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My eyelids grew heavy. The daytime tiredness I had grown accustomed to began to close in. I shot up quickly before my head could hit his pillow.
You cannot end up in his bed, I reminded myself.
I curled into the chair at the bedside instead and counted his breaths and knew sleep would come soon regardless of where I was sitting.
When I woke he was already watching me.
I straightened in the chair and pushed my hair back and pretended I had not just been asleep with my mouth open in a man's bedroom.
He looked better. Not well. Better. The glassiness had cleared from his eyes and the color had come back to his face in the way it did when feeders had what they needed.
"How long was I asleep?" I said.
"Long enough," he said.
I looked at him. He looked back. The room was quiet and the light had shifted and I decided that if I was ever going to ask him I was going to ask him now.
"The bond," I said. "What were your plans? Truly."
He was quiet for a long while.
“Do you know what it was truly designed to do?” he asked.
"I do now. Tell me what you planned."
He looked at the ceiling. "In the beginning I planned to do it. Drain you. Open the veil. Bring Brina back." He paused. "Then I found you in Rathmor."
"And?"
"And I could not."
“You told me she was dead, Teorin. You told me your mother was dead.” I tried to keep my voice even.
“I lied.”
I did not react to that, there was no point.
I watched his face. "What happens if the veil opens, Teorin? Truly."
He looked at me. “What lives in Sarenal is dark. Darker than anything you have seen here in Morrath.”
"We need to seal the wards then,” I said.
"If we do," he said carefully, "you will be forever tied to me through the bond. That is what the bond requires. That is what it has always required."
I looked at him.
"I am not scared of that," I said.
He looked back at me.
Neither of us said anything after that. The room held the silence the way rooms did when something had just shifted inside them.
Yorali
TAMAL
The dining room in Yorali was never comfortable.
