For the first time since I have had the displeasure of knowing him, the King looks shocked and confused. He strides over to the bookcase and starts pulling books from the shelves, scanning pages with frantic eyes before discarding them to the floor.
Another book. Another. His movements grow more erratic, more desperate. He yanks entire rows down, leather bindings cracking as they hit the stone floor. Pages tear. Spines split.
“It’s not possible,” he mutters, ripping through another tome. “The Bond shouldn’t—it can’t—”
Books pile around his feet, a growing mountain of discarded knowledge. His hands shake as he searches, his breathing ragged.
“Kiernan,” I whisper. My arm still throbs where the King grabbed me, phantom pain pulsing with each heartbeat.
“Can you stand?” His voice is gentle, but I can feel the tremor running through him, the aftershocks still rippling below his skin.
I try to rise. My legs buckle.
Kiernan catches me, his arm around my waist. “I’ve got you.”
We stand there for a moment, leaning on each other, both of us shaking. The black veins on our arms pulse in unison.
“What does this mean?” I ask quietly, looking at the matching marks. “Why did it affect you too?”
His jaw clenches. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Behind us, the King has descended into muttering, pulling books down with wild abandon, pages fluttering around him like broken wings.
“We need to leave,” Kiernan says, his voice hard. “Now.”
I nod. We move towards the door, supporting each other.
The King doesn’t acknowledge our departure, so consumed within his spiralling madness, surrounded by the wreckage of his own library.
Kiernan has brought us back to his suite and I am sitting on the sofa in his lounge. He is pacing, his jaw tense and fists clenched, in front of the window.
“Kiernan, are we going to talk about what happened back there?” I ask, rubbing my arm where the black threads have almost completely faded.
He stops pacing and walks silently into his bedroom. When he comes back in, he is holding a small blue leather-bound book. He sits down on the sofa next to me.
“This is what my father was looking for.” He is quiet and guarded. “I found it almost hidden away on the top shelf inthe Main Library a while ago. It didn’t seem important at the time, just more cryptic references to the Marriage Bond, some of it in Ancient Fae that I can’t read. I took it to my father, who is the only one I know that does understand Ancient Fae. He dismissed it as useless, but I suspected there was something more. So I took it back.”
“Do you know what it says?” His tone is making me nervous.
“Some of it. Funny thing—Ned, the bartender at the tavern reads some Ancient Fae. He translated what he could for me.”
Kiernan’s gaze is serious, and he shifts on the sofa, as if uncomfortable with what he has to say.
“The Marriage Bond is a lot more than we were initially led to believe, which is why I suspect it’s not performed often. We knew about the shared emotions, the effect on my Gift and shared power. But there’s more.”
“Like what? You’re making me worried, Kiernan.” I can feel my heart beating fast, and my palms are sweaty.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his arm coming round to lean on the back of the sofa behind me as he sinks back. His fingers brush over my shoulder absentmindedly.
“The ‘One Life’ part of the ritual quite literally bound our lives together. What is done to one is done to the other.”
Silence stretches between us.
My breath catches.
Our lives are bound?
Not just our emotions, not just our power—our actual lives. If he’s hurt, I’m hurt. If he dies …
