“I was not raised among my people, but my blood is no less for it.”
“Fascinating. A refugee.” He shuffled in place. “The bond is an extension of your word. If you are willing to put your word into power for this man, to cancel out the words of your accusing sister, then you must offer something even greater. Your life.”
“My—”
“Joined to his.”
“What?” She cringed at another wave of derisive laughter.
“The bond is a seal of magic. It binds you to him until his blood is yours and yours is his.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said, all her senses overexerting at once. The noise became all-consuming, the chill in the air biting through her flesh. Everything around her vied for her attention. It was like drowning without water.
“Once bound, you will have one year to conceive a child. If you fail to conceive within a year, you will both die. If you are successful, may you find peace in each other for the remainder of your days, for you’ll be tied together until you rejoin your ancestors in the Halls of Ilyn.”
“But how does...” A guard held fast to her, and she looked up, then down, realizing she’d collapsed. She wrested herself away, dizzy on her feet. “How does that... How does that make my word stronger and more powerful? A child? How does that make a spit of sense?”
The announcer smirked at her unsophistication. “A true woman of the Seven Sisters is a bastion of fertility. The only way you would fail is if you have deceived us, which is impossible.”
But she was infertile. She had to be. There’d been no access to teas or other abatements when in Whitechurch, and between all those men, all the times she’d been forced to receive them...
What if she had deceived the woman? What if she was not who she believed herself to be—who her mother had always said she was?
“Your decision, daughter of the curia?”
Sweat trickled down her temples and brow. What curia? She’d never heard the word before. The morning was so cursed cold, and the sun was blinding, yet no one but her seemed to be struggling. She counted the knots in the board beneath her boots. Four. There were five men standing behind Jesstin, and between them she noted nineteen buttons on their dark-blue coats, though there’d be twenty if the fourth man hadn’t lost one. Seven eyelets on each side of Jesstin’s boots, still struggling on the top of the stool so broken it could only have been chosen intentionally.
Maybe I’m not who I think I am.
Maybe this is not the man I want to be bound to for a day, let alone a year... or a lifetime.
Maybe we’ll both perish in a whirl of dark magic in one year.
But if I do nothing, or if I say no, he will die now.
And for nothing more nefarious than wanting her to have a night of peace from the demons.
The eerie silence snapped her back. Taven was yelling—this isn’t what I saw, the boy is going to die, he must die—but she didn’t hear the rest because the announcer—whose name, Meric, jumped into her head like a sudden crash, in a way she knew it must be real—repeated his question.
“I...” Glancing at Jesstin made her voice rasp. His face was beet red, like his bloodshot, bulging eyes. She couldn’t read the source of his terror, his sadness... Was it for himself? For her? Would he rather die than be bonded to her? Was she, as always, overthinking a moment that couldn’t afford distraction? Did it matter when he was seconds from the stool giving way? A stool he would not be standing upon at all if not for her? “I accept the bond, Meric.”
The man’s smarmy assurance flagged. “I did not give you my name, daughter.”
“And yet I know it. Cut him down.”
Meric’s eyes knit in chary cynicism. He hadn’t expected her to accept such a bargain, and neither had the crowd, judging from the unnerving silence rolling off them like a dense fog.
The announcer sucked his teeth, blew out, and nodded once at the guards standing near Jesstin. A sharp blade cut the air, followed by a muffled grunt as Jesstin toppled to the wooden platform.
“Pick him up,” Meric commanded, sounding neither pleased nor disgusted. “And call the sister back. We have a bond to forge, and I need it done proper.”
Elloven rushed to Jesstin, who was struggling to stand on his own. The redness in his face and neck had turned into a purplish hue. He looked less like a man who had cheated death and more like one who had returned from it.
Jesstin croaked and coughed into his arm. “You don’t know what...” He wheezed a whistling breath. “You’ve done.”
“Saved your life is what,” she hissed in a whisper, her eyes drifting toward the men listening.
“Only to damn your own.” Jesstin nearly fell into her arms when the men let go. He gripped her shoulders, righting himself with a blench, then let go of her and cupped his neck with a swallow of air. “Elloven. You’re a bloody fool.”
