ThePrince of Cyngalon’sblood, offered willingly.
His own blood shivered: the hush of the wind through faraway trees. All the plants in the room were now very much awake. He set down his glass and rose into the prince’s space, tentatively took the offered knife and copied the motion: a thin slit in his flesh, enough to draw a prickle of crimson blood.
Prince Osian watched with palpable intensity. Suddenly, this felt damned. Dangerous.
Together, they moved their hands, until the cuts on their palms overlaid each other. Their fingers laced, the prince’s hand warm and steady, lightly calloused.
Meilyr met his gaze and swallowed a shiver. The prince’s blood – honest-to-the-godsroyalKhaimlicblood – pressed against his own, hot and alive.
The memory of his parents and the oath he had sworn to them after their deaths reared up inside him. The promises he had made, shattered yet again in the act of forming another, with the man whose family had devastated his own. Had devastated his homeland.
Prince consort.
With the light burning in their eyes, Meilyr said, ‘And I swear to play my part. On my blood, and before the eyes of the gods.’
On his blood that would condemn him to death if the prince knew the truth.
Prince Osian took back his knife with its alderwood hilt and the bite of iron in its blade, as their other hands remained linked in the vow.
Meilyr’s pulse beat so hard he felt light-headed. The prince owned him physically, but Meilyr now owned his blood. What a wild, incredible thing – but he could feel it, even more certainly than the prince’s fingers. It coursed in his body, roaring like the wind, the prince’s heartbeat ricocheting through him. In tandem with his own, a terrifying echo, devouring all other sound.
It was done. Offeredwillingly.
Celyn would have been jubilant. From now on, Meilyr had the means to kill Prince Osian, as easily as the prince could slide the dagger up through his ribs.
FIVE
Rowan.
Courage, wisdom, protection. Used for binding, and for breaking.
Often part of union wreaths at hand-fastings.
Personal writings of Lowri gan Hywel
FIVE
It was a wonder Meilyr made it through the rest of the evening, a wonder he made it down the stairs without falling when the prince escorted him to the rooms beneath his own –Meilyr’srooms, now.
Weaving that bond, that oath with the prince, had resulted in an immediate headache. His pulse had been too fast, too thick for his veins, and even worse was how the echo ofHis Majesty’spulse had continued to repeat through him like the peel of some awful bell, so that for a while it had felt as though Meilyr no longer existed in one body, but in two.
The locked door of his new chambers and Prince Osian’s ascent back to his own, which Meilyr too hadfelt, seemed to be helping the sensation subside. There was still a pressure behind his eyes, but only one heart in his chest.
He traced the raw rise in his thumb. That had never happened before. Perhaps it was the natural aftermath of swearing a blood oath, but he could still feel the prince if he… listened. Like focusing on someone’s soft breathing in a quiet room.
That connection would remain until death.
Weaver, orgwehyddblood – Meilyr’s forbidden blood – allowed increased connection between living things. Flora and fauna worked similarly, though fauna were understandably harder to exert one’s will upon. Physical touch gave a glimpse, but an exchange of life threads opened the way to more.
Ingestion was one such method, to gain a more acute awareness and more powerful weaving, and a means to alter the threads of life itself: growing, blooming, wilting.
But blood oaths, thewillingandreciprocalsharing of life threads…
Once, blood oaths between weavers and non-weavers had been a thing of legend and great trust. Great love.
Now, Meilyr was woven to an obliviousKhaimlicprince, who he also happened to be married to.
Gods, what a day.