The chirping of birds woke Kirin from his slumber. He decided to ignore the noise and sleep on. His teachers would probably scold him again for being a laggard. He sighed and buried his face in his pillow. It was harder than usual, but the surface was smooth and warm, with a faint pleasant scent of freshly cut grass.
Someone echoed his sigh, and the pillow moved under his head.
"You are making things difficult, bard. Not to say hard."
Kirin shot up in panic and looked down at the demon, who lay there with his arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the tree with a somewhat cross-eyed expression.
"Why didn't you just push me off?" the bard asked sheepishly.
"I did. You just kept rolling back."
"You could have just rolled away then."
"You are heavy. Especially that fat head of yours. Must be all those useless songs and stories you filled it with."
"Just wake me next time!"
"So you can jump up and scream like a girl, like you just did? And there better be no next time. I am all stiff and sore from lying still for hours", Valerien warned.
He got up in one graceful move that belied his previous words and disappeared between the trees.
Kirin rubbed his eyes, feeling mortified. It was a mystery to him why his body constantly seemed to seek the demon's touch. Maybe it was simply because the Fae's body was like a warm brazier, but that alone could not explain it. It had to be connected to that damned soul bond. He had to get to the bottom of it, but it was too risky to bring it up openly.
He was still pondering how to do it when they set out, when Valerien unexpectedly gave him an opening.
"Who taught you that song about the goddess and the warlock?"
"An old bard on Ynys Mon. But everyone in Gwynedd knows some version of the story. It is very famous."
Valerien gave him one of his unreadable looks and drove his horse closer.
"So that old bard lied to you?"
"Uh… what?"
"Before those men attacked, you said someone lied to you."
Kirin blushed. He had hoped the demon would have forgotten that.
"It was… Do you remember the end of the story?"
"You said Seren bound her soul to her dying lover and took him to the Otherworld."
"Do you know what a soul bond is?"
Valerien seemed to lose interest and just shrugged. "Some poetic gibberish about sharing a soul with a person whom you love above others."
"So you have songs about that, too?"
The demon smiled. "It seems all bards spin equal nonsense, regardless of the realm."
"What do they say?"
"It's just an old legend."
"I sang you a whole song. You can at least tell me a story," Kirin objected.
Valerien sighed as if he were having to put up with a stubborn child, but obliged.
"They call it soul sharing. Only when you find that one person in the world who matters to you more than anyone else, only then can you know how it's done. Someone who matters even more than your life and honour. Someone for whom you'd give up anything and anyone else. Everything you ever valued and believed in. Your queen, your country, your kin and even your children. It has to be only one life you hold dear above all else."
Kirin felt quite offended by the mocking tone in which Valerien delivered the explanation. It sounded like he was imitating a poet he didn't like.
"Have you never been in love?" he asked before he could help himself.
"No."
The bard blinked in disbelief.
"Never? Not even a busty milkmaid when you were very young?"
"I assure you I never even set eyes on a milkmaid."
"Not even some beauty you just saw dancing at a feast by chance? Or maybe a strapping young soldier?" Kirin insisted.
Valerien burst out laughing. "No. How often have you been in love, bard?"
"Maybe... five or six times?"
"In nineteen years? A beauty you saw dancing somewhere by chance? It sounds to me like you fell for every second person you met. Or are you just confusing lust with love?"
"I am not!"
"Uh-huh. So what was so wonderful about that milkmaid?"
"Come on, that's unfair. I was fourteen and she was a pretty girl with big… uh…"
"Big blue eyes?" the demon suggested with a grin.
"I think they were brown. I thought I would die when she married some farmer and moved away to the mainland," Kirin admitted with a sigh.
That sent the heartless demon into another fit of laughter.
The bard leaned out of the saddle to box his shoulder in frustration.
"Stop that, you'll fall off the horse."
"What is such a long life as yours even worth if you can't even love someone?" Kirin demanded.
Valerien fixed his eyes on the horizon. For a moment, the bard thought he wouldn't even get an answer.
"Love and romance are not the same thing," the demon finally said.
Kirin blinked at the strange answer.
"So there is someone you love?"
"There are only three people in the world that matter to me. I guess you could call it love. But it is not the kind you asked me about."
The bard thought about that. To him, true love had always been the burning, all-consuming passion the songs spoke of. He had never experienced the love of a mother or a family which other people took for granted. The closest thing he ever had to that was Owain.
"What does any of that have to do with that lie that upset you so much?" Valerien asked, interrupting his thoughts.
"Because… because I was told that a soul bond can be broken if one of the people who share it dies. But why would Seren bind her soul to a dying man then?"
Valerien raised an eyebrow. "That upset you so much? I would have thought you had bigger problems to occupy your mind."
"What does it matter to you anyway?"
"I was just curious. I thought you meant your High Warlock lied to you."
Kirin froze in panic. Had the demon overheard them?
"What do you mean?"
"He doesn't seem to have taught you anything about the Fae. He knows Seren wasn't a goddess, yet he never told you. I was just curious if that was what you had realised."
"Are you saying she was … one of yours?"
"She was a Fae princess. Around five hundred years ago, when she was very young, she would often go in and out of this realm as if it were her personal playground," the demon said dismissively.
Kirin stared at him, but Valerien just fixed his eyes on the mountain on the horizon.
"So you knew about the story I told you?"
"Not exactly. I just knew she stayed here for around twenty years."
"But … but does that mean Idris really lives on in the Otherworld?" Kirin asked with excitement.
The green eyes turned on him. "He is dead."
Kirin swallowed nervously. There was something dangerously cold in that gaze. Still, he couldn't stop. His heart hammered as he asked the question he dreaded.
"Did she die, too?"
"Not back then. She lived for hundreds of years after he died."
"So binding her soul to his changed nothing?"
"You don't even know that is true, bard. It is just a song."
"But if it was true? Why would she do it in the first place?"
Valerien looked back at the mountain with an expressionless face.
"Some people believe that if you can share your soul with someone, you bind your life energy to the other person and can bring them back from the brink of death."
Kirin could barely breathe. The demon glanced at him with a strange smile.
"It is said that if the love is mutual, the souls eventually merge into one in the Source. But if it is not, you will end up with a broken soul. So be careful when you fall in love next time."