Now bare.
My voice catches in my throat as I stare down at it. “Did you break our mate bond too?”
Chapter 35
Aster
“Worse,” I rasp the word, my voice awful and grating with disuse. “You have to understand, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I was just so terrified, I’d just escaped and I felt like I wasn’t going to make it. I’d already put the gag on myself and I was too drained to lift it, so I’d lost my only defence and—”
Reva’s staring at me like she doesn’t know me as my world crumbles.
“It was a defence mechanism,” I hurry to explain. “Not how magic’s supposed to work at all. It should always be intentional, but I suppose if you’re at death’s door then it can act out for you. And that’s what happened. I didn’t say any words or cast a spell or make a potion but still the magic tied you to me. You were like sunshine in this never-ending darkness, and my magic reached out to you.”
“With the mate bond.”
“Withabond,” I gently correct her, squeezing my eyes shut. “I didn’t know it was a mate bond until Kit showed us what one looked like in that book. I’d never even heard of them. But I suppose that my magic decided that if we were connected, you wouldn’t kill me.”
“You would have thought,” she says in a low, distant tone. “It would have already done that for you with the sorceress. Since it sounds like she was far more of a risk to you than either me or Kit.”
“I wasn’t in a good state when you found me,” I say. “I was so desperate to get away from her, and I suppose my magic just...reacted.”
“In desperation.”
Fuck. I’m not making any of this better. In fact, the more I talk, the worse it seems to get. I can both see and feel her slipping further away from me.
“You said that you gagged yourself.” She glances at me and then immediately away again, her fingers flexing at her sides.
“I should have explained all of this weeks ago. I know that. But after a while our bond felt so real and I started second-guessing myself. What if it were real, and I told you it wasn’t? I was so scared I’d—”
Lose her.
Have her look at me like I’m a stranger and a liar all rolled into one.
Just like she is now.
“I really messed up.”
She clears her throat. “Why did you gag yourself?”
“Becausesherealised she could use me in other ways beyond just draining me of my magic. If she touched me, she could force me to do whatever she wanted.” I swallow through the lump in my throat, wishing that I could sink to the floor as my legs don’t feel strong enough to hold me up. I’m not going to give in to the urge though; I’m already pathetic enough.
“I was always more powerful than she was, and I think she recognised that straight away. She used me to... do things, controlling people and I couldn’t go along with it. Didn’t want to watch anyone else hurting. Even if it got me out of the basement for longer and meant I got a proper meal, it wasn’t worth it.”
Reva clears her throat, eyeing the door. “And now that we’re about to see her again and you’ve ungagged yourself, how do you think that’s going to go?”
“I—” I have no idea. “Maybe I can try to reset the gag. It was too powerful last time. I should have included a failsafe, so I didn’t get stuck like that.”
Reva gestures to the spectacles still clutched in my hand. “I guess we can’t use those either, since it feels like whatever bond I had with Kit and Torin is gone too.”
My chest pangs with regret. There’s a question in her eye and it’s one I can’t answer.
“That made no sense to me, either,” I tell her. “Maybe my magic wanted to make sure you were protected too.”
“If you’d touched Kit first, or Frannie, would you have formed the bond with them?”
That’s a big cause of the hurt in her eye, I think. The accidental, desperate, and entirely mindless nature of my magic seeking anyone that might help me.
“I don’t know.”
