Sound Your Name (Oh, My Darling)

5. Power & Passion

The practiced smile was familiar, Zoya had learned to place one similar on her own lips too. It was a protection. However, there was a slight twinkle in the girl's eyes that spoke to her, opening the way for the two of them; for her words being the truth.

Zoya had seen the girl's truest and brightest smiles in her dreams. Felt the surge of protectiveness and love her soulmate had for her, it had always made her envious. 

~~~

The dreams began when she was five, they were brief moving pictures of a boy her age running through fields of wheat. A boy who could always find what he was looking for, no matter where it might be or whatever weather he may be in. He traveled in a caravan along with a father who dressed in patchwork clothes and a mother with pretty silk skirts. His wide grin, soft dark curls and smiling black eyes always made her hope she would dream of him again soon. It was him that helped her little heart from breaking every time her mother rejected her. 

Her father was always on the road, never at home for very long. Her mother’s body had weakened after giving birth to Zoya and she resented her for it, no longer able to travel alongside her husband as she once had. No matter what she did to try to please her mother it was never enough. Then her mother heard of the widower that lived at the edge of the village in the big house who was looking for a new young bride, and her eyes turned towards Zoya at last. 

Quickly Zoya discovered she did not like the attention her mother gave, and even though she wished her mother happy the idea of marrying someone...someone that wasn’t the boy from her dreams rang wrongly throughout her whole being. 

If it wasn’t for her aunt Liliyana perhaps the worst could have happened, but instead Zoya had jumped in the way of her being beaten when she shouted for the wedding to stop. She still had the long scar down her back from the widower Grankin’s cane, but it was also the day her power awakened.

When she arrived at the Little Palace she was one of the oldest to arrive before beginning training. She was the envy of all the orphans, with an aunt who wrote her letters regularly. The letters didn’t always make their way to her, but when they did Zoya could always feel the piercing looks drilling holes in her back. At least from those who weren’t already paired off, those who hadn’t already found their soulmates at the Little Palace.

The dreams continued to come, her boy was her soulmate. He was hers, she had known it in her heart that it was true. She was wary of the girl that spent time with him at first unsure if she truly had a soulmate as well or if she was just fooling him to spend time with him. One dream memory shook that idea from her mind when she saw as the girl caused both herself and Zoya’s soulmate to disappear into thin air before reappearing into their meadow a short time later, laughing at their treasure trove of apples. The girl was Grisha which meant she did have a soulmate, relief swept through Zoya when she woke from the dream memory that night. 

One day though on her way to lessons with Baghra she heard the end of a conversation she was no doubt not supposed to be privy to. 

“...only an amplifier then would be able to have the dreams.” 

Baghra’s voice spoke up, “The soulmate would have them as well.” 

Zoya’s stomach dropped and she scurried up the walkway so it would seem she was just coming down for her lesson by the time the General opened the door. Her face smoothing into its smooth mask she’d learned early on in her childhood around her own mother. 

She realized that day it wasn’t just good enough to be strong, she had to be powerful. One day she might have to protect her soulmate, late that night she tossed and turned as she realized that one day she might have to kill for her soulmate. She couldn’t trust anyone but herself.