It would also have required me to break my word and lose Thane. Unacceptable.
I was bonded to Thane. I would not break that for an omega, even as I knew Thane suspected I would. And the Seelie Queen didn’t want Thane, or his wild magic, in her lands.
“I'm not unbound,” I said.
His gaze didn't waver. Doubt flickered there, not in my claim but in its sufficiency. An omega bond amplifies. It stabilizes. It alters the architecture of power. We both knew it. It could break my mark and bring me more power than I ever experienced.
I reached for him again, slower this time, and closed my hand at the back of his neck, resting my forehead against his.
“I choose you. Every time,” I said.
His breath shifted. The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction.
The forest stirred as his magic flared and then settled. Leaves rustled where no wind moved. A bird lifted from a low branch and vanished deeper into the trees.
He exhaled and straightened fully. “After,” he said, his voice more confident.
“After.”
We resumed our advance, closer now, shoulder to shoulder, studying the surrounding terrain. The ground shifted beneath our boots. Stone pressed through soil in irregular lines, etched with sigils worn smooth by time but not inert. Power was embedded in them, a faint buzzing that filled my body and made my mark burn.
I crouched, studying the pattern without touching it. Binding work. Not lethal. Made to contain something. I stifled the thrill of excitement that confirmed we were on the right path.
Thane lowered beside me, head angled slightly as though listening for music. His affinity for magic is much closer to the surface than mine, more open and attuned.
“This was not designed to keep intruders out,” he said quietly. “It was designed to hold something in.”
“Yet it kept previous searchers out, diverting them, confusing them. Who created it? The king or one of his magic-users?”
Thane’s expression darkened from memories he didn’t want. He had been one of those magic-users once upon a time. Not my choice, but forced into service, eventually escaping. “It feels different.”
I rose and scanned the tree line. The canopy thinned ahead. Light shifted from filtered green to pale silver.
We moved through the last line of trees and into a clearing.
Stone rose from the earth in a single narrow column, pale against the sky. The tower climbed into the clouds, its surface wrapped in vines that didn't choke but anchored. The forest didn't reclaim it. It obeyed it.
The mark on my wrist flared sharply, pain shooting up my arm. I rubbed it absently as I stared at the tower of stone.
Thane stepped to my side, gaze tracking upward. His throat moved once.
“That was not in the reports.”
“No,” I said.
The tower dominated us. Deliberate. Imposing.
If the king had hidden a weapon, he had not buried it. He had placed it somewhere that would endure.
And the forest guarded it. But it had let us through. Why?
Thane
Malric hesitated as we stood before the tower, which was unusual.
Malric didn’t retreat from anything. He advanced, or he held. There was nothing in him that yielded ground unless forced. His focus was always on the mission, always forward, locked onto the objective with the same precision he brought to a battlefield once lines were drawn.
I followed him without question.
