Page 181 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Once again, Caomhán just looked at Jonathan. “You’ll tell her, or I will.”
“You have no proof.”
“I’ve me nose, and it’s never failed me before. I knew she had one the first time we met, and I knew it was you the second you came back to the island. She was a foot from me and already aching for you before she even knew you were there.”
“Shut.Up,” Jonathan growled.
“What is it?” I demanded. “Will one of you just tell me what in the goddess’s name is going on?”
“Sure, and I will, since he won’t,” Caomhán said, pushing off the mound.
“I saiddon’t.” Jonathan’s eyes flew open.
“You could never find your shape, love, because you weren’t whole,” Caomhán spoke as if Jonathan hadn’t said a thing.
My skin prickled. “Is that…is that common? Are all fae like that? Maybe until they manifest?”
Caomhán just chuckled. “It’s nothing to do with manifestation. And, no, it doesn’t happen to everyone. Just those with mates in this world. A half left wandering until they find the one to complete them.” He glanced at Jonathan, who looked legitimately in pain. “And he’s yours.”
“My…”
“Mate,” Caomhán finished. “Isn’t that right, Jon? Isn’t that why you came back?”
I swung toward Jonathan myself. “Is this true? Are we…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
He looked like a sponge that had been completely wrung out.
“It’s a myth,” he croaked, but the expression in his eyes told me he knew it was true. “It’s not supposed to be real.”
“But it is, isn’t it?” I didn’t understand it, but every cell in my body throbbed with awareness.
Why I was so oddly attached to someone I’d known for just months. Why my dreams were warped by him in the past, present, and future. Why I couldn’t get him out of my mind.
It made sense.
And yet, I had no clear idea of what it meant. Or what I was meant to do with it.
“We’re…mates?” I asked. “Like animals?”
Caomhán chuffed. “What do you think we are in the end, Cassie? Stones in the river?”
But Jonathan wasn’t laughing, and neither was I.
“We are,” he admitted. “Fated, as it were.” When his eyes met mine, they were full of sorrow. “I am so,so, sorry.”
51
THE THING ABOUT MATES
Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?
— SAMUEL FERGUSON, “DEAR DARK HEAD”
Isurfed at dawn the next morning without even a single harbor seal to keep me company.
It was just as well. I’d spent most of the night brooding after leaving Jonathan. Those mournful green eyes had practically begged to follow me back to the cottage, but I had needed to bathe and think. In that order, alone. And apparently, until the sun was almost ready to rise.
