CROSSProcess, Part 10 by Billings Hildred M

Author:Billings, Hildred M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barachou Press
Published: 2023-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Don’t leave me,” Sulim whispered as she wrapped her whole body around Cairn. “I’ll lose the last of my mind.”

Cairn returned the embrace that Sulim refused to release. “Who said I was going anywhere?”

“You know what I mean.” Sulim wished she could become smaller. Small enough for nobody to question why the woman she loved more than anyone else held her so closely, and for so long. Instead, she was a grown woman. It didn’t matter if she stripped herself down to her skin and wrapped herself up in the cooling covers of her chief’s bed. Once they were together, the sweat of lovemaking and adrenaline were enough to send her to an early, fiery grave. If only I could be burned alive now. She wanted her ashes spread across this bed, where she had left her holy humility over the past decade. “I love you. That’s enough for me to fear for you. And I’m very afraid right now.”

Cairn’s hand always seemed so much bigger in the dark. When it pressed against Sulim’s cheek, they both closed their eyes in acknowledgment of the world they inhabited. “There’s still time,” Cairn whispered. “We can leave now.”

As desperately as she desired such blasphemy, Sulim couldn’t bring herself to readily agree. Not even when she imagined spending the rest of her days on a quiet planet with the woman who now kissed her.

I’ve kissed her a thousand times. Sulim hadn’t felt such intensity since their earliest days together, though. Back then, when it was new and felt more forbidden, she knew she enlisted into a lifetime of more than violence and danger. The real danger was in loving this woman, after all. She tried to save me. She told me to stay away from her. It wasn’t only about having a lifelong affair with the chief of Second Tribe. It was the woman behind the veil. The cursed soul born from circumstances nobody but the Void controlled.

“Will you go with me?” Sulim asked between two heavy breaths. “To the Void?”

Cairn’s hesitancy touched more than Sulim’s fears. “I will follow you anywhere. Don’t you understand? Most days, you are the reason I even pull myself out of bed. None of what I have accomplished in my short life means a damn thing if you’re not waiting for me somewhere. You are the other half of my twisted soul. Even if we were born elsewhere, I would have found you. It was destiny that I found you in this life.”

Perhaps those were the words of a woman looking for a reason where there was none. After all, wasn’t it chance that the former chief sent Cairn to Qahrain? Didn’t chance take Cairn and her partner to Montrael Meadows? And the only reason it was me is because my aunt loved her son more. That was luck. Chance.

Or was it fate? Sulim didn’t know anymore. All she knew was that she ended up on Cerilyn, and the woman who owned her heart happened to be the one to abscond with her in the first place.

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