The force of it nearly stole my breath.
As did the feel of her lithe body pressed against mine.
“That Goddess damned bastard,”Sylaira cursed down our mental connection.“If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be injured like this. Everything wouldn’t hurt.”
My nostrils flared and I forced myself to ignore her internal monologue. Clearly, she was in too much pain to temper her thoughts.
Yet with the dampness of her skin, the closeness of her scent, the chain tying our fates together calmed immediately. As if all it had wanted since it burst into our lives was this proximity, and now that we had obeyed its pull, it was ready to slumber.
I took one step forward, testing for any discomfort in my mate. She said nothing, even as a throb cascaded between us. So I took another, then another, until our pace evened out and we scaled the embankment with ease.
We remained silent throughout our trek back to the hollowed out tree. Sylaira closed her eyes, face screwed up.
“Don’t you dare cry, Sylaira,”she continued, still unaware she was projecting her thoughts to me.“He doesn’t deserve your tears. He’s the monster who killed your friends and family.”
With each passing moment, fury twisted tighter and tighter in me.
She didn’t want to acknowledge me? Who I was to her?What I was doing for her? Not even a fucking thank you for considering her injuries as I carried her?
A part of me hated her for that. Hated her for cracking me open. Hated myself for forsaking my duty all this time.
I’d harden myself to her displeasure, as I was so great at doing. Even if I might have deserved it.
I’d hunted her and stolen her freedom. Apparently killed her parents too. And now I carried her like some lovesick fool, aching for the warmth of a bond that would never amount to anything.
No one had ever chosen me. Not truly.
Even being bound, soul to soul, with this female couldn’t change that. She would always look at me like I was the villain in her story, if the words and images leaking from her mind into my own was any indication.
Fine.
Fucking fine.
When we returned to Sivy, I’d hand her over to Iaoth. She could join her Seer friend and be tied to a chair and plied with drugs to force her visions out.
And I’d tell my sister that I was done hunting.
I’d go to the front and Command there. Slake my rage in Demon blood.
And maybe, just maybe, the Halálhívó, the leader of our enemy’s army, would find me on the battlefield and finish what the Goddess had started.
16
Being pressed up against the Issaraeth was torture. Not because he was cruel. Not because his strength made desire flutter low in my belly. No, it was because his magic cradled my leg with such careful tenderness it made it hard to hate him.
Thinking beyond the agony in my body was difficult anyway. And the anguish in my soul?
That was an entirely different story.
Now that our connection was sealed, would I become just like him? Would I lose all sense of who I was? The visions I’d had of him, of our future, had always ended in me becoming everything I feared.
For the tenth time since we began our trek back to the tree, I checked my mental barrier. The barricade of ice fractured and melted. I didn’t want him in my head. Digging through my thoughts. Feeling everything I did not choose to share.
But the cracks leaked my pain. I couldn’t fill them, not now, not with how excruciating each step was.
Fuck him for putting those bronze cuffs on me. My power was nothing more than a flicker in my chest, especially since I’d used what little I had retained to call on my wings and launch myself into the air.
Which meant my internal healing abilities were struggling too.
