Page 132 of Heavenly Bodies

With a shaking and tearful smile, she traced her eyes, mirrored in the stone, alive with triumph. The shapes had been rendered with such care, a moment captured in time.

She thought back to when she had fallen off the cliff. The fear, followed by the hope. Enzo had captured it all. Had captured her in the moment she had killed a monster.

‘Elara,’ a voice breathed behind her.

She spun around, heart thundering.

‘Enzo,’ she choked out. ‘I thought you’d left.’

He stood in the studio’s doorway, clutching a cup of water. ‘I’m here,’ he rasped.

She took a step towards him. ‘It’s me. This sculpture. The day we jumped off the cliff.’

‘I—’ He gritted his teeth, swallowing. His jaw worked, as though debating whether to speak. He closed his eyes, resolution on his face. ‘I knew then.’

‘Knew what?’ Her voice was a breath, a whisper.

‘That you were my soulmate.’

Something within her chest leapt. ‘What did you just say?’

‘My mother told me, not long before she left to travel to Asteria, that half of my soul was missing. She said she could see it, my perfect counterpart, waiting for me.’

‘That can’t be me.’ Elara’s voice was a rasp. ‘My prophecy would not allow that.’

‘It doesn’t make sense, I know. But I can only tell you my truth. A truth I think you feel too.’

‘But you hated me.’ Her hands were tremoring, and so she pressed them to her sides.

‘When I pushed you off that cliff, and realized that there was a chance you could die, something tugged in my chest. A physical pull. I had no choice in it, no sway. I jumped off after you because my heart bade me to.’

A lump had begun to form in Elara’s throat. ‘You were so angry with me the next day, when I’d tried to leave.’

‘I didn’t want to admit what I’d felt. And then, when I visited Isra after I told you to go…She admitted what else she had seen when she read you. She saw it too, El. Wearesoul-tied. The moment she confirmed what I suspected, I was in denial. I tried to do everything to stop it being true. Tried to keep hating you, to push you away. Because of who you were, the prophecy, my father…’

He sighed.

‘But now, nothing seems to matter. Other than that you know that I am in love with you, Elara. And that you are whoI have been searching for all my life. That was my secret, my payment to Eli. That my soulmate was a girl who could never truly love me back.’

‘Enzo—’

‘No, El.’ A dam seemed to break as the words poured out of him. ‘I need you to understand. You said we couldn’t be anything more than friends, and I would have done it. After I walked you back from the baths, I knew.’ His voice was ragged as he sagged against the door frame. ‘That I would have taken the crumbs you fed me. Taken you in sips, even when I wanted to drown, if it meant I could be near you.’

Elara was trembling as each word caressed her. A silence stretched between them as Enzo fidgeted with his hands, the nerve in his jaw ticking. She looked at him, words warring on her lips, until finally she spoke.

‘Drown in me.’

His head snapped up, every muscle standing to attention. Their gaze locked. A ragged breath escaped him. Then in five strides, he was on her. His hands gathered in her hair.

‘I love you too,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘I think I’ve been falling since I met you. It was so easy to love you, Enzo. Your strength, your passion, your courageous lion’s heart.’ She placed a palm over his raggedly beating chest. ‘I’ve waited all my life for you.’

The smile he gave at her words was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, more beautiful than any marble treasure he could carve. Light glowed from him as he met her lips with his own. She arched into him, a whimper escaping her as her shadows curled around him. He held her tightly, so close that the pain was exquisite. She wrapped her hands in his curls and tugged, angling his neck so that she could kiss it. A moan left him as his hands roamed her body, unsure where to begin now that she was all his. He tore hislips from hers for a second as he wiped workings and papers from the bench’s surface. Then he pulled her up, and she draped her legs around him as he lifted her on to the workbench. Lust swept her as she took him in, how undone he was—just for her.

His rough fingers hitched up her dress, and she found herself wet already as he pushed her head to the side, kissing and licking the arch of her neck.

‘I’ve imagined you, spread on this worktable for me since the moment you entered the studio,’ he murmured. ‘My muse.’

She moaned against his words as he pushed back to look at her. His hand moved higher with urgency as his other began to unbuckle his belt, and he gathered her to him again.