‘What is aZauvek?’ I asked, acting ignorant at what the Elders were seeking.
Sienna’s mother answered me, ‘I am surprised you do not know, as it is a word the Skin Seepers use; perhaps it is too old and has been lost to time. Zauvek is your forever. It is what your people once called your soul bonded one.’
‘You already know of him—I am assuming you also know who he is. So, there is no secret to share,’ I explained realising quickly they knew far more than I was comfortable with and there would be no faking ignorance.
‘We want to know the truth of what you feel. A thought you have not even been able to vocalise in your own mind until now.’ Sage further clarified, ‘We will not take this feeling from you; what we take from you in your answer is your inability to hide from the truth. We take your shame.’ She licked her lips, as if the idea of making me uncomfortable was a delicious treat she had been starving for.
I stood there for a while, thinking about seeing Demir at the Academy. I still hated him. I still looked at him and saw everything he and his family had done to me and mine. Anger pooled in my stomach. I didn’t quite feel the primal pull that Cain had said he would likely feel for me. Instead, I felt something muchscarier—something that was not a physical response to a soul bond. What I felt was a conscious desire—something I had lied to myself about my entire life—but it was something I needed.
‘When I found out that Demir of Morgad was my Zauvek, I felt hope. I had spent my life thinking I was incapable of love and incapable of being loved. I was too dark, twisted and tainted. I was a collection of broken pieces that could never be whole again. I lied to myself over the years and convinced myself that love was nothing I needed or would ever want. I saw it as weakness, but it is all I have ever craved. The absence of love in my life is why I am the way I am and now that I have my Zauvek—no matter who it is—perhaps there is hope that I will feel what it is like to truly love and be loved. Even if it is an illusion and against our own volition, maybe it can be something real. But more than anything, to trust wholly without reservation. To find true comfort and safety because I am so tired of holding myself together with scrap pieces. I want someone else to see all of me, not fear me but to relish it. To see value in me, not my title. I want someone to piece me together in a way I have never been able to and perhaps a soul bond is the only person that ever could.’ I breathed deeply.
‘Suddenly there was a real possibility that this old magic would be the force that could wade through all the darkness and shattered pieces of my soul and make me feel something other than despair. Perhaps this old magic could fix what is wrong with me. Make me someone who could be loved despite who I was. My secret is that all I have ever wanted is to be loved, and for the first time, perhaps this world that has punished me my whole life is finally making something possible for me. Even if it’s not the person I would choose, at least it would be somebody,’ I said as I fought the tears from welling up in my eyes. I would not cry as I stood there, stripped bare. Confronting a reality, a truth I had never admitted to even myself—but it felt so right saying those words. Accepting them for the truth that they were. Iwanted to crawl into the depths of this mountain and never leave after revealing it, but it was done.
Valerie’s ominous features twisted into a knowing smile. ‘What of the young man who has warmed your bed over the years?’
Visarous.Was that confession really not enough? She wanted more.
‘Visarous is a physical attraction. Demir… something in my chest calls to him. I have ignored it, pretended it’s not there, and while I may not feel it as viscerally as he does, it’s there—a yearning want, but also a need. I have never truly felt any of those things for Visarous. He was a warm body at best but he never comforted my soul, my mind or my heart.’
I felt Sienna shift uncomfortably beside me at the confessions. She had not known that secret desire of mine and how desperate I was that I found hope in even the idea of Demir.
‘Now we require something from your future—something certain. It is something the world will collect for us at the most inopportune time. Neither of us has a say in when that debt will be paid. The magic will wait until the worst possible moment to take it from you because the it seeks to shatter you and take you along with it,’ Valerie said in a hungry yet eager tone. My stomach churned at her words, while my mind reeled.
‘Be careful what you offer, Sky—you will never get it back. It may not mean much now, but one day it could mean everything,’ Sienna warned again.
‘There are only two certainties in my future: King Sebastian’s death and my Zauvek. But I will not sacrifice my one and only goal in life. Although it’s what I crave most in this world. I want you to take him. I may want and even need love like some starved child, but I cannot afford to live in it and truly experience it. My people must come first until my last breath. Demir—who he is, who his family is—makes that an impossibility if he were to ever get too close. So, take him from me, should I everlove him. Take it all. I cannot have it. I will not and if I am truly being honest with myself, I do not even deserve it.’
‘Skylar, don’t! You can’t!’ Sienna yelled, gripping me by the shoulders and shaking me to see reason. ‘You can’t do this—you don’t know what it means!’
‘I do. I want to be free of this hope, and the only way to free myself is to shatter any possibility of what could be. I will not betray my people; I will not choose him over them,’ I explained calmly, pulling myself from her grip.
‘Take him,’ I breathed one final time, until I felt a vice tighten around my heart before slowly releasing itself.
‘It is done,’ Sage said with a smile, knowing she had won more than she had anticipated from this trade. ‘Now tell us, what do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
Twenty-Three
‘Do not leave a single detail out. For what I paid, I deserve it all,’ I said firmly.
Sage nodded in acknowledgement. ‘It will be easier to show you; come and walk through my memories with me.’ Sage extended her hand towards me, an invitation to clasp it.
The moment I did, I was hurled into a forest. I stood there, still clasping Sage’s hand, as I took in the scene before me. A younger Sage stood in the middle of a clearing with what I could only assume were Jasper and River’s ancestor; their blood truly did run pure. It looked as though it was their father, not some distant relative from hundreds of years in the past. A guttural roar sounded from the distance, accompanied by a second screech that came from the opposite direction. The air became tenser. The young Sage of the past looked scared, and so did Jasper’s ancestor, a young Forest Fae. In all my time knowing Sage, I had never seen fear in her eyes. How could someone who had lived so long be afraid of anything?
The sound of wind blowing in a thunderous, steady rhythm grew louder as it drew closer, until a dragon dove down through the clouds above the clearing and landed. It’s grey body wasenormous with blue eyes that mimicked mine. Another screech echoed through the clearing as a smaller, longer silver object flew in and settled in front of us.
The larger grey dragon bent its head down towards the ground as a petite young woman with black hair and blue eyes like mine hopped down. Those eyes were unmistakable. She had the same eternal flame as I. She was my blood and a dragon rider. This was the first time I finally understood just how old Sage was; the last dragons had died nearly five hundred years ago, but she had once lived amongst them. She was older than I had thought.
‘Where are the others?’ Sage asked the dragon rider.
‘They’re all dead. This is what’s left of them. The Fae from the other realms fell to the power of dark magic and turned on the very creatures that breathed life into them. The dragons have fallen. King Fredrick of Morgad led the charge, slaughtering them while they slept and destroying every egg. I barely got Ember out,’ she said, nodding to the smaller dragon.
‘What do we do now?’ the Forest Fae asked.
A deep, gravelly voice that shook the surrounding trees and made Sage wince echoed in the space around them; it was the larger grey dragon. ‘We cannot send the dark magic back to the spirit realm so soon after it was unleashed; it is too great a risk. The dark creatures in the nether are lying in wait to cross to this side, and if we were to open that rift for even a second, we could be unleashing far darker things upon this world. Instead, we must bind the dark magic that Fredrick brought with him. We can only send it back once the dark creatures have been weakened by their distance from the black magic.’
‘Where would we bind it? How would we bind it?’ the dragon rider asked.
