It has been ten months.
Electra is sure it is over. She is sure, and yet she cannot convince herself of it – not in quiet moments, when her magic casts about in search of him, as a drowning man reaches for a thing to save himself. Not in her dreams, when she relives the exquisite torture of their last meeting: the vision of him poised above her, the intensity in his eyes, the nakedness of his skin, the orders and adorations that dripped from his lips like pearls, the illusion so real she can almost forget that it was her own hands….
Not in waking, when she remembers his revelation, and her furious, desperate warning.
He has not returned to her. She hopes that, for once, he listened, and has not fallen victim to her mother’s machinations; hopes he is merely through with her, and not dead.
More dead, Orestes reminds her constantly. She wishes he would keep his relief to himself.
“We were given a second chance,” he says, spotted limbs dangling from the tree beneath which she’d been sitting, the first time she saw Jack. “A chance we did not deserve. We were freed from our ghosts – why have you shackled yourself to a new one?”
Electra has no answer for him. He is in her mind, is he not? He can see for himself.
“I want you to say it.”
She will not.
But maybe he is right. They have been given many chances, have weathered the storms between regimes in this new world, have somehow managed to avoid the dungeons or deportation or execution or any of the other myriad punishments they so surely deserve. There are other men in Shaman. Orestes points them out, on occasion, as if his opinion has any power to turn her heart.
No, her heart is immovable. Her only comfort is that someday, she will die, and Jack may yet love her.
“When did you become a silly girl? You never were one, before.”
It has been eighteen months, and Electra is sure she will die of heartbreak.
She eats, because Orestes forces her to eat. She smiles, because Orestes forces her to smile. But the hunger, the hollowness, are forever in her eyes, and the men that might have comforted her before are afraid of her, now. She is as cold and inscrutable as marble, while the gold in her eyes scalds any who approach with sudden fire. How dare they presume to have anything she might want? How dare they offer to fill the emptiness inside her? No! She will tend to that emptiness, feed it until it consumes her…
Orestes is resigned. “Recall, if you will, that when you go, I go too. And mother will be even more delighted to see me, than you.”
Electra doubts that very much.
She leaves him to menace the livestock, taking the long way back to the castle through the gardens. It is a beautiful day in Shaman’s spring – the green is a painful reminder, like a fist around her heart. She frowns at it as she moves, taking in the lush new leaves, the opening blooms suffusing the space with perfume. Were these colors, these smells, quite so bright the year before? It seems impossible; she remembers roses, mostly. Not jasmine. Not plumeria.
There is a man in her path with his back to her. Electra does not know how he escaped her notice, before, and the intrusion makes her angry, that flash of fire lighting up her eyes. Just as quickly, she pauses. Something about the man’s posture is familiar. More urgently, something about the way the edges of him go from a shimmering mirage to solidity and presence…
“Jack,” she whispers. Her voice cracks on his name. She is so relieved that his apology confounds her – what possible reason does he have to apologize? He is here, he has come to her; whatever it is, it is forgiven in an instant. There are tears in her eyes as she moves toward him, a smile spreading across her lips.
She freezes in place as he turns.
A moment ago she recognized him, but now she is unsure. He has moved past the projection her magic allows; she can see the texture of his clothes, a bit of brown mud on the toe of his boot. His shirt is more cream than gray. His skin is sun-warmed, glowing with the pink of flesh beneath. His cheeks are flushed. His eyes! Electra has never seen such eyes.
It is her Jack, and not. His voice, that has haunted her dreaming and waking, sounds suddenly so near, as she has never heard it before. As if he were right here, and not calling to her through a chasm of time and space. In that voice, he asks her a perfectly sensible question.
“I–” she begins, but cannot finish. She cannot tear her eyes away from his face, to look around. She remembers stepping into the garden, remembers the moment it became strange. But surely there is a more important question: “No. Where are you?”
And then he touches her.
He touches her.
Electra gasps, lifts a hand to her face as if she’s been struck. But she recovers quickly, chasing after his hand with her own and grasping it, awkwardly, unprepared as she was to thread her fingers through his. They are strong hands, calloused from use. Warm. Electra’s eyes are wide and her breaths are so short and sharp that her stomach begins to burn. She lifts his hands to her lips. She can taste him.
She means to say something, but chokes on a sob instead. Then she flings her arms around him, crushing her face to his neck, her chest to his chest, feet straining on tiptoe.
She can feel his heart beat, fast and hard.
“Is this real? Is this real?” She’s saying over and over, more desperate than she has ever felt in her life. There have been so many chances, but this seems impossible, far more than she deserves. Surely, it is a trick. But Gods, it does not feel like one, with his arms around her body, and his breath on her temple (his breath!) and the smell of him filling her lungs. She clings to him so hard, it must hurt.
“You came back. You came back to me.”
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