The shadowy tendrils try to slink back to him, but I gather them with the softest tug of my magic and settle them in my lap as if they’re cuddly creatures. Darrius’s brows rise, but he doesn’t pull them away, especially when he notices my utter lack of pants... or undergarments. As they nuzzle into the bare skin of my thighs, I peer at him, but he gazes back innocently.
Behave,I think to him.
His answering look is sinful.
I clear my suddenly dry throat and focus on my task. “Both hands are different. The nondominant hand is what is written by the fates and the dominant is what you change with your own will. This top line is your heart line. You see how it’s very frayed at first but then strengthens? Your heart is very guarded. You were afraid, but you’re not now.”
I look to his right palm, where the heart line is smooth and deep, and smile. Darrius has always known his choice, even if his path wasn’t clear. I stroke the second line of his left. “This is your head line. You’re a man of discipline and order, though you can see from these smaller breaks that your mind goes in many directions at once. Your right is nearly solid—a testament to what you have achieved.” I trace the curve around the fleshiest part of his left palm with a fingernail. “Your life line. There’s a break here and here where others have influenced you. Perhaps sickness of some sort, maybe related to the curse.” I glance at the right. “You can see the line on this palm is unbroken, showing your tenacity.” Lastly, I stroke down the middle. “Your fate line is the same in both. Strong and unerring.”
“Amazing,” he whispers, midnight eyes holding mine.
“Darrius?” I ask, sliding my fingers through his. “What does performing the bonding ritual entail?”
“A true soul bond has four layers, much like the lines you just spoke about—head, heart, body, and fate—as well as seven points of connection, to each chakra in our bodies. While a physical connection can strengthen a soul-fated bond and an emotional one can deepen it, a mental oath—a meaningful vow—can seal it.”
I frown in thought. “So, like marriage vows?”
“A soul bond transcends mortal rites,” he says. “But yes, you will be my wife, and I will be your husband, as blessed by the fates.”
I remember his nickname for me. “What’s the male version of pátni?”
“Páti,” he says with a smile.
I taste the word soundlessly on my tongue and like how it feels. There’s a certain sense of rightness—pátni and páti. “How does the vow work? What do I say?”
Darrius stares at me, his handsome face solemn. “Are you certain, Suraya? Once we do this, we will be eternally linked. We will share magic and a life force, and all our thoughts and our feelings. You will have power over me... and I will have the same over you.”
Apprehension flickers, and I feel a peculiar wave of discomfort, as if some craven, selfish part of medoesn’twant anyone to wield my magic. “But we will be stronger together?” I ask.
“Infinitely.”
Darrius rises and pulls me up next to him. The difference in our heights is noticeable as he looms nearly a foot over me. He takes my small right hand and places it against the middle of his chest, aligned with his spine, and splays my fingers wide. Then he does the same to me, his right hand nestling between my breasts.
His voice is soft and grave. “The center of the palm rests over the anahata chakra—the heart bridge—which connects your throat, third eye, and crown chakras above, and the solar plexus, sacral, and root ones below.” His left fingertip brushes over each point: the base of my neck, between my brows, the top of my skull, and then his knuckles slide down from between my ribs to my belly and lower, making me gasp.
Reverently, Darrius moves back up, ever so slowly, naming the purpose of each one from root to crown. “Survival, sexuality, identity, love, expression, intuition, and knowledge.”
As he invokes each chakra, the energy sparks between themandbetween us. I can feel my magic flaring inside of me as if it knows what is about to happen. Despite my earlier trickle of apprehension, I sense no real doubt, only a pulse of certainty that this is our path.
Not our only path.
I blink at the unexpected words from my simurgh.What do you mean?
We are the passage between the earth and the sky, a conduit between the bright of the sun and the dark of the moon—both of yourhalves will be loved and anchored by kings.
Don’t you mean king?I ask, frowning.
But the voice fades as my magic brims, my runes flaring with silvery iridescence as Darrius’s shadows swirl along his arms. They meet in the middle where we are connected in a lover’s dance, bursting upward like fountains of coiling light and darkness.
“Suraya Saab,” he says in his deep voice that wraps around me like roughened silk. “I pledge to you my irrevocable oath to honor this soul-fated bond. As I offer you my hand, so I offer you my soul to keep from this moment forward.”
My throat clogs with emotion, but I manage to repeat the same. “Darrius Nightsong, I pledge to you my irrevocable oath to honor this soul-fated bond. As I offer you my hand, so I offer you my soul to keep from this moment forward.”
Every cell inside of me tightens as the vow settles into place like stardust. The magic between us seems to still for an infinitesimal moment before it blasts upward and outward, blanketing us both. I feel it the moment the bond seals, the tether between us glowing with otherworldly iridescence. Familiar magic that isn’t mine fills my veins, and I watch in wonder as inky runic shadows wind up my arms and merge with the silvery ones already there.
“Fate marks,” Darrius says, staring at his own arms, where a silvery pattern, reminiscent of the runes on my arms, has formed, intertwining with his shadow marks and sinking into his brown skin.
“Is this not normal?” I ask, when his brows draw together slightly as if he hadn’t expected this.
