He swallowed. It seemed that Connor hadn't thought about this wrinkle.
"Yes, but his ring is also on your hand, and if you and Corwin really pressed the issue, no one will challenge your assertion that the two of you are married because your souls are intertwined."
"That's why some married couples choose to get Soul-bonded rather than to register in their family books. It's almost irreversible." He looked about ready to cry.
I shook my head. "I don't think Corwin meant for it to be like this. He simply wanted to protect me and to make sure that he could find me anywhere. Let's just wait until he comes back. I think you should hear his side of the story."
"His side?" Connor snorted. "What about my side? Do you have any clue about how twisted this whole mess is?"
He stared at me for a moment as I shook my head. I hadn't even realized there was a huge issue between the three of us until things suddenly blew up.
"I don't even know where to start." He growled in frustration, his eyes suddenly moist as he looked up, blinking rapidly.
Then he shook his head and began laughing.
I stared at him in amazement. Connor was now the one whose emotions ran the gamut, from anger to sadness to amusement. Was he also starting to get hormonal?
"Do you want to know what the funniest part about this is?" He chuckled but there was no mirth in his eyes.
"The funniest thing about this is that I spent a year—a whole damn year—telling him I really liked you and I wanted to get to know you better. I spent countless hours, arguing with him and trying to get him to warm up to you."
"A---a year? I didn't know..."
He shook his head. "I was trying to go really slow. You didn't seem as if you were ready for a relationship yet and I figured I could wait until you were a bit older. But we ran out of time..."
"After we met up again, I even pushed you and my brother together every chance I got so he could see what a great person you are." He banged his head with his fist. "Man, I am such an idiot!"
I reached out and grabbed his fists in an attempt to stop him from hitting himself.
"Stop Connor. Please stop. You're not an idiot. You're a truly amazing guy. You're such a caring person, never wanting to hurt anybody and never wanting to see anybody hurt."
"Really?" He asked. Hope returned to his eyes as he clutched onto my hands like a drowning man.
"Yes! Look, if it makes any difference at all, I like both of you equally. I don't know either of you well enough to say more than that, but you're right. I'm not in any hurry to have a boyfriend right now."
"But he's put his band on you." Connor insisted, his scowl returning. "I never even got the chance to tell you that I liked you before he jumped across the starting gate and blew me away," Connor mumbled.
"Well, here's your chance!" I smiled, echoing the same words I spoke to him that beautiful orange-blossom-scented day when we were free-flying in the sky.
He turned away. "It doesn't matter what I do now. I think I've lost you already, even before I got the chance to try for you. He's put his band on you. If I do anything now, it would be like I was stealing his woman."
"Connor, it's not like that. I'm not anybody's 'woman'—at least not yet."
He sat still for a moment, saying nothing, and turned back to me.
"You're right." His eyes crinkled with a smile and he reached out to touch my face. "You're absolutely right! This is nowhere near over. It's not over until you choose one of us."
He began to grin with the same happy-go-lucky expression I was used to seeing from him.
"In this affair of the heart, we both chose you, but that's only half the equation. YOU have to also make your choice, and until you finalize your decision, it's not over yet."
He grinned and scrambled towards the tent opening. "It's still GAME ON, baby!"
I watched him leave with no small amount of amazement.
Connor was one of those people who had an endless supply of optimism, and his cheerful attitude was not only refreshing, it was uplifting.
The brothers needed to talk to each other and sort this out between themselves, but I had a feeling they would work it out. In truth, I also needed to find the time and a quiet spot to talk to Corwin.
I had been so oblivious and spacey when Corwin snapped the band on me that I had agreed to the soul-band, knowing next to nothing about its powers or properties.
I needed to learn more about it.
As afternoon turned into evening, the desert turned into a field of shimmering gold interspersed with dark intruding shadows of reality.
Every scrub of grass lengthened and metamorphosized into an illusory phantasm. Every twisted, shrubby yucca tree transformed into an accoutred harlequin, dancing in the wind with the grace of a twirling marionette.
As the sunset slowly turned into twilight, the gold became pink and then slowly grayed into dusk. The dessert began to come alive with sounds of life as they came out to feed and play.
The night wind rustled through the grasses and trees, providing a constant acoustic background for the wild screech of a red-tailed hawk.
Not wanting to bother it while it was feeding, I left it alone and searched the area for any familiar little minds that might be nearby.
On the other side of my tent, I could hear the sound of a gecko scuttling up the rock formation. I reached out with my mind, touching the gecko's simple thoughts for a moment.
It was not one of my guys from Topaz. It gave a quick greeting and then darted away.
