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Cedric sucked on one of his teeth. “Not for the first time, the mark I left . . . your bondmark . . . It feels like it’s playing with me? Winking at me, calling me to it? Most of the time it looks just the same as always, the barely there souvenir of the time I . . .”

“Of the time you bit me, yes.” The sense of smug satisfaction that came down the bond with her words was enough to make Cedric groan again for an entirely different reason.

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “But then there are other times, like right now, when it looks, um, different.”

Elyria’s gaze dropped to the twin mark Cedric bore at the side of his own neck, above his collarbone. “It’s like it’s shimmering, right? As though it’s suddenly become luminescent or someone’s shining a light right over it?”

Cedric blinked at her. “Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

She nodded slowly. “And your teeth? Do they . . . ?”

“Ache? Like a motherfucker.”

“Language, Your Highness,” she said with a cluck of her tongue.

Cedric huffed a quiet laugh. But his voice was serious when he asked, “Do you know what it means?”

“What, in all our time apart, you never thought to do a little research on soul-bonds?” she teased, though there was a hint of sadness in her tone.

“I had other priorities. The first and foremost being getting my soul-bonded back. And why would I have wanted to do research anyway? I was ready to pledge my entire being to you long before you branded me as yours. I was already yours—forever. Everything before and after and beyond the moment in that tent when you allowed me to claim you in return is just”—he waved his hand loosely in the air—“details.”

Warmth flooded Cedric’s chest, contentment and love and desire pulsing across the thread between them, making it very difficult for him to focus on what Elyria was saying.

“Important details though,” she said, “given that you don’t seem to realize that there is a difference between the way our soul-bond is now”—she touched her palm to her mark, then moved it to cover Cedric’s—“and the life-bond we have yet to form.”

Cedric was still recovering from the jolt that shot through his body at the feeling of Elyria’s hand over his mark, so it took a few moments for her words to settle in his mind. “Life-bond? But aren’t we already⁠—”

“That’s where your ‘forever’ comes in, Sir Knight. Strictly speaking, our bond is only partially complete. And it can remain that way—we don’t have to do anything else. Despite what our bodies and minds may be trying to push us to do.”

“I’m . . . confused. This thing between us seems plenty complete to me. It’s so strong. You feel it too, don’t you?”

She smiled. “Of course. And it is. What Elder Larkess told us before still rings true—despite how sappy it sounds to actually say aloud. We have a true soul-bond.”

Cedric laughed at the way Elyria’s voice pitched up in an inelegant imitation of the sylvan elder’s accent, like she just couldn’t handle how serious the conversation was.

“Celestially fated or whatever bullshit you want to ascribe it to,” she continued. “But it is still technically incomplete, because we haven’t tied our lives together fully.”

“Why haven’t we?” he said, the words tumbling out before he took even a single second to consider how they sounded. Oh, he truly was pathetically in love, wasn’t he?

He thought Elyria would tease him about that, that she might even throw those very words back at him. But her expression was completely serious, her voice even more so, that moment of levity nowhere to be seen when she said, “It’s nothing I would ever expect from you, my love.”

Cedric’s confusion must have been fully evident on his face, because she blew out a long breath before dropping her hand from his collarbone to wrap both arms around her knees once more. “It’s a monumental decision, Cedric. Life-bonding means tying your lifespan to mine. It means changing. You’d outlive your friends, outlive the life you know, the life you thought you’d have. It means tying yourself so fully to me that even death would not be enough to unweave it. Were one of us to die, the other would go mad and likely follow soon after. Look at what happened to your grandmother. I would never ask you to make that sacrifice.”

Cedric let her words sink in . . . for roughly three seconds, then asked, “What do I need to do?”

Elyria gave a disbelieving shake of her head, though there was a soft smile on her lips as she did. “If we were to do it, there’s a bit of an . . . order to things. A ceremony and vows and⁠—”

“So, it’s like a wedding?”

She chuckled. “Not exactly. That ache in your teeth? The shimmer of our bond? It’s calling us to pierce each other’s marks. We’d drink in each other’s essence—our blood. And then there’s”—she smirked—“another sort of piercing that needs to happen simultaneously.”

“Done.”

Elyria squealed as Cedric leapt on her, quickly flipping her onto her back and caging her in with his arms on either side of her head.

“I appreciate the enthusiasm,” she said, her chest vibrating with laughter. “But again, this is not anything I’d ever ask from⁠—”

“Yes, yes, you’ve established that. But I don’t need you to ask. If it means being closer to you, if it means more time with you—forever with you—then I was already in, before I even knew what it meant to be.”