Page 170

I chew my lip because I do love Arlo, but that doesn’t matter when so much is riding on my bond to Kylian.

“Did you mean what you said about loving Kylian?” Eagan asks.

I nod slowly, my mind and heart at war with each other. How is it even possible that I can be torn between one man I barely know and one I have loved for years? Rationally, I know it’s the bond, but why does even thinking that feel like I’m lying to myself?

“Then you need to tell Kylian. You insulted him when you offered to let him mark you to save another man. You showed him you would sacrifice your life for Arlo’s.”

“But that . . . It’s the only thing I had to bargain with.”

“You wouldn’t have needed to bargain with him in the first place had you been honest from the beginning.”

“Kylian would have killed him.”

“No . . . Do you truly believe Kylian would hurt you in such a way?”

“He gave away my sister!”

“Your cousin, and no he didn’t. He made an agreement, one he knew would keep your sister alive.”

I swallow thickly. “He doesn’t know that for sure.”

“Yes, he does. Just as he knew you were too valuable for Xavian to kill. He knew Xavian wanted you for himself. Despite his threats, no king would be stupid enough to kill a mage after the last time. Nothing Kylian does is a gamble.”

We reach my door before I can respond, and Eagan opens it, motioning for me to enter. I step inside, trying not to notice how wrong the space feels without Kylian.

Eagan pauses in the doorway. “I need to speak with the king about the situation with Draven’s spies,” he says. “I will return later to check on you.”

I nod because words have deserted me, and if I open my mouth now, I might ask him to stay just so I’m not alone with my thoughts and this echoing emptiness.

He pulls the door closed behind him, and I’m again alone in a room that feels like a tomb, surrounded by silence and the persistent ache of a bond that pulls me toward someone who just pushed me away.

I move automatically toward the bed, sinking onto the edge, and my mother’s leather-bound book from the library stares at me from the bedside table. I was overwhelmed with the last book I tried to read about mate bonds and their rules that seem designed to trap two souls together.

I’ve been avoiding my mother’s book, saving it, in a way. At first I thought ignorance might protect me from the truths I’m not ready to face, but it’s more than that. Every time I’ve tried to read her book, the weight of it felt unbearable.

Everything of my mother I have left in this world is all there will ever be, and once I’ve read her words, there will never be new ones to read.

The leather is cold and smooth in my hands as I trace my fingers along the edges, feeling the slight ridges where the volume number was scratched into the spine.

There’s an ache in my chest as I let the worn pages fall open, pages that were written by a hand that once held mine. This book is a piece of a woman who never got to see her daughters read it, a woman the world burned before I could understand what she truly was. All these years, her words have been here, waiting patiently for me to take my place.

My eyes scan the faded ink, taking in descriptions of bonds through history, legendary pairs who found each other across impossible odds. She writes the way she used to speak, and with every new line, it feels like the words were written just for me.

Time passes in strange increments while I read, the light outside the windows shifting from late afternoon gold to the purple-gray of dusk. I barely notice, too focused on the words swimming before my eyes, descriptions of markings mixed with romantic notions that would be beautiful if they weren’t so terrifying.

Then I find a section about bond variations and exceptions, and my fingers tighten on the page until I’m afraid I might tear it.

No bond is the same across all bloodlines.

Vampires bind by venom and blood.

Lycans by bite and scent.

Dragons by flames, touch, and breath.

Elven by blood oath.

Demons by soul and taint.