Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,22

fighting back nausea from the agony in my head.

“Stay.”

At least let me get some towels. I won’t call for the others. Let me go, Erebu. I’ll be right back.

Her voice comes to me in garbled sounds, as if I’m submerged deep beneath a lake and she’s shouting from a life raft on the surface. But I hear her.

I nod, letting her go.

I don’t know how long I sit there with Sophia kneeling by my side, changing the towels every so often to staunch the blood flow from my nose. It might have been minutes. It could have been hours. It feels like days, the way my body slumps with exhaustion and my brain melts into mush.

But finally, the agony in my head subsides into a dull throb. My nose stops bleeding, and I can breathe freely again, instead of desperately fighting the sensation of drowning.

Vaguely, I feel the soft, soothing strokes of Sophia’s hand in my hair, the press of her cheek against my temple, and a brief, affectionate kiss upon my brow.

She’s touched me like this before. Even if I can’t fully call up the memories, I retain the feelings she evoked—the sense of being comforted, taken care of.

Cherished.

“You used to be my wife,” I blurt, then promptly clamp my mouth shut again.

What is the point of dredging up those awful memories? I was an embarrassment of a husband. And she never loved me. Why did I ever expect her to?

“Yes,” she agrees softly. “You were Cambyses. My wonderful Cam.”

“And you were Kira, my light in the darkness,” I say.

Gods, I’m unbelievably sappy. What the fuck is wrong with me?

And yet, now that the floodgates have opened, I can’t dam them back up again.

“Why couldn’t you love me?” I whisper. “I loved you.”

Sophia inhales deeply and shifts so that she’s kneeling right in front of me.

I keep my head bowed, hiding behind the thick curtain of my hair.

But she won’t let me hide. Gently, she brushes a few locks from my face and tucks them behind my ear, sweeping the collective heavy mass over my other shoulder to keep it from falling back.

“I did love you, sweetheart,” she says in that low, soothing voice, like a mother comforting a child. “If you look within yourself, I think you know that I did. And by that same token, I think you would find that while you loved me too, neither of us loved each other in all the ways that a husband or wife should love one another.”

I take a shuddering breath and bite the bullet.

“You mean sex. I couldn’t…make it good for you. I couldn’t…”

Fuck. I couldn’t even get it up, was what I couldn’t do. The wedding night had been a complete fiasco and I never attempted penetration with her again in the ten years that we were together.

“Darling Cam,” she says, using the name I had when she was Kira, “you mustn’t blame yourself. I never have, and I never will, blame you. We didn’t want each other that way. I—”

“You were in love with someone else,” I accuse, a flare of that old rage burning through me.

“My brother. Dalair.”

She is silent for a while, one of her hands settling over my clenched fist on top of my knee.

“Yes. I was in love with Dalair. I love him still. I love him always.”

It should have hurt more, her staunch, fervent words. But then, I know how she feels. Because I feel the same for Dalair. Even though it’s a different kind of love. It’s nevertheless just as strong.

“It was never meant to be a betrayal to you. We three…we could have been the best of friends. You were my best friend, Cam. You kept me sane while Dalair was away at war. You and Vashti made Persia my home. You gave me joy when all I wanted to do was wallow in pain and despair.”

“But I wasn’t ever enough,” I whisper.

“That’s not true,” Sophia says this just as staunchly and as fervently as she declared her undying love for Dalair.

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I’m sorry I betrayed our marriage vows. Since getting my memories back and making sense of them after my Awakening, I’ve thought long and hard about this part of my past incarnations. I wondered what I could have done differently. Should I have refused to marry you? Should I have invited war upon our two empires, Egypt and Persia? Should I have resisted when Dalair came to me, and I