Her parting words, flung down our thinning tether, were the last thing I heard before she went silent.

“Soulmates” she had called us.

It had a nice ring, admittedly. Melodramatic and not a little ostentatious, my exact flavour of words. Until this moment, I hadn’t realised what humans meant when they said that. As the other half of me flew away and the cold dawning of silence filled me, I understood, very clearly, what a soulmate was.

The mate to my soul.

Like a pair of socks.

What?

I was losing my mind already, the stabilising reassurance of her neediness receding as I sat in the lush room that the bastard had rented. And her scent and warmth were already a memory I was struggling to remember.

Soulmates.

It would do, this human term, for what we had become.

I turned and the corporal form I was allowed to assume was sluggish as I fought the cuffs of Light at my wrists which were behind my back. It burned, searing me, the singed essence like burning wood, like the scent of a cremation, the burning of a forest. It was sapping my awareness. I wondered, idly, if this was like being drunk. If so, it was awful.

The bastard had come back, rage thundering across his face as he dropped Galvyn’s mace on the table near the door.

“Poor baby,” I said and even as I said it, I agreed with the glare that he threw at me. It had been a stupid thing to say, no wit, no impact other than the annoyance it gave him. He paced, the Light rippling across him. That deadly, beautiful Light.

“I could convince her to come back for me if you let me go,” I said. I nodded as he growled at me. “I didn’t think that would work, actually but no harm in trying.” I adjusted myself on the floor, feeling the heat of the Light cuffs inching up my arms behind me.

She had called us soulmates, I reminded myself.

Erin had never said that and I’d worshipped her. I had actually, literally worshipped her, prostrated, my face pressed to the cold stone. She had willed it and I had done it. Obey at all costs, no thoughts, just my overwhelming love for her.

Had I loved her?

I had, I decided. She had been lovable, at times. She was funny, smart, and very good at making me feel small. That was a talent, wasn’t it? Belittling the Son of The Mother? Making him feel useless, worthless, invaluable, despite me knowing for aeons that I was the most important thing after Aethra. I had the ego of millions of men combined and yet one word from Erin had made me wish I had never been willed into existence. That’s surely a talent, somewhere, appreciated by someone.

The twisted power that had bound me made me shudder as I recalled the absent adoration I looked at her with. The way my body felt at first, as though I was swimming in mud at all times. I realised later it was the feeling of being condensed. I was expansive, immeasurable, but the witches had forced me into a single form. Even when I shapeshifted, it was only a part of me that changed. Most of me remained outside the form, my consciousness the only part that craved the shape.

And being forced to be human for the first few years, unable to change shape, forced to endure the needs and wants of a human body… Sure, some of it was nice. Erin’s face came to me, her lips pressed to my cheek or the scent of her hair as she made me brush it out. The feel of the silken strands was…enthralling. She was the most Divine thing I had ever beheld, outdistancing Aethra’s beauty with ease.

Alira’s face loomed in my thoughts, replacing Erin’s beautiful visage.

Her daughter wasn’t pretty, not anymore. The changes had been unfortunate. Her bloodless skin was always frosted over in a deadly white. I dearly missed making her blush. (Gods, how powerful that can be! A woman’s blush! Mother, take me.) She was ghastly now, in all truthfulness but something about the way she tossed her head when annoyed, her long braid slithering over a shoulder, how she rolled her eyes at the things I said made me feel a lightness, a weightlessness.

And she smelled nice.

Like petrichor and violets and sunshine.

She smelled like the Garden, like Life and Death in harmony.

She was home, in all senses of the word. And…

She was gone. The cord between was still there, had to be or we’d die, but it was fine, like a spider’s silk. Gathering a little of myself, I pulsed it down the thread, giving her the sustaining life I had been fueling her with since I had killed her.

How many gods can claim they killed their soulmate and then became her very life essence, I wonder?

Few. Gods didn’t usually have a soul that was their equal.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Equal.

Did I really believe she was my equal? Her humanity, her short life compared to my infinite lives and free-form spiritedness? Did her wit match mine? Did her strength? And her intelligence?

Maybe not, but…

Her soul, yes.

What made Alira into Alira was as strong as what made me Hrulinar, First of Aethra.

Equals, yes. Soulmates, yes.

The tug on my thread to her felt like my heart beating for the first time in years. I smiled, despite myself.

“What?” The bastard demanded of me, his scowl almost comical.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” I asked him. My voice definitely sounded a little drunk.

“What?” He was repeating himself, the idiot. How can one man house so much…stupidity?

“Soulmates,” I reiterated. “Fated to be together, your soul’s twin.”

“No,” he said bluntly, trying to shut down the conversation. He was pacing still, his heavy boots pounding a rhythm across the room, muffled on the carpet followed by a louder thump on the hardwood floor.

“Good, because no one could ever match your charm,” I said and I hardly regretted the words as he flared the Light in the cuffs at my wrists.

