Daughter of Tide and Illusion

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

"Did you really have to punch me in the stomach?"

"You're early."

"And at that, you know I would have forfeited the fight to you, right?"

"And you think I'd let you? I wanted to win fair and square."

"By using a dirty move?"

"Another thing I learned from Drue," Lyv grinned up at Jai.

She didn't even have to wait for him to knock on her door to let her know he was there. Ever since those dark shadows covering her left and she was able make herself forgive him, the connection between them only got stronger. No, not connection...their mating bond.

And to think it wasn't even whole yet.

Lyv couldn't help the warmth that spread through her chest at the sight of him, a smile lighting up his face as his eyes roamed over hers before looking down at her in her dress. It was the one she bought for a wedding in what seemed like another life, one she'd kept with her because a certain male said she looked beautiful in it as they danced and he held her close.

One who was in front of her now, though he looked different than he did then.

Jai stood in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame with his arms crossed, looking more at ease than she'd seen in so long. No longer were they going to be on edge around each other, afraid to do or say something wrong. No more fighting about the past, though they still needed to talk about it all. No, they had the present to be in and a future to look forward to.

"What are you thinking about?" Jai asked her then as he stepped inside and she went to get her ankle boots from her wardrobe.

"I thought you could almost always know what was going on in my head?"

He glanced at her as she appeared once more from her bedroom. "Not when I'd rather you told me yourself."

Lyv sat down on the sofa to slip them on, lacing them up and watching as he went to look at the books on the bookcases. The tension in his back and shoulders was gone, something she noticed almost immediately. An easing calm had worked its way through him, but that only made him seem all the more powerful, even only standing there in her rooms.

And he was hers. All hers.

"I'm thinking," she began quietly, "that I haven't felt this at ease in a long time and it seems like it's the same for you. And on top of that, I'm thinking why the hell we took this long."

"Doesn't help that we're both completely stubborn," he told her with a wink.

Lyv snorted out a laugh, rolling her eyes as she stood. "Isn't that the truth. And we both get it from our fathers."

"I'm more like mine than I'll ever want to admit," he told her, coming over to take a seat on the sofa. "But you...you have it through both birth and upbringing."

"True yet again," she said, turning to face him and pull her knees up. "And speaking of my father, I talked with Bence when we finally had time for just us...plus Elys, of course. And he told me some...interesting things about the past between the two of you. Why did you never tell me?"

"I think I've mentioned it before, but just didn't go into detail," Jai said. "The conversation didn't last long, but the impact hass been felt in all the years since and will continue on."

"Because that's when he made a deal with you that there would be peace between Escarral and Dalcaine."

He nodded slowly as he stared at her. "And he already knew from the previous Seer of Ikreus that it would be because of a little girl who was to be his daughter, but not by blood. One born on the very night he came to me a week after the Autumn Equinox."