“Tell me everything,” she insisted, gaze raking me from head to toe with one brow lifted in judgement. “Is that a bruise on your neck?”
“Hey!” I protested, smacking her arm as she reached for it.
She laughed, the sound too high and cutting off too abruptly as she followed me into the bathing chamber that connected our rooms. “Oh, come on, Sylaira. You can’t leave in the middle of the night and show up the next afternoon looking like you just had the best sex of your life without giving me all the juicy details.”
I shook my head, turning the taps for the tub. “So insistent.” But I couldn’t help the lightness in my chest at the sight of her glittering eyes and alertness. After weeks of watching exhaustion hollow her out, that glimmer of the real Heraphia was a strand of sunlight dancing across a lake.
Even if beneath the shallow surface, something manic and desperate rattled.
I stripped off my shirt and threw it in her face. She caught it and sniffed. “Oh, you definitely let him claim you.”
“Gross,” I teased, sinking into the tub to wash away further evidence. “And shouldn’t you be admonishing me? After all, he killed your brother and our parents. He also broke your finger.”
Heraphia sighed, sinking to the floor and leaning against the marble wall. “He didn’t report us when he found us running. And he carried you like you were the most holy artifact in all the worlds when he guided us back. That shifted my opinion of him quite significantly.”
As it had for me.
“Besides, he’s your mate. This is the Goddess’s plan. I trust Her.”
There was that word again.
I motioned for the soap and she handed it to me. “You’re starting to sound like them.”
Her teeth sank into her lower lip. “I have to believe. For Zuriel.”
Belief had razed our realm long before Heraphia and I wereborn. For centuries, priestesses had indoctrinated Angels into the Goddess’s new faith. We’d been raised on the outside, knowing that the sycophantic notions most of the Angels clung to were falsities.
Heraphia had only been here a few weeks longer than me, and already, the monarch’s hymns sung in her veins, poisoning her from the inside out. The friend I’d once eaten sweets with until we both vomited in the garden, trying to hide the evidence from our parents, slipped away like smoke.
The other Seers sharing this hall had fared no better—if they’d ever believed otherwise at all. The nobles, too, I was certain held no thoughts outside of their zealous conviction that the Goddess wanted the Angels to exterminate the Demons. That their magic was unholy and borne of pure evil. That their worship of the Fates was the gravest sin.
But could Vaeron be influenced to change his mind? Was that why the Goddess had chained us together?
Could I bring Heraphia back from the brink?
Heraphia flinched back like she’d Seen something, drawing me out of my inner spiral.
“I need a distraction,” she said in a rush, blinking hard and fast. As her eyes danced over me, a haunted look spilled like ink among aquamarine. As if she didn’t need the break from boredom, but rather from magic and war. “Tell me now or I swear on the Goddess I will dump cold water over your head.”
While that wasn’t as much of a threat in the cloud forest during the summer, I still acquiesced. “Okay, okay. Yes, I let him claim me.” The soap plopped into the frothing water. “And it was incredible. The orgasms he gave me…”
My best friend squealed and clapped her hands. “He looks like he knows what he’s doing.”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t smother my smile. “Oh, hedoes. Especially with his magic. And he’s very intense about it too.”
“Don’t tell me he used his Command on you,” she gasped.
The way my core heated at the thought was downright shameful. I pressed my thighs together to smother the wetness and rubbed the bar of soap over the bottom of my foot. “Just his light.”
“Okay, but what about the claiming part? I’ve only heard whispers of the act. Your firsthand account will do wonders for my knowledge.”
I looked at her again, noting the mischievousness in the twist of her lips. “Well, the moment he entered me was…insane.” That was truly the only word I had for it. “It was like shattering and being remade all at once. Like my soul expanded and connected with his. Our bond has been there since the moment our gazes locked, but this, this was different.” I frowned, sighing. “It’s confusing, really, and one of those things I think you have to experience for yourself.”
Heraphia lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Won’t ever happen for me.”
If I could have returned to my dream and begged the Goddess to bless Heraphia and Zuriel with a mating bond, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d have made a bargain if I had to, because I desperately wished my friend could feel that deep connection with her husband. She’d be able to speak mind to mind with him, wherever he was off fighting, and know that he was okay.
Not wanting to watch that gray fog swallow her again, I continued on. Perhaps sharing my problems would distract her from hers. “When I allow our connection to bloom, I feel sheltered and wanted. Yet these voices in the back of my mind ruin it.” Because I sought shelter with a male who was supposed to be my enemy. Who had killed my parents. Who had hunted me.
