I sniffed, wiping my nose on my sleeve. He’d already had enough of my tears.
“Hmm,” she murmured, turning back to the dancing light. “Why don’t you fill me in from the point we parted?”
I propped up on my elbow so I could look her in the eye. “I will, but first, tell me, are you okay, Heraphia? Zuriel is gone. I wasn’t here. You are like this.” I gestured to how she was lying on the bed. Even with her hands resting on her stomach, her shoulders quaked like they couldn’t hold the position. “And you look like you haven’t slept much since we parted."
“I haven’t.” She let the confession linger in the stillness. “I miss him, Sylaira.” One salty drop leaked out, and then another. I reached to wipe them from her cheeks, but she tensed.
My hand hovered in the chasm between us.
She released a shuddering breath and a subtle nod. I dried her face while her lips rolled. “I’ve never suppressed my Sight like you have, but this…this isexhausting. It’s all the time. When I’m awake, when I’m asleep. When I’m walking. Those crystal chairs are a death sentence, not an altar upon which to receive divine messages.” She winced at the mention of them.
Unease curdled in my gut. I’d been preoccupied with settling in yesterday and my session with the healer, so I hadn’t ventured through the other door, where everyone else seemed to disappear for hours on end.
“So please, please tell me a story. Something of the past. Because the future is too uncertain. And I don’t want to See any more of it right now,” she begged, finally meeting my gaze, her aquamarine eyes shining.
“Okay, I’ve got you,” I choked out, my own vision blurring. Careful not to jostle my knee, I scooted closer and wrapped myarms around her. For a moment, she resisted, and then she clutched me back, like her grip alone could prevent me from leaving her too.
Once she’d calmed again, I began my tale of everything that had happened since the Issaraeth and his soldiers had stormed Ithuriel’s estate. How I’d fled toward Vaelsur and been mere feet away from haven when he’d snatched me from the sky.
Then, of my escape attempt that ended in our mating bond snapping into place. Of his elation shattering when I rejected him immediately. Of the times he Commanded me.
My decision to attempt to manipulate him.
My decision to allow him to touch me after he showed me the broken pieces of him.
My decision to believe him when he said he wanted me.
All the choices I made that led me here—lying beside Heraphia, ribs cracked open, heart bleeding out, and not even the Goddess could stitch me whole again.
“What guts me most is that I was starting to feel sympathy for him. He has these words carved into his chest, and I think his father was the one to put him there. Duty above all. He said once that his power is a derivation of his father’s, and that his fundamental will was altered somehow,” I finished, Heraphia’s tunic now damp from all of my crying. I withheld the brief mention of him consuming blood from a Demon. He never explained what it meant or what had happened because of it, and I got the sense that it was a wound as deep as the one in his flesh.
Heraphia’s eyes were no drier than mine. “He has a duty to you now, as his mate.”
“As he keeps saying,” I grumbled. But he’d shown me the exact opposite since our arrival at Thalvireth Palace. Goddess, even before then. His words were lies wrapped in velvet, and I didn’t know which scraped true anymore.
“Mating bonds should surpass all other duties,” she said slowly, like she was turning over an idea in her mind.
The scoff slipped out before I could stop it. “They should. When he found me with the healer, he was a male possessed. Obsessed.” I didn’t tell her that his protectiveness curled something molten and unwanted low in my belly. Or that it filled me with primal fear too.
“He couldn’t take his eyes off of me, and he even promised to cut off the healer’s hands if he didn’t remove them from my body.” Worst of all, the thrill that threat offered…excited me.
Almost a month mated to the male, and I was already losing myself to the intoxicating promise of his violence.
Heraphia’s brows rose, and she pressed her lips together like she was smothering a laugh.
“What?” I prodded, intuition pricking at my senses.
She shook her head, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Males. Don’t you remember how Zuriel was when we first started courting?”
While they weren’t mates, Zuriel had been tormented when another Elessarum male so much as looked in Heraphia’s direction. The strife between House Ilytharï and Heraphia’s family hadn’t helped matters, not when Ithuriel was moments away from snatching his heir from our peaceful group and forcing him to serve his house whether he liked it or not.
“I do,” I replied, a decade flashing through my mind in an instant. It was so long ago now, and yet it felt like no time had passed at all. Too much of it spent on the run, the same day repeating on an endless loop. “He would have done anything for you.”
“Still would,” she murmured, attention going vacant, like she was picturing him now, marching off to war. We lingered in that solemn silence together while I gathered the courage to voice what nipped at my every nerve.
“So why hasn’t the Issaraeth broken off his betrothal?” I didn’t want to sound as bitter about it as I did. But this fucking chain binding me to him wound tighter each day, constricting my ribs until it was impossible to draw a breath.
“Have you asked him?” Heraphia shuffled away from me, turning onto her side and propping her head on her closed fist.
