Page 58 of Mortal Desires

She moved around looking for paper, but one word kept ringing in my mind above all others.

“Soulmates,” I said out loud. “What did you mean by that?”

Her brown eyes widened and she wore her guilt on her face. My face contorted in a grimace before the words were even out of her mouth. She rushed to me, waving her arms trying to stop my train of thought before it even formed in my own head.

“I didn’t think it was important. I said nothing because—”

I grunted, going to my throne and sitting at once, bracing myself for whatever nonsense was about to come from her lips.

“Start from the beginning.”

It wasn’t a hard task. Start slow, explain yourself. Take this weight off my chest, the one making my hands tremble for the first time in my existence, by telling me the goddamn truth.

“Each one of us has a gift. The Morales sisters,” she started, making small steps toward me, like she was scared again.

I waved my hand impatiently, I knew that already. But she caught me off guard when I felt her just in front of me, asking, “Do you know our gifts?”

I sat straight and looked her square in the eyes. “I know about your dalliance with death, Pilar. It was all that was relevant to me.”

“Elisa is the head. Lucia has a blessed mouth,” she recited with a soft voice. “Elena sees the future. Emilia sees the past. Flo interferes with dreams and I can see the dead. And then there’s Marnie…”

She let the name of her younger sister linger in the air. I shifted on my throne, flaring my nostrils when she took her time to say.

“Marnie sees soulmates.”

I waited for a laugh, thinking this had to be one of her silly jokes. When she didn’t, I shook my head.

“Soulmates are a fairytale.”

“Who said that?” She looked troubled by my dismissal.

“A perfect mate for everyone?” I scoffed.

“Well, I wouldn’t say perfect mate but you know… destiny. Kismet. Fate.”

I stood on my hooves, needing to walk while we talked this through. I hated the word soulmate when I heard it many millennia ago. The idea that mortals could have their souls matched with someone for eternity while I had to live alone in my territory made me bitter for centuries.

Soulmates were never proven. Humans liked to use that word to describe their spouses, especially when widows came down to be with their loved ones, but there was nothing in their souls that proved they were really soulmates.

“Why would the fates talk about it if it isn’t real?”

“Maybe your sister sees something else.”

“Maybe she sees dumbasses in my future.” She huffed, annoyed I wasn’t taking it seriously.

“So you think I’m your soulmate?” I mocked. “I don’t have a soul so I can’t have a mate.”

“Explain this then,” she roared at me. “My grandmother, who died years before, came to visit me when I was little. She brought me up to the attic and gave me her ring.” She shows off the ruby ring on her hand. “Then she went away. Not down below, not ascending. She just went poof, like smoke. I kept that ring locked away, afraid people would think I stole it, just so Penny, well you know Penny,” she laughed still looking beyond angry, “could say to me ‘Hey Pilar, today is the day, I feel it.’ So I took the damn ring out of my drawer for the first time since the day I locked it up and then guess what? I met you right after. Even if you hadn’t used Penny as bait, I felt the tug, Vicious. It brought me here.”

I turned to her, my eyebrow soaring. “What tug?”

She placed her hand over her stomach and my eyes followed the movement. “As soon as I left the manor, I felt it right here, a tug calling me toward the steps. Penny was there so I never questioned it but unless you planned the tug too—”

“I didn’t.” My voice came out scuffed. “There was never a tug.”

Pilar shrugged like that was it for her. She didn’t understand what this all meant. The obvious pieces of the puzzle started to form right in front of my eyes. Pilar is the rightful queen, the only thing in existence I ever wanted to possess.

While her work with the souls annoyed me a lot, mathematically she could never destroy my territory. The world was big, people died every minute and she was one witch on the edge of San Francisco. Her whole life was a blink of an eye and yet it annoyed me so much I came up with a plan to bring her to my clutches.

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