A Skathryn bond is not merely a link, but a reflection. One cannot be forged without recognition from both sides.
I arched an eyebrow at the skathryn who was now sleepily blinking up at me from my lap.
Recognition from both sides… Surely Batty was the exception to this rule. I thought back to the nights I’d spent terrified as she scratched at my window, and then when she’d flung herself at me and refused to leave…
She yawned with a small, innocent-sounding squeak, and I rolled my eyes.
I flipped the page.
Skathryns choose only one—not through obedience, but resonance. A recognition of a bond not yet claimed.
What bond? What resonance?
Had Batty sensed my trapped mana? Had the warring sides of it called to the inherent chaos in her?
I read the passage again, searching for an answer between the lines, for something I might have missed, but the words remained infuriatingly vague.
Was the book implying some deeper connection? A bond I hadn’t agreed to? One I didn’t understand? Or didn’twantto understand?
As if in answer, the skathryn burrowed her face against my hand, wrapping her little wings around my wrist.
Skathryns choose…
Batty wasn’t just attached to me. She’d chosen me.
But… why?
I kept reading until my eyes snagged on another passage.
A Skathryn is drawn to souls already intertwined. Where its loyalty settles, know that fate has spoken.
Next to it, in the margin, was the Archmage’s neat script.
‘Such creatures linger only where a greater bond—one of fate’s making—has already begun its weaving.’
I stared at the words until they blurred.
Souls intertwined.
Fate.
A greater bond already weaving.
The meaning settled over me like frost spreading over glass. I glanced from the book to Batty and then slowly over to Draven’s sleeping form.
Batty hadn’t simply attached herself to me. She hadn’t chosen me at random. She had been drawn,summonedeven. Not by my bound mana or my misery, but by a bond that predated her entirely.
The one between Draven and me.
My hands trembled slightly as I turned another page to find inked diagrams of skathryns perched on the shoulders of ancient bonded rulers, annotations about how they stabilized the manaof entwined pairs, and handwritten notes about their tendency to remain only when two destinies collided.
I swallowed, thinking back to that day at the Sanctum when the Archmage handed me the book.Light reading, my ass.
He’d known.That frostbitten bastard had known. This whole time? From the moment he saw Batty? Or was it before that? Had he recognized the bond between Draven and me while we were so sure we still hated each other?
Shards-damned cryptic-ass Archmage.
And he couldn’t have just told me the truth then? Saved me the frost-forsaken trouble and heartache, and all the terrified and sleepless nights and raging against what I thought was a blood-vow while worrying Draven would kill me when he learned what I really was?
