SOULMATE

My gown isn’t white anymore. Mud clings to the hem, streaked with my blood, torn by the branches that clawed at me as I ran. But my dress will be the least of my mother’s concerns, not when she realizes I left the altar like a ghost, taking my soul with me.

His gaze didn’t soften like I’d imagined. It was hollow, devouring, as if I were already his.

She wouldn’t understand. My mother, who had bartered my soul along with my body. She smiled as she sealed my fate, speaking of enchanted bloodlines, stronger children. As if I were nothing more than a womb. She didn’t listen to me when I said it didn’t feel right. Not like the aching pull that lingers in my bones, like a love I’ve lost, but never had.

My name is no longer shouted through the trees. That stopped a day ago.

Twigs crack underfoot, blistered from these damned shoes. Not made for running.

The sun has vanished behind the trees, and the darkness is spreading into the forest like ink in water.

I need to find shelter before something worse than my betrothed finds me. Hiding in the yew tree last night did nothing.

The monsters still taunted me.

They moaned. Begged. Whispered my name through the branches. Waiting.

My chest cinches, or maybe it’s this damned dress. Either way I need to find a better place to rest.

A glowing square flickers between the trees, bright enough to steal my focus. My foot snags on a tangle of roots, and I go down hard, mud swallowing my hands, rock biting into my knees.

Tears stain my cheeks.

When will this end?

I rip a strip of fabric to wrap around my knee, then push myself up. The glow lingers at the edge of my vision, but I keep my focus on the ground. I force my legs to move, step after step, until I reach the clearing. The glow, pulling me in.

A home.

Warm light spills into the night, golden against the black.

Thank the gods, there’s a shed. A door. A roof.

Sleep.

The door, unlocked, opens with ease and I step into the black shelter.

***

A rooster’s crowing wakes me before the sun. The purple morning sky turns my black shelter into a moody purple cave, giving shape to the contents inside. Long, sharp blades, their edges catching the dim light like hungry teeth. Hooks hang from the rafters, thin-necked and waiting, their curved points eager to catch, to hold, to shred.

The rooster crows again, a sharp sound that jolts my heart.

Whose house did I stumble upon?

I need to keep going before I’m flayed and buried with these tools.

A door slams shut. A second of silence. Then, footsteps.

Gods. They’re coming.

Heart hammering. I scan my small enclosure for coverage. Saws, hammers, rope, and stacks of burlap sacks.

Footsteps crunch on the dirt.

I wedge myself between the wall and the stacks of burlap. If they look closely they’ll see my tattered shoes and muddied gown sticking out.

The door creaks open.

Orange light spills into the space.

The dress’ corset top binds me tight, pressing me into the narrow space between the sacks and the wall. Once meant to shape me into something soft, delicate for a husband’s hands. Now makes me smaller for survival. It squeezes my ribs just enough to wedge into this space, just enough to keep me hidden.

I try to breathe, small, quiet, useless breaths. The burlap crushes against me, forcing my ribs to stay still. If I could breathe deeply, I wouldn’t dare.

Wood clatters. A low, scraping sound follows, iron against the floor, dragging, inching closer.

Steps recede.

Door closes.

I push with all my might on the arm prickling beneath me. Dislodging myself.

Whoever, or whatever, owns this house stands just beyond the door.

Thunk. Shick. Thunk. Shick. They’re digging.

I size up my host from the window. The blurred glass does little to show me who or what I may be up against. Black trousers, shirtless, black hair.

That widdles out spirits, ghouls and ghosts, and because of the sunrise, not a bloodsucker. Could be a shifter? No, the moon is gone. Fae are too lazy to dig their own holes, and let’s face it I’ve never seen an Elf dirty themselves either.

From the fire blown windows, it appears my unsuspecting host has taken a break to head into his house. This is my chance.

The fresh air floods my lungs. I didn’t realize how stuffy the earth scented shed was. My eyes scan the tree line, plotting my next move, but curiosity pulls at my chest.

What was my host doing? Burying bodies?

I risk a look.

Luscious green plants, tall, short, full of vegetation. He wasn’t burying bodies. He was transplanting tomatoes.

Big, juicy tomatoes.

Tomatoes that would pop with the light graze of teeth against their skin. My stomach growls in response.

He surely won’t miss one.

The house is silent.

No movement inside.

I run for the first tomato I can reach. It snaps free with barely a fight, rolling into my palm. Warm from the sun, heavy as gold. A prize worth the risk.

I don’t wait for my shelter to sample my reward. Sweet-tart tang explodes in my mouth, juice hydrating my sunken skin.

“Do you make a habit of taking from others’ gardens?” The voice curls through the humid air, low, familiar, teasing in a way that turns my blood cold—a memory, not just a voice.

Frozen.

Tomato souring in my mouth.

There is no way I can make it to the forest before he reaches out and grabs me. Theft in Avalon is death.

If he doesn’t kill me here, he has every right under the law to turn me in for my crimes.

Death over a tomato.

“I—I’m sorry. I was hungry.”

I turn to face my fate.

He’s no longer shirtless. A black hood shadows his face, the scythe resting at his side like an extension of him.

Gods.

“Funny,” he says, voice smooth, unreadable. “You never liked tomatoes before.”

My chest tightens. Before?

The word lingers between us, curling in the air like smoke.

Have I met Death before?

The wind shifts, carrying the essence of smoke and leather, warmth and longing. A scent I know. A scent that belongs to warm nights curled by the hearth. Hands tracing my skin, slow and deliberate.

The tomato slips from my fingers, landing with a soft thud.

The hood falls back, fabric slipping away like a shadow.

Those moss green eyes. Piercing, inescapable.

My heart clenches—it knows this pull.

My body—it knows his.

But his face? Not as I remember.

My hands reach for his left cheek, fingers grazing over bare bone, smooth and unyielding. Death.

“How?” My voice is barely a breath.

“After I lost you, I gave up everything to avenge you.”

His words are a ghost against my skin, a promise, a wound.

“I’ve been waiting decades for your soul to return to me.”

His hands trace familiar trails along my shoulder, a map he once knew by heart.

“Thaniel?”

My heart skips.

“Mostly.” He responds, tossing his scythe into the dirt. Shadows flow off him, wrapping around my tight corset. The popping of the laces, giving air to my lungs, tenson lifting off my soul.

“I lost you once,” he breathes against my throat, voice a dark vow, a curse, a promise. “I won’t wait another lifetime.”

The words barely register before his calloused hands are on me, lowering me into the earth like something sacred.

Rough. Claiming. Hungry.

Fingers sliding through the dirt as he grips my thighs, spreading me against the earth, crushing wild herbs beneath us. The scent of crushed basil, ripe fruit, damp soil is a dizzying, intoxicating, extension of him.

Shadows lick at my skin, curling around my wrists, my ankles, my throat. They don’t bind me. They worship. They trace me like a map he’s memorized.

He rips the fabric from my body.

Careless.

Greedy.

Shadows move like living things, caressing the skin he exposes, cool against my burning heat.

The garden watches.

The earth swallows my moans.

His power surges through me, a storm building, a past forgotten and rewritten in the same breath.

And when he finally takes me, it’s not just love. It’s the unraveling of time, the mending of something lost, the resurrection of what was stolen from us.

I am not just his. I am whole.

I’m finally home.