“She doesn’t belong to him,” I said softly.
“Please,” the woman begged. “I don’t know anything else. She went with him. He said it was time. She didn’t even argue.”
I froze.
“She didn’t argue?”
She shook her head. “Packed her things and left. Quiet as a ghost.”
No. That didn’t sound right. The girl I saw in the square—the girl who looked at me like fire catching dry wood—she didn’t seem the type to go quietly.
Unless he cast a spell on her.
Unless he bound her.
Unless she was already in danger.
I turned on my heel.
Kassio waited at the bottom of the stairs, arms folded, his expression unreadable.
“You heard?” Of course he had. The shadows carried information, and this time of night, shadows were everywhere.
He nodded. “I’ll talk to my spies. There are many from The Spire in the city right now—it won’t take long to discover where they are headed.”
“I’m not waiting.”
“You shouldn’t go alone.”
“She’smine,Kassio.”
He nodded once, without argument. “Find her. Before the bond drives you mad.”
Too late.
By the time I stepped out into the street again, the evening’s first moon had dipped low behind the rooftops and the wind had changed.
I closed my eyes and let the bond guide me.
It pulled like a thread caught in my chest, twisting, winding, frayed. She wasn’t far. But the magic I had once felt so clearly was now muddy. Blurred.
He was hiding her with a binding spell.
Damn him. He was masking her from me. Layering veil upon veil, trying to cut the bond’s voice from my soul.
It wouldn’t work.
I could still feel the tug. Like a heartbeat out of rhythm, like a name I couldn’t forget. She was ahead of me. Somewhere in the woods beyond the city, or already on the road to The Spire, or—naked. Seduced. Claimed by another.
No.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
I would find her.
I would take her from my brethren.
And if I had to burn the world to ash to claim what was mine… so be it.
