“Are you sure you still want to keep it?” Rock asked, eyeing my pet critically.
“I’m not going to let you eat him. Don’t even think about it.”
“There is not much to eat. I’d be just wasting my time skinning all those furry tentacles of his,” he replied, dead serious.
I shook my head, smile on my lips.
“I’ll keep him. If he doesn’t run away. But I hope he’ll stay.”
“Of course he will. Now that he’s figured out there is an unlimited food supply for him wherever you are, he’d never leave you. He is still annoying, though.”
“Well, at least he won’t bite your ankles if I feed him regularly. I need to give him a name—”
“Zeeke,” Rock said, with a smirk.
“What does it mean in valo language?” The word came to me without any meaning registering with my brain.
“Nothing,” Rock shrugged. “It’s just the first thing that came to my mind.”
“It’s cute,” I agreed, watching the purple, fur ball stuff his tiny mouth with an exorbitant amount of berries. “It kinda suits him too.”
DESPITE FEELING THE firm connection through our blood bond, I refused to leave Vlunn alone overnight. Instead, we brought in some furs from our cave and made a nest by his side, spending the night together, just like I wanted us to spend every night and every day from now on.
“Good morning.” The familiar voice sent a warm rush of relief and excitement to my heart.
I opened my eyes to be greeted by the playful sparkles of golden sunshine, twinkling at me in the morning light.
“Good morning, honey,” I reached to cup his face. “Welcome back.”
He was still in his rock form, but his eyes shone bright with color and life, as did the heartstone in his chest.
“Thank you for bringing me back, my fated one.” He turned his head and kissed my palm.
“I couldn’t let you go.”
“I didn’t want to go. Leaving you proved to be impossibly hard.” He lifted his massive arm, shifting back to his usual form in the process, and traced a circle in the middle of my forehead. “Beautiful,” he whispered reverently.
“What?” I smiled and brought my hand to my forehead. I felt a rounded mark in the center. It didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt like it belonged there. “What is it?”
I scrambled from under the covers and crawled closer to the stream on all fours then bent over the edge, looking into the mirror-like water.
An oval gem, the size of my thumbnail, had appeared in the middle of my forehead overnight. Enclosed in a delicate crystal lace setting, it glowed softly with vivid color—orange—the yellow and the red mixed together in a most perfect combination.
“It’s the color of your hair,” Rock’s voice sounded behind me.
“It’s perfect.” I turned around to look at both of them through the happy tears welling in my eyes. “Because it means I’m yours now.”
“And we are yours.” Vlunn pulled me into his lap.
“Always.” Rock hugged my shoulders from behind and kissed my temple.
Just like this.
Epilogue
Another dull crystal fell into the diamond chalice with a clear, clanking sound. Only now I knew that those were not simply colorless crystals. These were heartstones and they once held the lives of beautiful, loyal men.
Every moment I got, I roamed the streets of Corfoha, searching in and around the twin-peaked rock mounds for the heartstones of the Stone Valos long gone. I collected every one I could find and kept them all in a diamond jar, locked in a chest in the vault.
I didn’t know to what purpose I had been collecting them, but I knew I couldn’t let them lie scattered around under our feet. Unreasonably maybe, but a part of me also believed that the heartstones weren’t truly dead, that they were simply asleep, preserved inside the mountain. At one point, I was tempted to conduct an experiment myself and drip some of my own blood on one of them to see what would happen.
What stopped me was a strong sense of responsibility. I knew that the mating bond sealed by blood carried the weight of forever, and I took it very seriously. I had already found my forever. With Vlunn and Rock by my side, there was nothing we missed. Any potential experiments with lives and hearts of other valos felt cruel.
If there truly were a chance for the dead valos to awaken one day, it wouldn’t be me who would make it happen. My valos waited a thousand years for me. Who knew what another thousand would bring? Meanwhile, I collected the heartstones and kept them carefully locked in the vault.
