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If I could, I would wash away every memory of their loss. I would pour every ounce of my love into the absence she once felt here. For a singular second, I think she might tense up again, might freeze. That it’s too new, and too overwhelming, and she’s worried that it won’t last, that they’ll be gone again when the magic bred from our bonding subsides.

But she only exhales softly, then reaches behind her to draw my arm around her waist, like she wants me to hold her even closer.

Her breathing begins to even as she toys with the silver ring on my finger, twisting it in slow circles until her hand eventually falls away, and I don’t need our bond to know she has fallen asleep.

I bury my face in her periwinkle hair, inhaling deeply—cherry almond and smoky sandalwood mixing in my nose—and it isn’t long before I, too, am pulled into sleep’s embrace.

41

BONDED

ELYRIA

“So . . . are we married now?”

Elyria released a breathy laugh, her head on Cedric’s chest as they lay on the bed, a sheet drawn loosely over them. His hand moved in soothing, concentric circles along her back beneath her wings. Pale morning light was just breaking through the gaps in the tent’s canvas, and Elyria yawned as she propped herself up on one elbow. “You’re so adorably human sometimes. We can call it whatever you want.”

“What do you want to call it?”

She smiled, a mischievous, beaming thing, while sending as much reassurance as she could down the bond. “Would it make you happy if I called you my husband?”

“Not nearly as happy as it would make me to call you my wife. But those were not marriage vows we said. And we have no rings.”

Elyria laughed again, louder this time. “What kind of marriage vow could supersede the oaths we swore to each other last night? And you already have a ring.”

She tore her adoration-laced gaze from his face to grab his right hand and lift it to her lips. Cedric inhaled sharply, stiffening when she drew his pointer finger into her mouth and hooked her teeth around the silver ring, pulling it off with a gentle sucking motion.

“There,” she said, plucking the ring from between her lips and sliding it onto the fourth finger of his left hand instead. “Is that official enough for you?”

Her knight squirmed on the bed, scooting back in order to sit up, and Elyria took an inordinate amount of satisfaction in the fact that he was quite obviously hard again beneath the thin sheet covering him. “What—” He cleared his throat. “What about you?”

Elyria couldn’t stop the slight roll of her eyes, even as her pursed lips quirked into a smirk. She twirled a finger in the air nonetheless, swiveling it around and around until a tiny loop of shadow had formed. It was very close to almost being solid, and when she sat up and picked it from the air, then dropped it into Cedric’s palm, she said, “So, are you going to get down on one knee, or . . . ?”

Cedric blinked at Elyria, then down at the shadow ring in his hand, which seemed to consolidate into a halo of shiny onyx before their very eyes. “Won’t it dissipate? Disappear?”

Elyria shrugged. “Sid never has. Well, aside from when she wants to, of course. And can’t you feel it?”

He frowned. “Feel what?”

“How different it all is now. How easy.” She flared her wings out behind her to illustrate her point. “It’s like your very power is pulsing in my blood. If I tried, I think I could make a dozen Sids, could send a hundred sparrows in any direction.”

Cedric chuckled. “There’ll only ever be one Sid.”

“That’s the stars-damned truth. But you know what I mean.”

He slid the ring onto her finger. “I really, really do.”

Elyria held up her hand, shifting it from side to side, and let out an appreciative whistle. “I think black’s my color.”

Cedric leaned forward to press a kiss to her temple before sliding off the bed and crossing the tent to where he’d left his trousers folded the night before. “I still rather prefer purple, wife.”

She grinned to herself, resisting the urge to flop back onto the bed and draw the sheet over her head. She knew there was no time to delay further, no letting herself marvel in this moment, in the aftermath of their fully sealed, all-encompassing life-bond. They had things to do. The road ahead would still be dark, with many horrors likely waiting at the end of it.

Still, as Elyria observed Cedric pull a clean tunic on overhead and buckle Ashrender at his hip, she could not squash the beam of hope simmering somewhere underneath the swirling beat of her power. There was more than enough here to fix the crown. She knew it. There was a light at the end of that road, and she would find it.

“How do ye reckon it works?” Thraigg asked. The dwarf bounced on his heels, his thick woolen cloak swinging open to reveal the gaping neckline of his oversized tunic. Elyria smiled inwardly as she noticed that only part of the bandage that had covered his chest and shoulder yesterday was still in place.

Jocelyn, standing across from her, looked like she had nearly recovered as well. There was color back in her cheeks, and Elyria had personally checked on the wound she’d sustained during their escape from Elderglade. The relief Elyria had felt upon seeing how it was healing was . . . not small. Neither was Jocelyn’s unbridled joy when Elyria had revealed the status of her wings to her.