“Her mere existence is bad for the entire human race, Ara,” David added. “She’s unnaturally old—been around longer than us.” He motioned between himself and Jason.

“And, rumour has it, as hideous as a millennium-old steak sandwich,” Jase said.

“Which is a perfect example of what happens to witches when they meddle in the natural order of things,” David said.

“In what way?”

“Well, aside from being so old her skin is as thin as paper, her soul is also demented from the inside out, like rotting fruit, Ara,” Jase said.

“Witchcraft eats the body and the soul when used for dark purposes,” David finished. “But she is much too old to have once been the child Morgana.”

“Oh. Well, there goes that theory.” I moved my shoulders in a noncommittal gesture. “So . . . if her soul is so rotten and dark, what would happen if she sanctioned herself a youthful, immortal body to occupy?”

David went stiff, growing taller, his hands stopping short of the scrolls they were about to grab.

“I knew it,” Jason said. “You two know more than you’re letting on.”

“When it’s your concern, brother, I will include you.”

I slapped David’s arm. “Be nice. Jason can know if he wants.”

“Well, Safia won’t get the chance to insert herself into our child. Here.” He handed a pile of scrolls to Jason. “Put these away.”

Jason just groaned, grabbing another stack of paper off the lamp table as he walked away.

When the storage room door closed behind him with a high squeak, David turned to me. “Ara, for Safia to insert a soul into a living being, she would need to untether the one already in place—something that can only be done with the Dagger of Yahanna. Once I use it on Drake, its power will die with him.”

“And with you.”

He leaned in and kissed my brow, closing his eyes. “Give me an alternative, my love, and I’d take it.”

“But, we could—”

“A real alternative,” he said sharply and walked away, not noticing Jason behind him until they bumped shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, and closed the storage room door gently behind him.

Jason walked toward me, his steps graceful and light as the wind, and leaned against the table, folding his arms. “Don’t keep pressing him about jure uxoris, Ara,” he said. “He’ll never agree to it.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you keep bringing it up?”

“Guess I’m just hoping.”

“Do yourself a favour—” We both looked over at David through the windows, rummaging around in the storage area. “Stop hoping.”

“I can’t.”

He sighed, standing up again. “He’s worried about you.”

“In what way?”

“He knows how bad you’re hurting.”

“Good,” I said, smiling. “Maybe he’ll stay then.”

“No,” he said casually, packing away scrolls. “He won’t. He’ll just go to his death with the burden of your aching soul on his.”

My arms dropped to my sides, but I plastered a smile on as David came back in.

“We good?” he said to Jason, laying his hand on my arm.

“Yup. I’ll finish up with these and lock the door on my way out.”

“Thanks, bro.”

“Any time.” Jase waved and headed into the storage room, leaving us alone in the total silence. The seconds-hand on David’s watch ticked, keeping time to the beat of my heart, offering the comfort of noise in a completely wordless moment. I held my thoughts back from David, and he did the same with his own.

When he realised I was practically paralysed, unable to speak for fear of saying something he didn’t want to hear, he slid his touch down my arm and scooped up my hand. “Bed?”

I squeezed his fingertips, deciding right then that any pain I felt for losing him had to be felt alone. This was hard enough for David without me adding my broken heart to it. “Yeah. But I don’t wanna sleep.”

“What shall we do then?”

“Uuum, well, I have a few things I want to try out before my only company is a cat.”

“A cat?” David looked utterly confused.

“Yeah.” I started walking. “You don’t expect me to get married again once you’re gone, do you?”

He stayed behind for a second, but a burly laugh broke the silence in the room. It seemed like forever since I’d heard him laugh in such a carefree way, maybe even as far back as our last day by the lake. “Right. Well, in that case,” he said, stepping up to take my hand again. “There are a few things I’ve always wanted to do to you, mon amour.”

“Mm.” I closed my eyes, feeling the tingle of his words. “Speak French to me, and you can do whatever you want.”

He leaned in and whispered something in my ear, and I didn’t care what it was, didn’t care that the squeeze of his hand on the small of my back sent a thousand hot ideas into my mind because, whatever he said, it was definitely not in English.

Chapter Five

We stood against each other, arms by our sides, the backs of our fingers touching only by the finest hairs between them. We were like two individual flames meeting before blending as one—the heat intense but our skin immune, our bodies two, but our souls completely intertwined.

My cotton nightdress felt like air along my craving skin—like a breath I wanted to exhale so I could feel the closeness of David’s soon-to-be naked body against mine. We both knew what we were about to do wasn’t just for the sake of being close or fulfilling primal needs: it went much deeper than that. The first time we ever made love with the hope we might fall pregnant, I was scared and unsure that’s what I really wanted. And every time after that I’d either been afraid it wouldn’t happen, or afraid that, if it did, it’d mean losing him.

