Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 173(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
I tried talking to the one that King Cleotis had designated as “my future mate.” I sat him down and asked him to be honest with me. Why did he and his brother keep going outside the city walls? Did they not realize the danger? I tried not to be too harsh with him, but he was so pretty sitting there in the faint luminescent light of the plankton that attached themselves to my outer walls. They gave off a cold, bluish light that complimented his skin.
“Well, Kailar? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I-I’m not sure what to say, sir.” He peeked up at me shyly from under his hair and I grew impatient.
“Come on, give me some excuse. Is it to irritate your father? Are you punishing him for sending you away? You know it was for your own good, right?”
Kailar looked anywhere but at my eyes. “I know that’s what he said.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“No.” He darted me a quick look. “I think he just wants to keep us away from our mama.”
“Keep you away? Kailar, why would he want to do that?”
“We heard them fighting. Yelling. We think he’s mad at her and punishing her. He knows how much she loves us.” He glanced up again and held out a hand in supplication, his eyes suspiciously wet and sparkling. “We just want to see her. We love her.”
Looking back on that now, I wish I hadn’t been so young and ill-prepared to talk to him. I wish I’d shown him more compassion. Instead, he caused a strange little pain to start up in the area of my heart, and I was not prepared for that in any kind of way. When a tear slid down his cheek, all I could think about was getting out of there.
“All right. Run along and play with your brother then. Stay out of trouble, Kailar and I mean it.”
The next week, my brother Keion solved his problem with the brother, Adan, by quickly hiring a live-in nursemaid to watch him and then sending them across the city to live. And me? I did my brother one better. I sent mine to the mortal realm with one of my best lieutenants, Mabus Theos, to raise him and watch over him. I thought a strong man to guard him until his twenty-first birthday would solve my problem nicely.
My servant, Theos, had posed as his father, and I had used my magic to wipe Kailar’s memory and make the boy forget his family so he could bond with his new “dad.” I didn’t love him, so I could use my magic on him. One caveat of our magic was that it didn’t work on our significant other. It would be too easy to control and compel them, so it was strictly forbidden. It was why I’d had to get Keion to compel Kailar to not be afraid of the pool when he arrived at my house.
As I look back on it now, using magic on him was a terrible thing to do to Kailar. Spelling him to forget his family that way—so he’d go along quietly with Theos—had been unjust and cruel. He’d already lost his mother and father and his sister. I took his twin brother away too, and even all his memories of his family.
There was really no excuse for what I did, and I’d understand if he could never forgive me. I couldn’t even forgive myself.
But as I stood there, gazing at him, I hoped he eventually could find a way. He was far more beautiful even than I had imagined, even though he was so frail and ill looking. And when I looked at him, I felt the pull of a soulmate, just like King Cleotus had told us we would one day, all those years ago.
I had made all the necessary preparations to get everything ready for Kailar’s arrival—I knew about Theos’s death, of course, and I knew the mortal who had become Kailar’s stepmother had been caring for him. When I found out, I’d kept a watch on her. As soon as I realized how rapidly Kailar’s health was failing and how badly they needed money, I’d come right away, but they had moved and left no forwarding address. It took a long time to find him again, and I felt angry about that but guilty, too. I should have kept him in Atlantis. And as soon as I saw him, I wished I had come to find him much sooner.
Two years ago, I’d felt the first tug of our connection, but I had ignored it, telling myself it couldn’t be true. To be honest, real life got in the way. I had been badly injured in a fight with Beathag and her creatures, and I still walked with a limp. Our mage physicians said I’d heal in time, but it was taking too long, and I was restless. But that tug had kept on increasing until it finally brought me and the soldiers under my command here to this town in Tennessee to be near him. I had uprooted us all in my quest to find him and make amends. True soulmates were rare in our kind, although the gods occasionally blessed us with one. Still, I couldn’t dismiss the idea. I owed it to him to at least see him and find out.