It was barely more than a whisper, but it seemed to undo him.His composure fractured, voice shaking on the edge between rage and relief.“I’ve got you, love.I swear it.”
“Cush?”Elora’s voice broke through.“Please don’t be too mad.”
Cush glanced toward Syndra, expression grim.“I’m not mad, Little Raven.I love you.Be still, and give us a minute to work this all out.”Then he looked at everyone else.“We should all take a step back.”
But no one moved.Syndra didn’t think she could even if she wanted to.Trik’s power was like a heavy weight pushing on her shoulders, holding her in place.
The Chamber pulsed again, darker this time, resentful, defensive.It recognized a threat when it saw one.
Trik’s power surged in response, a living storm.“You tookmy Chosen,” he said, quiet and deadly.“You endangered her, and the child she carries.So tell me—” his eyes flared, light twisting into shadow, “—should I just destroy the entire Chamber, or pull each shadow elf out one by one to face my wrath?”
The last word cracked the air like lightning.
Silence followed, heavy as the world before collapse.
CHAPTER15
“Maybe stop trying to out-sacrifice each other?Because so far, all I see is two ancients competing over who feels guiltier.”~ Oakley
Cassie felt him.Not as magic.Not as sound.As certainty.It struck like lightning through water, silent for a heartbeat, then everywhere at once.
One moment, she was suspended in the Chamber’s grip, weightless, feet pinned to the ground, cold shadows crawling through her veins, and the next, the bond tore back into existence so violently it punched the air from her lungs.
Trik.
Her knees gave out.Earth rose to meet her, cool and damp.A rush of sensation returned with punishing force, heat, fury, terror, and something so immense and tender it almost obliterated her: love.The bond didn’t reopen so much asexplode,flinging her heart wide.Every heartbeat, every breath was suddenlyshared.Fear.Relief.Rage honed to a killing edge.
Then, her name, growled in her mind and vibrating through bone and blood.
“Cassie.”
It was a promise and a plea at once.
She gasped, fingers digging into the moss.Her other hand flew to her stomach as the baby stirred, a faint, answering flutter.Reflex, recognition, maybe both.The child knew him, too.
“Trik—stop?—”
The thought barely formed before it collided with his.
“I’m here.”The fury faltered.“I’ve got you,”he swore through the bond, words edged with threat and devotion, the sound of a man still falling from the cliff of his own wrath.“I will tear this realm apart before I?—”
“No.”
The single syllable snapped across the link, sharp as breaking glass.
Cassie forced herself upright, trembling but unbroken.Her breath rasped, shallow at first, then steadier.She opened the bond wider, not fighting him this time.She let himsee—the ache in her body, the bruises, the exhaustion, the fear held at bay by stubbornness.
She didn’t hide the vulnerability; she wielded it.“I’m alive,”she sent, measured, firm.“I’m okay.”
For a suspended moment, nothing moved.Then, through the tether, she felt him stutter, like a storm realizing it had found the shore again.
“When the bond went dark ...”
His mental voice cracked, raw and vulnerable in a way even he couldn’t hide.
Cassie swallowed the ache in her throat.“It was blocked,”she whispered along the current between them.“Not broken.Never broken.And it’s my fault for leaving.”
Everything shifted at once.She felt him, Trik the assassin, Trik the king,her Trik—reassemble himself piece by deliberate piece.The killing edge she’d sensed earlier tucked itself away, leaving something disciplined, coiled, dangerous in its restraint.“No blame, beloved.Let’s get through this.Then I need to hold you.”
