“What does it feel like to you?” I ask quietly.
He’s silent long enough that I think he won’t answer.
“Like something’s inside my territory,” he says at last. “And I should’ve felt the threat.” His mouth twists, faint and humorless. “But I don’t.”
My chest tightens, not just from the words, but from what slips through the bond with them. A deep, buried weariness. Loneliness he would never name. And beneath it, a restless pull.
I close my eyes. “This isn’t just magic.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s older than that.” A beat. “It knows more than we do.”
A shiver runs through me.
“We should try to sleep,” I whisper.
“We won’t,” he says calmly. Certain. “But lie down anyway.”
The silence that follows is heavy but not sharp. Not angry. I curl slightly beneath the covers and let the echo of his presence settle around me.
A voice. Not his.
He is the key.
The words slice through my mind like cold wind. I jerk upright, gasping. Zeidan rises, already reaching for his blade.
But there’s no danger in the room. The sigil flares again, and I feel it: the tremor of something ancient… turning toward us.
And for the first time since this began, I am truly afraid.
6
ZEIDAN
The bond is louder than it should be.
I sit alone in the northern tower of the citadel, overlooking the storm-lashed cliffs. A scroll of old bond law lies open in front of me, but the words blur, meaningless. I can feel her, Amelia, like a heat pressed against my spine, even though she’s rooms away. Her emotions rise and fall like waves: sharp worry, simmering exhaustion, and something else, something coiled too tightly to name.
The bond shouldn’t be this clear. Not yet. I close the scroll with more force than necessary.
The Matrons cannot know. If they do, they will have me stripped, bound, and reduced to something barely living. Already, I’ve heard the whispers in the halls. That the ritual was too violent. That the girl is unstable. That I am.
Let them whisper. Their fear means nothing. Their fear means they remember what power feels like. Still, I bind a suppression rune across my chest and draw the fabric over it. The glow fades. The bond quiets…slightly.
Not gone. Never gone.
A knock comes. Three sharp raps and no hesitation. That means Council. I rise slowly, careful to smooth the tension from my shoulders. The bond tugs, resisting the distance, already uncomfortable from this short separation. I ignore it. I must.
The Matron Council enter and I swear the room goes colder than usual, though no wind passes through these walls. Six of them are, half-seated, half-hovering near the high arch windows, like vultures ready to pick truth from bone.
Matron Serida speaks first. “You should have reported the outcome of the ritual.”
“It succeeded,” I say simply.
Matron Yrelda narrows her eyes. “Define success. The warding stones cracked. The ritual chamber had to be resealed.”
“You’re still alive,” Hessa says, dryly. “That’s more than we expected.”
“And she?” Serida’s voice is silk around steel. “The Purna?”