“When I received Ronan’s plea for an alliance, something told me I had to take it,” Kellan continued in a low, confidenttone. “And when I saw you for the first time in Odessa, I knew it was you.”
His hand squeezed around mine, and a surge of warmth swelled around my chest.
“But you didn’t say anything then?—”
“What would I have said? You’d chosen someone already,” he replied, slowing his pace and creeping around a particularly sharp shard of glass. “But you still had a bone of power. I first thought it might be the Celestyn Bone. I thought, perhaps that’s why I had this connection with you. That you were meant to lead me to the bone. And then I found you in the Death Dunes months later.”
I stepped over a jagged grouping of glass before twisting and ducking underneath a wall of it protruding from the side of the path.
“Bonder,I thought then,”Kellen continued. “You were the Bonder, and that’s why we were connected. You’d lead me to the Celestyn Bone. But then we swore an air oath.”
A pang of grief squeezed my chest. I could almost still feel the strip of air connecting us if I tried hard enough. Was it strange I missed it?
Kellan nodded ahead of me. “I’ve been bound by a handful of air oaths in my life. This was different, and I knew you felt it, too. Something had changed between us. Something more than air linked us.”
“What about Vienah?” I asked in a raw voice, unsure I wanted to know the answer. My stomach twisted as I thought of the water witch.
“Vienah…” Kellan murmured before letting out a sigh. “I’ll admit Vienah was…a distraction. You’d made it clear you loved Bayne, and when you reacted the way you did at the mention of his soulbinding to Queen Antares… The devastation in your eyes.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
Kellan paused, his head dipping as if rethinking his actions last fall. I ran my thumb over the edge of his hand, and he kept walking.
“And then our dream,” I murmured, interrupting the silence that had settled.
“Yes.” His voice dropped. “Our dream.”
“You were angry…”
Kellan stilled and turned cautiously to look at me. “I’m sorry for that. I knew something had connected us, and I knew enough of the Palaega Bone to fear the mind-controlling power it contained. The People of the Stars keep our stories. And Sintarrak’s manipulation of our ancestors… The danger of that power has been seared into our veins. I thought perhaps… Perhaps you had the Palaega Bone already and had kept it hidden, or perhaps you somehow manifested the power… It scared me.”
I squeezed his hand, and he turned, leading us through the winding maze.
“What changed after that?” I asked, remembering how his demeanor toward me had shifted to something more delicate in the weeks to come.
Kellan paused as we reached the crystal door to the altar chamber. He turned toward me and pressed our palms closer together.
“This,” he whispered, sending a spark of electrifying power surging through my body.
My powers awakened, dancing alongside his as they swarmed past the wall that had been in place. I glanced up, noting we were beyond the marbled rubelline barrier.
I pulled my gaze back to find Kellan’s dark eyes soft on mine, widened in awe.
“I’ve spent years mastering my Conduit ability, training with mages of the Marisarma fleet. But it has never once felt thisway,” he said, clarity and conviction riding his words. Kellan released my grip and pushed open the crystal door with his wind.
We stepped inside the shimmering altar chamber of crystals, their color shifting from a soft violet to a light blue.
“This connection we have,” he continued, turning toward me and tugging the door shut with a flip of his wind, “runs deeper than an air oath. It runs deeper than a shared dagger. Deeper than a shared dream. Deeper than a shared hell. I don’t know what it is, but I do know I have fallen irrevocably in love with you.”
Tears rose to my eyes, and I opened my lips to confess when emotions clogged my throat. Images of me killing Kellan swarmed my mind, Tynan’s Hell chasing me beyond his gates. Guilt clawed at my chest, the emotion itself as strong as the powers swarming beneath my skin, stripping me of my worth, of my ability to allow myself to be loved.
“How could you possibly love me after the Abyss?” I asked. “After seeing everything… After experiencing?—”
“I saw your darkest moments. I saw your pain,” he cut in, his brows pinching upward. “And I would do anything to keep you from that pain… Anything to reverse it. Anything to bring you safety, to bring you joy.”
Emotions rushed forward, and I shook my head. “But what I did to you in there?—”
Kellan’s lips parted, and he knelt before me.
“After whatyoudid tome?” he asked, brows rising. “You saved me frommy hell.My death.” He shook his head, the dried blood on his cheek cracking as he smiled. “Bonscaíh,my shadow, I’d endure your hell an infinite number of times if it meant sparing you from it.”
