20. Ash

Chapter Twenty

Ash

“ H ow was your visit?” I asked when we got back to the cabin. “Was it okay?”

“It was amazing,” Lorraine breathed and leaned against me. “You have no idea what it meant to be able to see her again. I wish I could have stayed longer.”

I frowned and something twisted inside me. “Is that what you want? To go back there?”

“It’s my home,” Lorraine said, her voice muffled against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and my heart sank. If she wanted to go back, I wouldn’t stop her. Like she said, it was her home. “I love being here, too,” Lorraine added, and that pulled me up short. “Yeah?”

She glanced up at me and nodded. “Of course. You have no idea how much I love being here. Life here seems so… simple.”

I burst out laughing and let go of her. “Simple? Since you got here, you’ve been hunted, in hiding, wrapped up in magic, and hunted some more. There’s nothing simple about that.”

“I guess not,” Lorraine said with a laugh. I took her hand and led her to the couch, letting her sit down before I walked to the hearth. I’d done a lot to fix up this cabin and make it modern, calling in favors from those with the kind of magic that could do that, but the hearth I’d left just as it was. I loved this hearth, and no matter what fancy kind of heating the humans used in their homes, there was something pretty fucking great about having a crackling fire to sit and stare at. Staring into the flames was a different kind of therapy, and there was no way in hell I would ever take that away from this cabin. I felt her eyes on me while I built the fire. “What?” I asked, looking over my shoulder. “Nothing,” Lorraine said. “I’m just watching you.”

“I can practically hear the cogs turning. What are you thinking about?”

She was silent for a moment before she said, “Cat believes all of it. I knew she would.”

“You said she was a fan of magic.”

“Yeah, she really is. She took it in her stride like it’s a normal thing, and I guess in so many ways, it’s started to feel normal for me, too. It feels like it’s a part of my life, and always has been in some way. That doesn’t make sense at all, but I can’t help it. It feels… normal.”

“It’s all I know,” I said. “I’ve known magic my whole existence. I don’t know how to live without it.” It had been pretty ballsy of me to give it up for Ava. If only she’d known how much I’d been willing to sacrifice for her. If only she’d known what it had meant for me to give it all up. “It’s weird,” Lorraine said. “Our lives were so different growing up. Why do you think we get along as well as we do?”

We’re compatible as fuck, and we fuck pretty damn good. I didn’t say those words out loud. Fucking was great, and Lorraine was pure ecstasy in bed, but being compatible had nothing to do with sex. I hadn’t always put two and two together when it came to that—I’d figured they were one and the same when I’d been with Ava. Maybe that had been my mistake. The thing was, with Lorraine I always had something to talk about, I always felt like she listened when I talked, and the person I was after we did the dirty was someone Lorraine was interested in. Ava had never been like that—she’d always seemed to be more interested before the deed than after. I should have seen all the red flags, but it was hard to compare one thing to another when I didn’t know anything else. When Ava had come along, I’d only known life as a drus, and nothing else had existed on my radar. “Do you think you’d ever be able to stay on Earth?” Lorraine asked. I lit the fire and blew on the kindling, letting the flame grow brighter and bigger as it found more fuel to burn up. I glanced over my shoulder. “I don’t know. What would I do?”

“I don’t know. I guess you could get a job, hobbies that you like, join a club or a sports team or something…” Her voice trailed off. I could guess what she was talking about, but I didn’t fully understand it. “What would my purpose be?” I asked. “Here, I’m a tree spirit, a protector of the forest. On Earth, I don’t know what use I’ll have.”

“It’s not as simple as being defined by one thing, you know,” Lorraine said. “You can be defined by a lot of different things and have a lot of different sides to who you are and what you want to do.”

When I was sure the fire was ready, burning brighter still without the risk of it burning out and dying again, I stood and walked to the couch.

