“I’ll be right there with you,” Maelsar pronounced. His Mirror power was useful in battle too. Taking on the tone of histarget’s internal voice, he echoed thoughts back at them, causing confusion and disorientation.
“What are your plans for Lyriasthe?” I ventured, trying to gauge his response. How far he would go for her. She was, after all, Elessarum, a traitor to the crown. He was the second son of a noble, with obligations of his own to fulfill. There was no way he’d ever be able to tell his family about her—especially not in the midst of war, when the very association with her could see him killed.
“What do you mean?” he asked me, going preternaturally still.
I lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Do you love her?”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. “I think so. Do you love Sylaira?”
The question hit me like a punch to the gut. Like we’d been sparring and he’d knocked the air from my lungs instead of lounging across from me.
Because I hadn’t even considered it, not really. The bond was all-consuming. Claiming had been all that mattered to it…
Even after spending hours with our bodies intertwined, I couldn’t get enough.
Sylaira looked at me like I wasn’t only a monster, a weapon forged for the crown’s arsenal. She saw straight through the mask and the armor to the broken male beneath. From the very beginning, her defiance raged where fear should have lived. Every time she stood against me, it was like she stepped into the eye of my storm and dared it to swallow her. She never bowed. Never broke. Never let herself become a mindless sheep among the Angel flock.
Her infuriating devotion to peace, her stubborn refusal to See, made something in me want to drop to my knees and worship at the altar of her will.
She’d decided her beliefs and her battles while I’d been carved by cruelty.
I didn’t love her because of our fated bond—it merely explained the original pull.
But the obsession? The feral desire to protect her at all costs?
No, that was because of who she was at her core—relentless, fierce, and so fucking rebellious.
“Yes,” came my hoarse reply. Because I did fucking love her. In fact, everything I’d done since our bond snapped into place had been for her. To ensure her safety. To make her mine.
And that was very, very dangerous to me. There were no lines I wouldn’t cross.
“Then why are you–”
“Because I can’t lose her, Maelsar. She has to live. I’ll do whatever it takes.” I’d known that from the moment our connection solidified. The first time I slid inside her had only amplified that.
She was right. I had an insidious obsession with her. I wasneverletting her go. This world would change, one way or the other, so I could live for millennia curled around her. Scenting the heady ghostflower off her skin. Tasting the divine nectar that dripped from her core. Listening to her moan as she unraveled from my touch.
Maelsar blew out a long breath. “Okay. What do you want to do with this information then?”
“Let’s keep it to ourselves for now. The more leverage we can gain, the better. Keep Lyriasthe on it until the very moment we leave,” I decided. We still had time to build our arsenal, to ensure it was ready to release when we needed to detonate it.
“Another step off the righteous path. I’m here for it,” he agreed, shoving up from the chair. He rolled out his neck and shoulders. “I need to see my father now. Some family bullshit.Plus, every day he thinks of something new he wants me to do when we arrive in Eloi.”
I snorted a laugh and tossed my half-eaten apple at him. He caught it with his magic and flung it back. “Fuck you, Maelsar.”
“Fuck you, Vaeron,” he chuckled, encasing himself in a shield of white as he backed toward the door.
I shook my head and forced myself to rise and tidy up my rooms, hiding papers from Sylaira. Their session would conclude any minute now, and I was always there the moment she stepped out of the Divine Atrium. I didn’t trust anyone else not to interfere or try to snatch her away the second she was freed from her obligations.
It was difficult, maintaining a wall around details in my mind at all hours. With each passing day, my mate’s barricade dropped further, and our connection deepened until I wasn’t sure where she began and I ended.
I only hoped that when the time came to leave, she would see it as a blessing instead of the hell I was leading her into. Because I was choosing her over my duty to the realm, and there would be no going back.
52
“Would you like to go for a walk this evening?” Vaeron murmured after a fourth grueling day of sitting in the crystal chairs and delivering fake visions.
“Please,” I breathed, nearly slumping into him with relief. The walls pressed in on me from all sides, threatening to swallow me whole, and if I was confined any longer, I was going to scream. It had been days since I’d visited the healer too, though other than a slight ache after not moving enough, my broken knee was nearly whole again. Dancing would still take time, but my limp had all but vanished.