Today both of my men went hunting together. Vlunn had fully recovered, and he often joined Rock on his hunting trips to the forest and up the mountain. He clearly enjoyed being able to move as fast as he once could. I got to see his sunny personality shine fully, and I loved him more than ever.
Seeing Vlunn thrive and having me safe and mated, Rock had relaxed too. He smiled more often, and turned out to be considerably more talkative than I first thought.
‘Cuddle,’ I heard a cooing purr behind me, and the fluffy, lilac fur brushed by my elbow. Zeeke used his tails to pull himself up and into my lap.
“You just hate to be ignored, don’t you?” I asked in English. I used his frobi language whenever I could. However, it was very primitive, with a vocabulary of just a few basic words. Anyway, the attentive way his nine round eyes looked at me sometimes, I could swear he understood me perfectly, no matter what language I talked to him.
“Okay, okay, fine.” ‘Cuddle,’ I purred back and scratched behind his pointy ears.
He wrapped his tails tightly around my wrist when I got up taking the chalice with heartstones.
“Let’s go, Zeeke. Our men should be home any minute now.”
Despite it being evening, the streets of Corfoha were brightly lit by shimmering, multicolored lights that shone from the mosaic of gemstones decorating each and every building in the city.
Mesmerizingly beautiful, the city came to life, the way its Creator had designed it. The combined energy of my valos’ heartstones made the colorful gemstones light up and the hundreds of fountains throughout the city to turn on, making the city look and sound alive, even without any inhabitants.
With Zeeke snoring softly on my forearm, I walked to the temple, put the heartstones I found today in a diamond urn along with the rest, and locked them in the vault.
“Time to go home, Zeeke.” I petted the soft fur on the back of his large head.
With the city coming to life, all amenities inside the houses began to function too. With a wave of my hand I could activate the running water, start the fire for heat or cooking, or light up gems on the walls for illumination and beauty.
It made no sense for us to continue living in our cave anymore, and we moved into the city as soon as we could. I chose a charming house next to the warm pool with the waterfall, and the three of us, along with Zeeke of course, had been living there ever since.
“There she is.” I heard Vlunn’s voice, warm and sweet like honey.
Rock had a dead brualdak over his shoulders, and Vlunn carried a large basket filled with tree bark that I had discovered recently could be ground into dark brown powder and used instead of flour to make bread-like patties.
“Hi, beautiful.” Rock gave me a quick kiss, without taking the dead carcass off his shoulders. “I’ll take this to the cold cave and be right back.”
“I’ll keep her company.” Vlunn’s voice turned even warmer and sweeter as he dropped the basket, closed the distance between us, and walked me backwards into the wall of the nearest building.
Zeeke, squashed between us, protested fiercely. I laughed and waved away Vlunn’s playful kisses.
“Dinner is ready.” I gave him a small kiss on the side of his jaw and wrinkled my nose. “You smell like a dead brualdak. Go jump in the pool for a minute, take Rock with you when he comes back. I’ll see you at the house.”
We had dinner the valo way, sitting on furs and cu
shions thrown around a low, stone fireplace. The men had strips of seasoned meat that I had baked in a stone oven following an old valo recipe I’d found, and I had a bowl of vegetable soup with the pieces of the white disks Rock had showed me in the forest. He was right, when cooked, they looked remarkably like egg white or firm tofu. They had absolutely no taste but added a nice texture to my soups and stews.
With the ever-increasing variety of foods for me on Sonhadra, I could go for weeks now without having to eat any meat at all if I felt like it.
“We went to your crash site today, Zoya,” said Rock.
“You did?” I exhaled, forgetting all about my soup. I had mentioned on several occasions that I would like to go back, to see what was left from my old world, but both Rock and Vlunn had argued that it might be too dangerous.
“We decided we’d scout it first before taking you there,” explained Vlunn and added somberly. “There was nothing left. Charred ground and a few pieces of wrecked metal.”
“A few?” Surely, a spaceship the size of the Concord would have left much more than that behind. Vlunn had mentioned before that he saw pieces of fire fly across the sky the day of the crash. Who knew where the rest of them had landed?
