That’s it?
Perhaps there’s something beyond the garden. They probably don’t have time to explore before the heartbinding takes them back to the real world.
“It’s beautiful,” Rominy says behind her, and she nods.
“Perhaps we can explore it soon.”
“There you go, being all curious again.”
When she glances back at him, he’s grinning, and her own smile grows to match.
Something about this place makes her feel...closer to him somehow. Unless that’s the heartbinding itself. Pera said it would draw them together.
She’s about to comment on the sensation when the garden and cottage transform into the small meeting room at the castle, and she gazes up at the ceiling as the chill from the stone floor beneath the rug seeps through her thin gown. It’s disorienting at first, and when she turns her head, she sees Rominy lying beside her in his fancy coat and vest. The blond streaks are gone from his hair, which is shorter in the real world than it was in the heartlanding.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“I think so. I feel a little dizzy. I’m not sure I should try sitting up yet.”
“From what Mother has told me, it should pass quickly.”
He nods. “So...your parents are heartbound, too?”
“Yes. It happened long before I was born. Before Tharios was born. My father was gravely wounded in a skirmish with...with...”
“With humans?”
Elowyn sighs. “Yes. My mother performed the heartbinding with him to keep his heart beating until a more skilled healer could save him.”
“Were they already married?”
“No.” Elowyn smiles. “Though my father was secretly in love with her. She was an orphan adopted into the royal family as an elfling. They grew up together, and my father made her his First among warriors—a general, I believe you call them? Mother likes to joke that he let himself become critically wounded just so she would bind with him.”
“They seem close now.”
“They are. We can probably get up.” Elowyn pushes herself into a sitting position and waits for the room to stop spinning.
“I wonder how Arisanna and your brother are doing.” Rominy crosses his legs beside Elowyn and leans forward against his fisted hands as if still dizzy.
Perhaps they should have waited a little longer to sit up.
“I don’t know,” Elowyn says. “Cerian is a good person. He enjoys his privacy, though. The thought of the heartbinding terrifies him, I think. But he will be good to your sister.”
Rominy sighs. “For her sake, I hope so.”
Cerian’sstomachroilsatthe words he and Arisanna repeat after his mother. He knows what’s coming.
And he dreads it.
The heartlanding.
Pain sears through him as the magic continues building, and Arisanna whimpers.
No one told him it would be this...intense.
From the corner of his eye, he sees Queen Yalisa move toward her daughter, but King Gerault holds her back.
It’s almost finished. Just a few more words.
