Page 68 of Beds and Blades

“You were not alive,” he said. The color had left his face. “When I removed the ring, you were not alive.”

“I was not yet gone,” she said. “Not entirely.”

His face shifted through several things at once. Disbelief first, then something rawer underneath. Grief pulled at his mouth before he managed to still it.

“I did not know.” The words barely came out. “I thought…” He stopped. Swallowed. “I thought you were already gone. I would not have left you. I would never have left you.”

“I know.”

For the first time, her coldness shifted. Recognition surfaced beneath it.

“I know you did not know,” she said. “Morvanna found me before I completed. She offered me the bond before the dark had fully taken me. I had a choice, at the end.”

Her red eyes held his.

“I chose.”

Skip did not move. The hook stayed ready, but his face had broken open around the wound of her. Mira watched him and softened her expression into something he might remember, one that might still mean something to the man who had loved her.

In that moment, I understood the cruelty of these creatures. She knew exactly what the face would do to him.

“Do you remember when you claimed me?” she asked.

Skip’s expression changed. Pain, immediate and visible.

“I have not forgotten,” she said. “I will never forget the feeling of that bond forming. Looking into your eyes and feeling everything you felt. Every depth of it.”

A tear moved down Skip’s face. He did not lift a hand to stop it. He did not look away.

“Do not speak of our claiming,” he said. “You are not Mira. The woman I loved is gone from this world.”

“The woman you loved has returned.”

“No.”

The word cracked through the corridor.

Mira’s eyes shifted to me.

“Is this the new woman you want to claim?”

Her gaze moved over me with deliberate assessment.

“She is very similar to me. The same size. The same…”

Her eyes lingered on my body. “The same architecture.”

My skin went cold. Skip said nothing. His jaw was tight. His hand on the hook was not.

“I am here to offer you both something,” Mira said.

Her voice changed again, settling into reason. Terms. Diplomacy with blood still drying somewhere below.

“Both of you should come to Druvenfall,” Mira said. “Scipio, bring me what you know of this garrison—its defenses, its weaknesses, every habit it has mistaken for strength.”

She looked at me. “Meghan, bring what you know from Earth. All of it.”

Her gaze moved between us. “Bring it all into the dark bond.”