She wasn’t dead, because the bond still existed, yet … it was silent. He’d puzzled over it during the long hours they’d traveled, during his hours on watch. Even the hours when he should have been sleeping. He hadn’t felt pain in the bond that day in Eyllwe. He’d felt it when Dorian Havilliard had stabbed her in the glass castle, had felt the bond—what he’d so stupidly thought was the carranam bond between them—stretching to the breaking point as she’d come so, so close to death. Yet that day on the beach, when Maeve had attacked her, then had Cairn whip her—
