Isobel trailed behind, silent.
“You should go somewhere private,” Anna said once they reached the Tree.
“Let’s go to our suite,” Bel said, already heading through the atrium toward the stairs.
Anna released both Sean and David, apparently content to leave them to their drama, but David grasped her wrist tight enough that his knuckles blanched, forcing her to accompany them.
As they entered the antechamber, Rowilda jumped to attention, but none of them greeted her.
“Tell me what you did, Isobel,” Sean said as Rowilda swung the door open. “Why can I feel his pain?”
Autumn leapt from the couch as soon as they entered, rubbingsleep from her eyes, and for the first time in their acquaintance, her forever smile disappeared as she set her gaze upon Bel.
Ah. So maybe she knew what this was.
Isobel moved straight to the cookery and poured herself a glass of wine. Autumn’s attention flittered to each of them as they followed Bel, finally settling on David, who still had Anna chained to him. The pixie’s expression spoke of deep discomfort, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from studying her surroundings.
Isobel turned, glass in hand. Her attention fell on Sean’s injury, his blood now soaked through Anna’s cream shirt. “Will you please let me heal that?”
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
Her hand clenched around the stem of her glass. “I—I did something.”
“Something?” he asked, losing his patience.
“I bound you.” She blurted the words in a rush.
David took a measured breath. “Boundus?”
Isobel stared at the red wine. “I—I bound your souls.”
A long moment of quiet reigned with shell shock. Luster flashed and flickered, but the room was otherwise still, along with Sean’s thoughts.
They’d frozen on two words.Bound souls.
When his mind jumpstarted, it was with a single question: What did that mean?
Eventually, Sean looked at David. His expression remained a mask, but chaos unfurled inside him, a torrent so clear, he might as well have been screaming.
“What does that mean?” Sean enunciated each word with serrated precision.
Bel, who’d been avoiding his gaze, winced. “It…fuses your souls. Together.”
“Like, one soul in two bodies,” Autumn whispered, hovering between Isobel on one side of the room, and David and Sean on the other.
David took a step forward, dragging Anna with him. “What does thatmean?”
“It means you share your lives now,” Bel said, tone tense. “You’ll share everything. You’ll be one.”
Another silence spread between them, allowing Sean’s brain to descend to utter anarchy.
Shareeverything?
As one?
“Share our lives?” he asked. “Share…asoul?”
“Yes,” she replied. “It combines you into one consciousness. Two bodies. One person.”
