But the bond feels it instantly.
“What are you doing?” she demands across the connection, anger flaring sharp and bright.
“Maintaining clarity,” I answer evenly.
“Clarity from what?”
“From becoming leverage.”
Silence pulses between us.
“You think I’m leverage?” she asks, quieter now.
“I think Velcryn will make you so.”
Her hurt bleeds through before she can contain it.
“You don’t get to decide that for me. You said we will do this together!”
I do not respond. Because if I continue, I will say something I cannot retract.
Hours pass. The bond shifts from steady warmth to uneven static. It does not weaken. It destabilizes. Emotion presses without outlet. Frustration. Longing. Anger. Fear.
It is worse than distance. It is proximity without permission. By midnight, my concentration fractures. I brace both hands against the stone table in my chamber and force my breathing steady.
This is necessary.I remind myself. If they strip my title, if they challenge my command, if they move against Nytheria… She must not be standing at my side when it happens.
The bond spasms suddenly. Pain lances through my skull without warning. I stagger. The room tilts sideways. This is not emotion. It is vision.
The world shifts.
I see Amelia in the ritual grove. Her hair is loose, whipping in violent wind. The Wildspont pulses erratically beneath her feet. Magic pours from her in a torrent too vast, too unstable.
Elders shout around her. Vira stands behind the circle. Smiling. The spell spirals beyond containment. Amelia’s eyes find mine across impossible distance. And then she collapses. The vision shatters. I crash back into my body with a violent inhale.
The bond screams. It tears through my chest like a living thing in agony. What is she doing? I am already moving before thought forms. If this is future I have to break it. And if distancing myself was meant to protect her. It has just failed.
22
AMELIA
Ido not tell him. That is the first mistake.
The second is believing I can outthink a bond forged in blood and fire.
Nytheria is restless by dusk, the Wildspont’s pulse uneven beneath my feet as I stand alone in the lower grove where the first ley lines were mapped centuries ago. The air smells faintly metallic again. Not rot. Not yet. But strain.
Zeidan’s distance has not quieted the bond. It has sharpened it.
Every time he pulls away, something inside me strains harder toward him. It is not romantic softness. It is not weakness. It is gravity. A magnetic insistence that I do not entirely recognize as myself.
And that frightens me.
If Velcryn strips him of his title, they will blame me. If Nytheria fractures, they will blame him. If the bond keeps deepening, neither realm will see partnership. They will see surrender.
So I convince myself there is only one solution. Not sever it entirely. Just weaken it. Dull the edges. Restore autonomy. Thatway I can prove to the council I am still with them, that Zeidan is not an obstacle, but a tool… At least that's what my mouth is saying, but I know I am a liar.
I kneel within the circle I carve into the earth, pressing my palm into soil that still remembers older magic than either of us. The severing rite is ancient, rarely used, designed to untangle forced bindings between hostile mages.