Exile Empire, Exile The Second

Chapter 20 - Kairos

"What the fuck was that crazy town?" I exploded the moment we left her building. "Remind me to never follow strange magical old women back to their place ever again."

"It's never a wise choice, actually," Sorin said with smugness abound, and normally the way he said it would've irritated me so much. But he was correct, and I had to give him credit where credit was due. "Have you really had no training with all this? It seems negligent, to have an Empire guardian so unversed in the ways of magic."

"I left before I'd finished any training," I replied, shame heating my face. I looked down at the sidewalk as we walked and thought about the years I'd wasted doing nothing but getting wasted and fucking strangers. It'd been a good time, but an irresponsible one and I regretted the shit out of my selfishness now. "I don't know how much we'd get anyhow, because guardians aren't supposed to leave Empire. None of the guardians are supposed to leave their nodes."

"What compelled you to come here?" he asked, looking around at the dull street lined with glass faced buildings, filled with anxious, faceless strangers.

I stopped in front of one of my old favorites, a building that had probably been put there in the early nineteen hundreds. It had scalloped cornices and small angels on the corners to overlook the street and bring luck to any business inside.

"I like things like this," I said, looking up. He followed the direction of my gaze and joined me. "I like the angels over us, just sitting there for a hundred years watching people go up and down the street. I love the architectural details and the fact that it was once an office building but now it's a hotel for homeless people and has a needle exchange and safe injection site on the first floor. I don't like that we need those things, but I like that it's changed and yet it still stays so beautiful."

"Empire doesn't change," he said, understanding my meaning. It really was uncanny at times, how we knew so much about what the other thought. "You' worried about that."

"I did," I said and we began to walk again. We headed towards the SkyTrain station and our hotel. I was exhausted even though it felt like we hadn't done anything at all that day. I was starving too, and we could order in once we got there. "I worried I'd get bored, and I worried that marriage...this mate bond thing, would stifle me. I worried that I'd wind up hating my mate."

"Why would you think that?" he asked, clearly taken aback. "I've never heard of such a thing, everyone has been successful because it has to be. The fates determine it and magic makes it so."

"Is it magic or love, then?" I asked. "Aren't you worried that the love you feel for your mate isn't real? That your chemicals like endorphins and hormones have been tricked into making you fall for that person just so the guardian lines can continue?"

He let out a light scoff and said, "No. Not at all. Not when I was raised for this role, and not even after I was exiled because I had failed. I always knew in the base of my gut that I'd find you, Kairos Empire. And I knew we'd love each other with a hot, fiery, passion that wouldn't leave room for doubt."

"So you're happy you met me? Come on, you were peacefully living in your little cabin in the woods and now you're trailing around behind me looking for my insane sister who might already be dead and is a walking corpse?" I couldn't look at him while I spoke because I was afraid of his reaction. I was scared that he regretted this, all of it, and I was afraid he'd be disappointed in me.

"Not even close," he replied quietly. His voice was so sincere that I glanced over and took a peek at his profile. His nose was large and hawk like, but it suited his handsome face. His beard appeared to have grown during the day and was over half an inch now, it was dark golden blond peppered with lighter streaks of sun. His hair had grown during the day too, and I couldn't help but notice how sensual his lips looked when he held them like that. Like he was concentrating on a serious conversation. "Did you not hear me when I said I was exiled?"