Finders Keepers (Norman Brides)
Page 34
Melissa reached up to remove the thin silver chain from around her neck. The Salusian stone glowed in the moonlight. “You will have need of this.”
Her brother laughed, and shook his head. “I think not.”
“Take it,” Melissa insisted. “The people will more easily accept you and your claim if you return wearing it.”
“You believe I need the stone to gain the acceptance of our grandfather’s people?” He inquired, insulted.
“No, we both know this is your destiny, but I will feel better with the knowledge you have it with you.”
Reluctantly he accepted the stone from her outstretched hand. When he would have stowed it in the leather pouch at his belt, Melissa shook her head. “No, you must wear it, and promise me you’ll never take it off.”
“I suppose it will do no good for me to remind you the legend of the stone originates from our grandmother’s side of the family not our grandfather’s.” Seeing Melissa’s adamant expression, he sighed resigned and looped the thin silver chain around his head. “Satisfied?”
“Promise me,” Melissa insisted, observing the stone’s transformation from a blood red to a midnight blue against her twin’s flesh. She was relieved the stone accepted Michel as its new steward. Despite the legends about twins, she wasn’t certain it would.
“I swear.”
Melissa released a relieved breath. Then her eyes immediately filled with tears, recognizing he was in a hurry to be on his way, and that this might very well turn out to be a final goodbye between them. Not bothering to brush her tears away, she informed him in a tearful voice, “If I have a son, his name shall be Michel.”
Smiling at her promise, and sparing a tender glance for her tears, rather than his usual mockery at her display of a woman’s weakness, he warned, “Luke might have something to say about that.”
Melissa shook her head. “No, we’ve already discussed it. He’s agreed.”
“And if you have a daughter?” He asked lightly in an attempt to distract her from her grief at this fresh parting.
“Then her name will also be Michel.”
He laughed at her teasing. “Then I must return the honor. If I am ever blessed with a daughter, her name will be Melissa.”
He watched the grin flash across her face, before adding with one of his own, “And if I am ever given a son, he too will be named Melissa.”
Despite her sadness at their parting, Melissa laughed, then sighing, vowed in a quiet voice. “I will not say goodbye to you. I will never say goodbye to you again.”
Michel folded her in his arms and held her tight as she clung to him and sobbed her distress against his chest. “There can be no talk of goodbye between us. Are you not my other half? When you feel pain, do not my eyes fill with tears? When you laugh, do not my lips curve, no matter the distance between us? So shall it always be. As long as there is breath in one of us, the other cannot forsake this world. That is both our blessing and our curse. Did you never wonder how you survived alone in that cave for so long? I could not reach you, but I could refuse to let you go.”
Stunned at his confession, Melissa swore fiercely, “Then I shall breathe for you and refuse to release you from the confines of this world, even when you pray for death.”
Michel nodded. “That seems only fair. We entered this life together. When the time comes, we will leave it together.”
“Swear.”
“I swear.”
Melissa was satisfied. Michel had never broken his promise to her.
The End
Look for Michel’s story in The Promise Keeper coming September, 2014