“Quiet,” he said and he threw himself in the chair he had recently vacated. I counted to ten before I spoke again.

“Do you have a plan, Lordling?”

“Shut up.”

I counted to twenty.

“So, no plan, then?”

He twisted in his chair and the heated glare he threw at me made me raise my eyebrows. Something in his face was different. The child that I kept seeing peeking through receded entirely. I saw him as he was, a man in his mid-twenties, desperate but determined. I even saw the smallest flicker of intelligence but I admitted earlier to feeling quite drunk so I doubt that memory’s reliability, to be completely honest.

“Get up,” he said and I hesitated long enough that he flared the Light, dragging me further into a stupor.

“I’ll be a fine mess if you don’t stop,” I said and my voice was so slurred the bastard had the grace to look alarmed. My hands were suddenly unbound but still held thin bands of Light around them, keeping me stuck to this corporeal form, misty and unreal as it was. I dragged myself to my feet and swayed.

“S’not a great feeling,” I slurred and the Light in the cuffs dimmed. “Thanks,” I said as I stumbled into him. He caught my arm and I looked down, a deep frown on my face. The Light had caused my arms to become completely solid. My godly glow, the glow of Life, had faded, leaving a dense, lean arm behind.

“S’not a good thing,” I said drunkenly and he released me. “I shouldn’t be real.” I grasped my own forearm with a hand and felt nothing but human flesh. “Oh, I don’t like that,” and the sluggishness that had taken over me washed down me in a wave. I swayed again and the bastard looked worried.

I held up the cuffs and blinked, one eye and then the other.

“Get ‘em off me,” I demanded but he shook his head and I shrugged. “I couldn’t return to her if I tried. She’s too far and I’d have to follow our bond manually.” I heard my own words with dread. Being this close to human had made me stupid, and I closed my mouth, biting my own tongue.

“Can you trace her with your bond?”

“No,” I said but his smile was bright as he waved a hand and one of the bands disappeared, leaving me with one. The arm that was freed did not change back but I instantly felt my head clear and I closed my eyes.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Chin up, Hrulinar,” he said and I regretted giving him the Divine tongue. “We both want the same thing.” He grabbed my arm and I growled at him, a genuinely feral sound from the Prince of Beasts.

“You’ll regret this day, bastard, this I promise you.”

“I have regretted many days. I’ll add this one to the list when I have a spare moment. Let’s go.”

“That High Lord really did raise a pair of fools, didn’t he?” I muttered but I was sure he heard me. “Neither of you can do what’s right when it comes right down to it.”

The bastard spun on his heel, his finger pointed in my face. He was so much taller than me but his physical presence didn’t bother me. And me being unbothered did bother him, a lot. He noticed my lack of response to his threatening posture and worked his mouth, glaring at me.

“Don’t ever compare me to that snake,” he said quietly. “Noran is filth. Worse than.”

“Even after he took the fate that awaited you, instead?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” But something in his eyes narrowed, staring into mine. The drunken feeling had faded and I was steadier on my feet.

“You don’t think Mara would have poisoned you, if it had been you left alone at that manse with her for months on end? You don’t think she’d have found a way to turn you from the Light?” He stepped closer to me, my face close to his chest, his face glowering down at me.

“He engineered a way to be alone–”

“Did he? Or did he fall ill and she preyed on him, too? Are maybe the High Lord’s sons not so different after all? Maybe not in the people they lust after but–” His fist connected with my face in a very real way. I grabbed my nose as the pain washed across me. I was more shocked that I had felt it than that he had done it. I was winding him up on purpose, after all.

“Shut up,” he said, his voice so low it was a dark rumble..

“Your heroic deed should be that you actually punched the son of Aethra,” I said thickly. With a frustrated huff he turned and I dropped my hand from my face, wrinkling my nose up to ascertain the damage. It felt fine after a second, as though he had not hit me and I grinned stupidly. He pushed open the ruined door to her room.

“So, the plan is to make me follow our bond to her and you’re going to take her to Devan and he’s going to kill me, subsequently her, and then…spurs? Mace? Then a cute little estate in the West?” He raised his hand again but I met his eye and raised my brows.

“Actually,” he grumbled, mollified. “Yes.”

“Pathetic.” I spat. Ignoring the drag the bracelet had on me, I strummed the chord between myself and Alira. Within seconds it strummed back. I grinned again, relieved.

A clenched fist grabbed my silk shirt, the one I was so careful to leave untied when Alira saw me, if only in remembrance of her embarrassed blushes from…so long ago. Light flared and I was dizzy again. The drunkenness returned and I wobbled.

What did she smell like? I forgot…

We were soulmates, two socks in the same boot.

What?

“If you say another word, I will bind your other arm, consequences be damned.” This is not what she smelled like. This manly, sweaty, anxious smell mixed with new linen and…desperation.

“Bastard,” I said, grinning widely, knowing exactly what would happen next. The flare of the Light dimmed my vision and I struggled to recall what happened after…