“You okay?” David asked softly into the crown of my head, his warm breath forcing my eyes closed.

I laid a hand across my belly, shaking slightly.

“My love?” He lifted my chin. “What is it?”

It had all changed. Every reason I ever had for wanting to make love to him had changed. I could finally hope it would bring the blessing of a little girl, and I wasn’t scared, not about anything, not about being a young mom. Not about going it alone, without David. I wasn’t even scared that I’d mess it all up and fail as a parent.

I opened my eyes and smiled, melting the concern in his. “I can imagine it,” I said.

“Imagine her?” His hand cupped mine.

“Yeah. I can finally imagine what she’ll be like.”

His hand moved from my belly to wipe a tear from my cheek. “Let’s not imagine anymore, Ara.”

“I . . . I’m afraid, though, David.”

“Of what?” His green eyes searched mine, so intense with depth and wisdom and strength that I felt silly for feeling fear when I should be thinking of nothing else but this moment. I was afraid it wouldn’t happen, though—afraid our baby wasn’t possible, no matter what we did. But something in his eyes just made it all okay, like he’d take care of it. Like nothing was impossible while I had him.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered in my ear, guiding my hand onto his heart. “Let me make love to you.”

“Only if you let it last for forever.”

“I can’t promise you forever, Ara. You know that.”

“Then at least make it last until the dawn.”

“That,” he said with a slowly shaping grin. “I can promise.”

I leaned back a little and took all of him in: he looked magnificent as king, as if he’d grown an inch taller since he was sworn in and maybe even jumped a few points on the sex-appeal-o-meter. The stubble tracing his jawline had grown in over the day, shadowing his face like immortality’s version of a Calvin Klein model. The white shirt he was wearing had been sewn from a fabric so soft it was almost a part of his body, falling over the contours of his chest like skin, leaving all the warmth on the surface as if he were naked already. I felt him under my hand, his chest moulding the cup of palm, the shirt parting at the buttons, inviting my fingertips inside.

David smoothed the tip of his thumb from just under my earlobe and down my throat, his lips softly pushing my nightdress off my shoulder a little. “I still can’t believe how well I know every inch of you.”

Gravity drew the fabric down the step he hadn’t, and my skin fell open to the warm summer night as the top of the dress bunched around my elbows, leaving everything from my hips upward exposed and tingling slightly with little bumps. Both his hands trailed firmly down my back, following its shape like a hand tracing a distant skyline of smooth rolling hills. I held my breath, afraid to breathe a moment of this realness. My hand sat against his chest, his body solid and alive beneath it, yet my mind floated along the memory of the first time I saw him smile—the gentle half-turn of his lip, the way he’d hide the thoughts he could hear, trying so hard not to give anything away about how they made him feel. I saw him as that boy I sat beside at the piano on my first day of school, felt the ache rise from my gut to my chest, knowing I could never go back. All that was gone. And those memories were all I’d have left soon, never to make any more.

When I looked up, the hold of his round, black eyes on mine nearly burned a hole in me, his tears clouding them, so restrained I just wanted to cry for him. But he blinked and they slipped past his lashes, falling eternally away to the land of forgotten things. In this moment, we were here, alive, and one day, he’d be gone. I’d stand here in this memory, touching the air as if I could feel him there, but I’d only be able to imagine what it felt like once to know his warmth, to feel the way his hands moved over my body in ways I couldn’t even dream up. And I knew he felt every breath of my pain as he read the thoughts that provoked it.

“I’ll never be far away, Ara.” He drew me closer by the small of my back, and as my hands dropped to my sides, the nightgown slipped past, falling at our feet. “I’ll leave a part of myself behind in you.”

“And every time I look at her, I’ll die a little more.”

“No, you won’t.” He kissed my hair. “You’ll know what it feels like to love again.”

I stood on my toes, reaching up to cup my hands behind his neck, our lips connecting a breath later. But the kiss only broke my heart—the supple warmth of his lips, so lovingly wrapped up in mine, were so exquisite in their hold that the only emotion they could possibly convey was love: unending, unconditional love. The kind of love I would never have again.

I angled my chin so I could feel the slight prickle of his stubble, a feeling that always made him real, present—one I could always find when I closed my eyes, even if he wasn’t here. Every breath of that kiss would become a moment locked away—stored for the day it would only be something I opened at night, when I lay in bed with my eyes closed—our forever lived in a series of events that already happened.