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She wears blood and ashes around her neck; her own blood, her lover’s ashes. It wasn’t a gift, but something she took, the way she is so taken by her lover; for a long, long time, they were merely friends, but being friends and friends alone had felt like a conscious decision. At least, on her side.
She remembers their first kiss vividly: fate had torn them apart, and it had weathered Laudna, visibly. Imogen’s own time in Issylra wasn’t horrible but she’d seen Laudna’s rough edges and smouldering anger, and just wanted to make it better, wanted to sooth her, to heal her, to…kiss her wound, but not like a mother.
“I’m not sure if this is okay, anymore.”
She’d meant she wasn’t sure anymore, but from how well it went, their melding of mouths, one could easily have though they’d kissed before. She hadn’t needed Lieve’tel to tell her that, by the Duskmaven, she’d made the right decision.
There is an old custom she once heard of, from a different part of Marquet, that invisible red threads pull soulmates together from birth until the day they are wed, wearing away, slowly, until one or the other dies. Her lover is dead, but that has never stopped her from being alive.
And now that the red thread between them is taut, an equal lifespan, a shared destiny…well. Is that not what marriage wishes it could be?