“I’m glad you have someone to share this truth with.” I smiled. “But I meant . . . is there no one else? No friends? No girl-talk?”

“Oh.” She grimaced and started fidgeting with the laces on her boots. “I have had many friends, of course, but most of them have been killed by war or the bitter shortness of mortality. The ones I had, well, we were as close as I could be while keeping huge parts of me a lie. Doesn’t make things easy when you do that. Eventually it causes problems. However, in the last century, I’ve kept my friends to almost none, for safety . . . in preparation for this war.”

I frowned. “Who else knows the truth? That Everest is your father?”

Her face fell. “I have never told anyone. I’ve never even told anyone my real name.”

“Saber isn’t your real name?” I heard myself whisper.

She shook her head gently. “And this is not my real face.”

I exhaled in a rush, feeling like the wind had just been knocked from its sails. A fake name and a fake appearance. Secret identities and lies. My heart broke for her. I wondered how many identities she’d had in the last thousand years. It sounded horrible. “That’s lonely, no? No husbands then?”

She blushed and stared at Squishy’s fur.

I gasped. “Ohhh, this is boy-troubles.”

She grimaced and wrung her fingers together. “I can’t exactly talk to him about this⁠—”

“Your father? I’d say not.” I snort-laughed. “So, tell me. I know your secret, maybe not your real name, but I know who you are now. And I will not betray that trust. Now I may only be eighteen to your thousand, but my gut tells me you need to talk about what’s bothering you. If we’re going to be friends, then we ought to start right now. Judgement-free zone here.”

She took a deep breath. “I have a soulmate.”

My eyes widened. “Does Everest know?”

“Oh, yes.” She chuckled and tucked her hair behind her ears. “My father revealed my secret to him as well.”

“Your soulmate marks are hidden like mine?” When she nodded, I sighed. “It’s hard to keep them hidden. I want to show him off to the world as mine. I imagine you know that feeling.”

“I do,” she whispered. “More than you know.”

I patted the ground next to me for Bubba to come lie against me. “So, when did you meet him?”

She let out a sigh and her eyes had this new sparkle about them. Her smile curved a little more and the blush was light on her cheeks. “Eight hundred years ago. When I was hiding . . . his family . . . they hid me. Father met him just a few weeks after I met him. We were married shortly thereafter.”