“I don’t know, but part of him is dying.” The words came out wet and muffled, and I realized I was crying. “We have to go to him.”
“You know we can’t.”
“We have to,” I ground out, whipping my head around to glare at him.
“Wecan’t,” Adriel insisted. “Even with that dagger, you are no match for Semphrys.”
“Then we won’t face him,” I cried.
Adriel made a confused noise in his throat, but Sorsha was on her feet, staring at me with a stricken expression.
I knew what I had to do.
Closing my eyes, I retreated into my mind, searching the thorny brambles that formed my mental barrier for that shimmering golden thread. I reached out with my senses, feeling for Kaden, but I couldn’t find the bond that linked us.
With each passing second, I grew more frantic. Searching. Sensing.
If the bond was gone, that meant —
No.
My heart beat faster, my breaths growing ragged. He couldn’t be dead. I would have felt it. Or maybe I had. Maybe that had been the source of the agony I felt.
But then, tangled in the vines that formed my mental hedge, I found a dull golden thread. It was a ghostly fragment of what it had been, but it was there, which meant he had to be alive.
Tears trailed down my cheeks as I imagined the echo of that devious voice in my mind. The voice that had goaded me. Incensed me. Aroused me. Gods, what I wouldn’t give to hear it now.
Then I felt it. The faintest pulse down the bond — so subtle it might have been nothing if it weren’t for the deep sense of knowing that settled in my bones.
Kaden?
No answer.
Please, I begged him, growing my hedge of thorns thicker and tighter, leaving only enough room for that shimmering golden thread.
It’s you.
Kaden’s answer was faint — barely more than a rasp –– but I choked out a sob of relief.
It’s me.
Lyra?A flicker of confusion ghosted down the bond, followed swiftly by fear.You shouldn’t be —
They’re hurting you.My voice shook as it traveled down our mental pathway.
Kaden didn’t respond.
I’m coming for you.
No.
You cannot stop me,I shot back.
Lyra, it isn’t safe. My mind isn’t . . .
He trailed off, but I heard the words he did not say. Kaden’s mind was no longer safe from his father.
Raw, unadulterated fury coursed through me as I imagined what they must have done to him to breach his mental defenses. I pressed a hand to my chest, my muscles still clenched protectively from the agony they’d put him through.
