cycle and asked me to be her army’s commander, of course I said yes. What else was I supposed to do? Where else was I supposed to go? I might have plenty of friends, but she was the only thing I had that somewhat resembled family. I would do anything for her, but I don’t want to be a knight forever and fight wars and kill people. I just want to settle down with my true family and solve mysteries.”
He stared at me a long moment after confessing all that. I stared back, not sure what to say.
A second later, his heated feelings drained from him, loosening his shoulders and bringing sad hopelessness to his eyes. “When I first felt a spark in my tattoo, telling me you were near, I was so happy and eager for my connection to you, I was ready to give up everything to follow you wherever you went. And I still am.”
Pressing the heel of his hand to the side of his head and directly over his mark, he watched me earnestly. “This thing tells me I belong somewhere. With someone. I belong with you. I can’t lose you with it there. I can always tell if you’re fine. Or it alerts me if you’re not fine, so I at least know I need to do something to fix that. It tells me that you’re my one shot at getting the best life I could have. And I’m not letting that go. So go ahead, empress. Try to resist it all you want. But I’m not. I’m going to put in all the work I need to in order for both of us to reach our nirvana. Together. Got it?”
Heaviness filled my chest. He had so much faith and hope in his stupid mark; I was almost jealous of his convictions. But then I reminded myself that reality never had such a fairy-tale ending.
The man was clearly delusional.
Except a small part of me wanted to believe him and have the same delusion.
Before that silly part could grow any larger, though, Melaina spoke up, breaking the moment.
“You know,” she said. “If Pallo had ever talked to me like that, even once, he never would’ve had to forcibly marry me and then suppress my compassion, empathy, and kindness, until I cried tears of blood and possibly bled to death from the eyes if I ever got too close to feeling any of those things. I probably would’ve just married him willingly.”
“Jesus,” Indigo breathed, gaping at her in horror. “That’s why you bleed from the eyes?”
“Yes. Now, let’s get back to the topic of these amulets. Just how successful did you say you were at finding things?”
“I said no,” I broke in with a serious frown, pissed that he’d managed to sweet-talk his way to my aunt’s side. “He’s not coming to Earth with us, ergo he’s not going to hunt for amulets with us either.”
Neither of them paid me any attention.
“So there’s this legend…” Melaina started, hooking her arm through Indigo’s and leading him away to sit on some tree stumps near the burnt-out campfire. “It’s been passed down through the Graykey family line that stems back to the original nineteen.”
“You mean the first nineteen settlers who came to the Outer Realms?” Indigo slipped in curiously.
She nodded. “From the old world, yes.”
He nodded too. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“Corandra Graykey was the first to arrive and, if the story can be believed, she was the only one with any magical abilities.”
With a snort, Indigo shook his head. “Of course that’s how the story would go in a Graykey family legend. Leave it to them to give their ancestor the only one with powers.”
“Possibly.” Melaina shrugged. “But anyway, back in the old world, Corandra was murdered, hanged from a large oak tree, I believe.”
“Oak?” Indigo furrowed his brow. “But there’s no such thing as an oak tree.”
Melaina laughed. “Not in the Outer Realms, that’s for sure. Because seriously, why would she allow the very tool that killed her to inhabit the new world she created after that?”
“She actually died then?” he asked skeptically. “So how was she able to create a new world in the first place if she was dead? Are you saying the Outer Realms is just a product of her imagination? We’re just puppets playing in someone else’s afterlife?”
“No,” Melaina answered, but not very assuredly. Her brow furrowed in thought. “At least, I don’t think so. Wow. You know, I never considered that idea before. Huh, I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t believe so. She brought everyone else who died from that tree here as well to live out the rest of their days in the Outer Realms.”
Indigo lifted his eyebrows. “Sure sounds like an afterlife kind of deal to me.”
“Okay, yes,” Melaina snapped. “I agree. But...” She shook her finger menacingly in his direction. “The people here can change and grow and breed children. Fight in wars, travel, and invent. Hurt, heal, destroy, and build. Do you honestly think that could happen in someone’s afterlife?”
“Well, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’ve never been anywhere else but here. For all I know, my reality could be someone else’s fabricated make-believe world. Someone’s afterlife.”
“Well, I have been to another realm,” Melaina shot back with an elated smirk. “The old world. Now, how do you suppose I’m able to travel between the two of them if one is an afterlife?”
Indigo pointed at her. “Good question. I concede to your point. Now…” He rolled his bound hands. “Proceed with the rest of your story, please.”
Melaina blinked at him, widening her eyes as if trying to keep herself from strangling him, then she cast me an accusative scowl. “Your mate is annoying as hell.”
No, really? “I’ve noticed,” I said.
Indigo merely smiled at me, as if charmed, probably because I hadn’t outright denied we were mates. But in my eyes, that was a given, so I was conceding nothing, and he was celebrating a false victory.
Rolling my eyes over his lame cheer, I decided to start a stew for supper, because I already knew this discussion would take forever. But as soon as I knelt by the fire pit from the night before to get it going again, Indigo leaped to his feet. “Oh, here. I’ll do that.”
He produced a fire striker and was coaxing a flame from the logs before I could even start. I blinked at him, then turned toward Melaina, sharing an exasperated glance with her.
But seriously, did the bastard have to butt in everywhere he didn’t belong? Now what was I supposed to do with my hands?
She shook her head. “I don’t even remember where the hell I was in this stupid story.”