I sat down next to Lorraine, and she gravitated toward me automatically. I lifted my arm, and she slid against me, her body fitting perfectly against mine, like we’d been made to fit together like this. Was it some sick joke that the gods liked to play, making a human fit so perfectly into the world of a drus? Or did the Fates have a hand in it? Was this on purpose, or had it just happened, and no one really knew how? It was hard to believe that there hadn’t been some design behind me and Lorraine and who we’d become to each other. That night when she’d run through the forest, screaming, terrified, fleeing for her life, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from getting involved. It had been the worst thing I could have done. I’d landed myself right in the middle of the mess I’d managed to escape three centuries ago. It was the best thing I could have done, too. I’d landed myself right in the middle of something that was fucking perfect. In every way. “Do you think you could stay here?” I asked. Lorraine frowned, glancing up at me before she glanced at the fire, licking the wood as it chewed it up with crackles and sparks. “What would I do?” she asked, and I understood what she was saying. On Earth, I had no identity, but that counted for her here, too. “You’d be with me,” I said. Lorraine nodded, her face softening before she wrapped her hand around my bicep and leaned her head against it. Her hand was small, barely reaching around half of my arm, and her face was delicate and beautiful, even though her brows were knitted together. “I think I’m in a difficult spot,” I said. “Why’s that?” Lorraine asked. Her eyes held confusion. “You’re not a sprite, and I’m not human.”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m falling in love with you,” I admitted. “Despite the facts, all the reasons I keep telling myself I probably shouldn’t, it happened anyway.”

Lorraine looked up at me, blinking. “Ash…” she said. I looked down at her, willing her to say more, willing her to say what I needed to hear. I was putting myself out there, admitting how I felt about her. She could very well tell me right now that this wasn’t what she wanted, that I was full of shit for even thinking about love when what we had had started so deeply rooted in lust. “I’m falling in love with you, too,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. I stared at her. I’d forced myself to expect her to say she didn’t feel the same so that if it happened, I could survive it. Instead, she’d said those words, too. I tilted her head up, my thumb and forefinger on her chin, and kissed her. I slid my tongue into her mouth and tasted her, probing. She was so familiar now, the kiss something natural and sweet. I knew Lorraine inside and out, and I’d meant every word I’d said. I really was falling very deeply in love with her. I’d also meant it when I’d said I was in trouble because of it. “I want you to stay,” I said. “With me. After All Hallows’ Eve when the bond is broken.”

Lorraine frowned, her brows knitting together, and even when she was confused and potentially going to say something that might hurt me, she was fucking cute. She was adorable in every way. “Is that even possible?” she asked. “I mean, I get how it works with me leaving before All Hallows’ Eve with the magic going all screwy since we’re bound…” We’d found that out the hard way.

When Lorraine had been kidnapped and taken out of the vale, when her ex’s men had somehow found her, just taking her away from here, from the magic and the bond she’d had with me, the magic and being away from it had nearly killed her. When the bond that forced her to stay was broken, though, I had no idea what would happen. She would be a normal human again, unbound to the vale and to me, and then I would have lost her completely. Unless she didn’t leave. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “Humans don’t usually stay here, since the magic is too much for you to bear, but I know about one couple who did it. The woman was human, and because of their love—it’s something different, something special—she could stay with him.”

“How?” Lorraine asked. “Who?”

“I don’t know how,” I said, shaking my head. “And I don’t know if it’s something anyone can just do, since they’re the only ones. I only read about it; I didn’t actually talk to either of them. The history in our books is pretty accurate, though.”

Lorraine didn’t answer me. “If I figure out a way to do it,” I said, turning to Lorraine, looking at her until she turned her gaze to me and our eyes locked, “will you stay with me?”

Lorraine didn’t answer me right away. I couldn’t expect her to give me an answer right now, either. It was a big deal, asking her to give up her whole life to come stay with me in the vale. That was if we even figured out how to do it, and that was going to be a shit show already, trying to convince Artemis, getting someone to do a spell, and all that jazz… but if it could be done, if there was even a chance, I wanted to try. “I don’t want you to give me an answer right now,” I said, and Lorraine’s features flooded with relief. “I just want you to think about it. I know how I feel about you, and I now know you feel the same about me, but that doesn’t mean you’re forced to choose something.”

“I don’t want this thing between us to end soon,” Lorraine said in a small voice, and the admission made my heart leap for joy. “It’s just so much to consider.”

“It is,” I said, nodding. “That’s okay. We still have time.” I had a fucking eternity, after all. If Lorraine decided to leave, that was in two weeks’ time, and that wasn’t as much time as I had, but that didn’t mean that we didn’t have time to think about things, talk about things, figure out which way we were going with this. The biggest part I’d feared had been admitting to Lorraine how I felt about her. Now that I knew we were on the same page, whatever followed would come naturally. We could work something out. If it meant being with Lorraine for the rest of my life, I’d do pretty much anything to help her stay here. I dropped a kiss in her hair, and she leaned against me again, letting out her breath in a sigh. “So much has happened, it feels like a lifetime ago that I lived at home with my sister,” Lorraine said. “It does,” I agreed. “It feels like we’ve been together for an eternity.”

An eternity that could either stretch out for the rest of time… or one that could be wiped out in a blink.