Page 272 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

“Theoretically… she can’t die. She might collapse or feel sick, but the Bonded should not be able to empty the Bonder.”

“Theoretically?” I pressed. “That’s not good enough.”

“Agreed,” he said, just as Lana noted, “But she could end the war in one fell swoop.”

“She could,” Aren agreed. “Assuming we find the last horseman. But… it’s a risk I’m not fond of. Not unless we know she’ll survive it, even if he doesn’t. Jason?” He turned over his shoulder. I balked.

“Jason? As in Westerlund?”

All three nodded, and then another man appeared, scowling at his hand as he shook it out like that would hasten the healing. Beautiful, brown-skinned, with striking cerulean eyes as clear as the sea in Santorini, he towered over the girls nearly as much as Aren, though his build was leaner—somehow feline.

And just like that, I was staring at the only other fate weaver Ally had ever known.

“Tell me about her Bond,” I begged in a rush. “Please. What do you see? Can they be meddled with? Corrected?”

“Slow down, little one,” he rumbled, amusement lifting his cheeks—amusement I envied in the face of this suffocating panic. “Generally, there are rules. Unspoken laws, like a code, among fate weavers. But given the circumstances, I think it’s fair to say I’m morally obligated to break ’em.” He flashed a handsome grin—the kind I ached for, without motives hidden behind his teeth like everyone else I’d witnessed here.

And then, just as the stone promised, Jason gave me my answers.

FIFTY-FOUR

SAWDUST

FREYA

We left August in Hazelharbor with Nathara’s healers, who repaired fractures in his neck, skull, and arm; the gunshot wound in his shoulder; the ribs that had punctured his lung; and the lung itself—all before touching his spine.

Sessions like that were brutal on healer and patient alike, and despite August’s gritted orders, Nat called it after two hours of reconstruction.

They’d take another whack at it tomorrow, once his natural healing had time to catch up. Admittedly, watching the tiny priestess smile sweetly and simply put my growling brother to sleep when he kept protesting was funnier than it should’ve been.

As for Cyrus…

Well.

He’d be fine. Or at least that’s what they insisted after my million-and-one questions.

They’d healed the stab wounds and his wings, though Nathara strongly cautioned him against using them anytime soon before we returned to Luminark Manor.

To his credit, he kept the grumbling to a minimum, and the moment our own healers left the room, he was asleep.

And there he stayed. Wings spread wide, the leather tie long since fallen from his hair, leaving it tossed haphazardly across his forehead.

Even in sleep, a deep crease marred his brow, and still he was so goddamn beautiful it hurt. He was the kind of man the ancients would’ve preserved in carved stone or cast bronze. Not even rest gave him the peace he needed. It took everything I had not to reach forward and smooth that crease away, like enough care traced over the place it pinched might ease some of the strain from his body.

Gentleness had never been my strong suit, though. James could attest to that. I guess so could August.

I wanted to climb into the mammoth bed beside him. Curl against his ribs like a cat and nestle into the crook of his neck, where my face fit like a piece of him he’d somehow forgotten during assembly.

Alas. One pain-glazed ma moitié does not forgiveness make.

Not for someone like Cyrus, at least.

I’d have to settle for the armchair beside him. I could answer questions and dole out orders from my perch. That incessant barrage of mental voices had a purpose beyond driving me to the brink of insanity. Being a soul of two hierarchies had very few downsides, but that was one of them.

Fidgeting in said chair, my eyes snagged on the piles of books that had somehow been gathering in my room, my office—it seemed we had library gremlins in the manor. With an anxiety-ridden sigh, I leaned forward and snatched the top book, scowling down at a well-worn copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. If the others were broken in, this one looked like it had been folded backward and stuffed into a back pocket for an entire cross-country hike. I barely made it past the title page before familiar messy annotations appeared.

Cyrus.