I settled into my sleeping bag with a sigh. It had been a very long day.
At first, the guys all squeezed into one tent while I occupied the other, but eventually, Tarzan's and Max's loud snoring drove the twins out of their tent.
With nowhere to go, they decided to invade my tent.
I was already ensconced within my bedroll but not yet asleep when I saw their heads bobbing up and down as they combat-crawled through my tent flap.
I laughed.
They were trying to be as unobtrusive as two large guys with deep red hair crawling into a tent could be.
"What are you two doing in a woman's tent?" I asked, still lying on my back and staring up into the tent's low-slung fabric ceiling.
"Umm. Could we stay here with you for now? Those guys," Connor grinned and jerked his thumb towards the other tent, "are so damn noisy, I can't even rest, let alone sleep."
"How much danger am I going to be in if I have two men in my tent?" I asked, giving them the evil eye and hoping they would behave themselves.
"We're traveling through a war zone. You should be clinging to us with open arms. We are your ultimate protectors," Corwin said, creeping ever closer to my right side. "With us near you, no one will dare touch you."
"Yet, most dangers faced by women come from the men themselves," I reasoned in affable tones. "Furthermore, when faced with overwhelming evidence that show crimes against women are committed mostly by those self-same men, it never fails that—'men are a danger to women'—said no man ever."
"But darling," Connor crooned. "We've been sleeping next to you for over a week now. If there was any danger, it's always been us protecting you."
Corwin reached out and tugged on a strand of my hair. "Right now, you are far more dangerous to us than we ever could possibly be to you."
His face moved into my right field of vision. Corwin's long red hair fell over one eye as he looked down at my face.
He was so close, I could see his pupils dilating in the dimness of the tent.
"I can attest to that." Connor grinned, jutting his head over to my left and looking down at me from the same height. "If a man isn't careful, he could lose internal organs to you. Like—a heart, or even his brains."
"Silly twins." I snorted. "And what would I need with your offals?"
I motioned for them to lie down. The sight of their faces looming above me was disconcerting, to say the least.
They settled down, one on each side of me, each not wanting to invade my space too much, but each not wanting to lose out to the other guy.
At first, they kept a reasonable distance between themselves and me. It did not take long, however, before they began their slow but steady inching progression towards me.
Before I knew it, they were right up against my body, burrowing their faces into the sides of my neck and making blissful sounds.
So this was what they meant by all bets being off and no holds barred.
This was not fair. This was emotional and physical blackmail!
In an attempt to protect myself, I tried to push them away, but they would not relent, nestling ever closer to me until it was all I could do not to scream out in frustration.
"Back off!" I growled. I was amused at their antics but I needed some breathing space. "It's too hot, and you're both crowding me."
They willingly obliged to my request, but stayed as near as they dared.
To distract them, and to get more information, I decided to pick their brains about what Abe had said earlier.
"What do you think of the story that Abe told us about the war between the mages and the humans? Do you think there's any truth to it?"
Corwin grunted and shifted his body until he was lying flat on his back and staring at the same tent ceiling I was looking at.
"Every bit of it."
"Then how come there's no mention of it in our history books?" I asked.
"Because we're the losers." Connor mumbled into the long locks of my hair that he had pulled over his face. "We can't write into the history books that we're losers, now can we?"
"But what about the Shadow Beings, and the Scourge Winds, and the half-bloods?" I asked, counting on my fingers.
"All true," Corwin mumbled through half-open lids.
"The bubble breech, the mage exodus, and the start of a new war?" I ticked off.
Connor pulled himself up and poked his head into my field of vision, all the merriment vanished from his face.
"What would you like to hear? If it makes you happy, I can tell you that none of it is real, and that we are on an adventurous road trip to find Tory and the primates."
"I don't want fantasies. Give me the truth."
A heavy silence hung in the air between us.
I found an interesting water stain pattern on the tent canopy and stared at it as I waited for the twins to resolve whatever internal conflict they were wrestling with.
It was their choice to tell me what they wanted. I was not about to be a nag or to be pushy, but I could tell they were keeping much from me.
Connor finally broke down, his eyes sad and tired. "The truth is, war has broken out."
Corwin sighed. He still had not moved from where he laid, but I could tell from the magikal energies that were starting to swirl around him that he was on high alert.
Connor rolled over and placed his head on the crook of his elbow, his face turned in my direction.
"Since it's come to this, we really have no choice but tell you what we can. It may end up saving your life."
He paused for a moment, searching for the words to begin.
"It started the day the Mage Elites took half the primates out of Topaz City."