Great. Other powers at work. Fantastic. Just what we needed.
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“You are not claimed in this world. This is unnatural. With your beauty, your character –”
“Tor, honestly, it’s different here. It’s totally natural. Good women constantly –”
He shook his head and squeezed my hand. “It is unnatural.”
“Tor –”
“I’m a man, in your world or mine. Believe me, my love, this is unnatural,” he stated firmly.
Okay, I couldn’t argue with him being a man. He was definitely that.
I leaned in further and asked, “What are you thinking?”
“People observe us,” he remarked, I pulled in my lips and bit them because I’d noticed this too. “It is strange. I could understand men gazing at you; you’re beautiful, this happens in my world too. But the way their eyes are drawn to us, not only men but women –”
“I’ve noticed that too,” I told him.
“Something is not right about this,” he told me he was feeling the same thing I was feeling.
“Why do you think that?” I asked.
“I don’t think it, sweets, I feel it.”
Oh boy.
Yeah, he was feeling the same thing I was feeling.
“And what do you feel?” I asked hesitantly.
“You do not have destinies written in the sky in your world, do you?” Tor enquired and I shook my head. “And therefore, souls are not split in this world.” I shook my head again and Tor studied me. Then he said softly, “Cora, I think you hold the other half of my soul.”
I sat back swiftly, my heart clenching then beating madly and I stared at him then I said in a high-pitched voice, “What?”
His hand tugged mine and I leaned back in. “Minerva’s magic is blue.”
I shook my head but kept my eyes on his. “I don’t get it.”
“The vickrants aren’t born, they are made. Same with the toilroys. And the hewcrows. Minerva creates them. That is why, when struck, they bleed blue magic. That is why I was offended when you suggested I bled blue.”
“That’s a saying in my world, Tor, about royalty –”
He squeezed my hand and I quieted. “I know, love. But this mist that took us, it is also blue.”
Oh shit! I hadn’t thought of that.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“And Minerva, she is impatient. She’s been thwarted generation after generation. And I’m thinking that she knows of this world and knew of your existence. And therefore, to feed her need for evil, she split my soul but the other half she did not put in the Cora of my world, she put it in you.”
I wanted this to be true. I really did. But I didn’t think it was true.
“Tor,” I reminded him gently, “you fell in love with her on sight when you met her.”
“I didn’t know another her existed and I had grown up from the time I could comprehend to the time I laid eyes on her being told she was my one true love, my only, my destiny, the being that held half my soul. It would stand to reason having this ingrained since I could remember that my mind would conjure a love that was not actually there.”