Lethe's Kiss (Ari & Soren Book 3)

Chapter 7 - Soren

When I returned to the library, I found Ari still sleeping. The peace and innocence on his face struck a soft, sad chord in me, and I stood for a moment, just watching him breathe. He didn't know it—didn't see it in himself—but his was a rare soul indeed.

I remembered the day we'd met. I'd been sent to his uncle's house to retrieve an artifact containing a dangerous spell—by any means necessary, I'd been told. Expecting a difficult task, I'd been ready for a fight; then I'd seen him walking towards me and figured I'd have an easy time of it, after all.

He was beautiful, inexperienced, painfully trusting, and naïve. I'd thought him a fool—someone to use or to manipulate; to abuse, even, if need be.

That was how I'd seen people, then: as tools—as the means to an end. It was Ari who had changed that—who had saved me from that soulless place, and restored warmth to a heart long since gone cold. By the end of that first day, I'd been hopelessly in love with him, and I still was.

I'd told him all this—how he'd saved me from myself, and what it had meant to learn that I was capable of that kind of love—but I still didn't think he fully understood. We were life-mated, soul-bound on a level even I struggled to comprehend; and yet I suspected he didn't really know all he was to me, or how readily I would die for him.

The thought made me laugh and roll my eyes at myself; it seemed I'd inherited something of my father's penchant for melodrama after all.

It was still true.

Rousing myself from this strange reverie, I leaned over his chair, brushed the hair from his face and kissed him, but he didn't wake. Carefully, I lifted him and carried him up to our room.

Though thin and a little below average height, he was not remarkably small; yet he always felt too light when I held him, as if he were not completely solid, and I had to remind myself not to hold him too tight. I knew he hated being treated like a fragile thing, but I couldn't help it that he seemed so delicate in my arms.

In the bedroom, I lay him down and then stood back a pace and watched him a moment more, listening again to the sounds of his life. Satisfied at last that despite his deep sleep, he was in no danger, I left him there and returned downstairs.

Hesitating in the hallway, I considered my next move. My father's reaction to the new-blood's words troubled me more deeply than I cared to admit. It was true that we clashed from time to time, and that I was angry with him for forcing me to shoulder burdens I had no desire to bear; but at the end of the day he was still my father, and I still loved him.

I hadn't always.

There were times in my youth when I had hated him fiercely, and would have been glad never to see him again. For years, I tried very hard to push him away, and to make him hate me in return.

I think if he had been any other man, I would have succeeded.

Not my father, though. No; he'd remained patient and steadfast, always ready with a compliment or a criticism, depending on which I deserved; and, whether cutting or kind, always fair.

Fingering the key in my pocket, I let curiosity guide me to the library once more, and then to the small private room at the back. Windowless, as it was on the side of the house built directly into the canyon wall, my father's study was like the inner sanctum of his mind; and yet it seemed not to reveal much about him as a man.

There was a large desk of dark wood, a highbacked leather chair, a modern office phone (there was no cell service here, but my father had put in a landline at his own expense), and an asymmetric bookshelf spanning one wall. Its various levels held a strange, mismatched collection of things; perhaps those objects dearest to my father's heart, or perhaps simply chosen to take up space. I didn't know.