Rock put his plate down. “We didn’t see any other survivors around there, love.” He pulled me in and kissed the mating mark on my forehead.
“The whole area looked like Bahmet,” Vlunn agreed. “Black and lifeless. Except that unlike Bahmet, the vegetation has already began reclaiming the space. Nothing ever grows in that city.”
Bahmet, The City of Death, was apparently the closest city to Corfoha. However, my men had explicitly forbidden me to go anywhere near it. “Any form of life is not welcome in The City of Death,” Vlunn had said. “There is only one inhabitant left, Orishok, The Keeper of The Dead. And everything he touches dies.” Needless to say, as curious as I was about meeting another valo, I had no desire to come anywhere near that city and its gloomy resident.
Rock’s hand stilled at my back with Vlunn’s mentioning of the dead city.
“Zoya, is there a word quinn on Earth?”
“Quinn? Yes, there is, it’s a name. Why?”
“Not sure,” Vlunn began. “But when we went through the forest near Bahmet today, we heard Orishok talking with someone, a woman. He used the word quinn.”
“Quinn? Are you sure?”
It couldn’t possibly be the same Quinn, prisoner from the Concord. I saw her dead, with my own eyes. No one could have survived those wounds.
“That’s what he said.” Rock confirmed. “Quinn.”
“Did Orishok kill her?”
“No.” Rock’s hand stroked up and down my back again. “Their voices were peaceful, loving even.”
“How did she look? Did you see her?”
“No, we couldn’t see them through the trees. It was getting dark.”
“Will you take me to that place? I need to see her.”
Vlunn moved closer to Rock and me and put his hand on my knee.
“We thought you would want that. We’ll go when it’s light.”
“Only,” Rock added. “You’ll have to promise not to come close to Orishok, not to enter the City of Dead, and not to leave our side.”
I smiled at my protective man and teased. “I promise to hold your hand at all times, Rock.”
“You’d better,” he grumped, completely serious.
Well, what do you know? I might not have been the only survivor of the crash after all. Excitement filled my heart, and I had to stop myself from overreacting, to avoid a greater disappointment tomorrow if my men had got it wrong.
I hoped against all odds that it was the Quinn I knew, who survived the crash by some miracle. If so, I would do everything to find a way for us to be friends. But, even if I were to be disappointed in my hopes tomorrow, there was nothing missing in my life.
Some time ago I begged Fate to let me keep my two men by my side without any real hope of it happening. Now, that I had them both safe and sound here with me, I had all I needed for happiness, without asking for anything more.
I’d finally stopped enduring life and was now free to fully enjoy it.
Here, on this far-away, undiscovered planet I found who I truly was. Without the burden of guilt, self-doubt or regret, I simply allowed myself to be happy.
And that was my life’s biggest accomplishment.
Valos of Sonhadra
All Books in The Series
Tempest by Poppy Rhys
Alluvial by Amanda Milo
Blazing by Nancey Cummings
Whirlwind by Ripley Proserpina
Radiant by Naomi Lucas
Shadowed by Isabel Wroth
Undying by Tiffany Roberts
Enduring by Marina Simcoe
Unfrozen by Regine Abel
More by Marina Simcoe
The Cursed (Demons, Book 1) – Fall 2018
Demon Mine (Demons, Book 2) – Available Now
The Forgotten (Demons, Book 3) – Winter 2018/19
The Real Thing –Available Now
To Love a Monster – Spring 2018
About Marina Simcoe
Marina Simcoe likes to write love stories with characters, who may or may not be entirely human. She firmly believes that our contemporary world could always use a little bit of the extraordinary.
She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own beliefs, values and aspirations fit into our everyday life.
She lives in Canada with her very own Rock Man, their three little Pebbles and a cat, who is definitely as smart as a boulder.
For more illustrations of her books please visit Marina Simcoe Author page on Facebook.
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Enduring (Valos of Sonhadra Book 8) Page 15
