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You will watch if I choose to make mine to save your future wife.” I flinched back against the cave as his words struck me.
A sorcerer’s bond created a magical bridge to ignite the merge of each other’s powers and intertwine the two souls together upon marriage—consummated by blood, body, and soul. In an unformed bond, the risk of power depletion became deadlier in consequence as the threads of fate fully weaved the sorcerers together.
“I would give anything,” I whispered, fading into the night. To see you smile like that again.
Caring benefited no one, I repeated to myself, but you did it anyway.
“When he looked at you, though, it said everything.”
Love was a want out of reach, but it was still a want, and Keahi felt like something I needed.
“Because even if you cannot feel it, I have, and it has taught me to hope when I should not.”
“I will fight with you even in times of darkness, Lightbringer,” Kane vowed with a fealty I could not return. “We are the flame, and you are the light to bring us home.”
Kane leaned down toward her ear. “I will see you again, Lightbringer. Do not leave us just yet,” he whispered as he faded into shadowfire. “I won’t be able to forgive him if you do.”
“You have a lot of fear for a man who is dead, but I’ll play your game. . . Do you know what I will do to you, father, if I wake up, and my bonded is still dead? I will hunt you to the ends of the realm. I will not stop until I have you on your hands and knees praying to the Gods you have betrayed. I will be your King.”
“Because I am the monster you made me!”
There was no home without him, and I had not known one existed until I felt his return every time I dreamed. The Prince of Solstice’s eyes were made of fire, but his soul was my oasis.
“Everything, and then nothing.” My voice cracked. “It was like your soul had been expelled from the realm entirely—you were gone, and I could not bring you back. I wanted you to come back.”
“I can feel you, Keahi, even when you are gone. There is a hole in my chest where you are supposed to be. It was not until I heard what you said on the battlefield when you thought I was dying in your arms. I heard. . . everything.”
“That is not the scar I am worried about.” The cave walls shook against his ragged breath. “It is the one I will be left with if you leave me. If you believe this to be transactional. . . because I assure you, it is not.”
I am sure to be all of those things except one, my little liar. I will let you figure out which one.
A gloved finger lifted my chin. “Furious.” Keahi leaned into me, and his soft lips brushed mine. “Fury, however,” he said roughly. “Is dull compared to the memory of you dying in my arms—I could have lost you.”
“I could not kill you, even if I wanted to, because I need you,” I confessed. “This side of you does not scare me. I have felt glimpses of it before, deep within the bond. I chose you regardless, against everything I claimed to live for.”
“You will not beg anyone, for anything, ever again. You will take what you want, and you will not feel sorry for it.”
“When you find out what I truly want, and what I will do to get it, you will not run from me. Just as I have chosen not to run from you. I have allowed myself to want many things, but never the way I have wanted this.”
“Tied up, perhaps.” He worked his jaw, unable to hold back his smile. “But I will always find my way back to you.”
I will not take from you, not unless you ask me to. You are my sorcerer bonded, and I will always choose to honor you in my promise for lifetimes.
“Which one is it, my little liar? Or I will make sure that no one else in this room survives the night.”
“Let this be where the beginning and the end find each other. Take the power that has always been yours to wield and make them pay for it.”
“And this—” He paused, readjusting the hilt in his hand. “—is for touching my wife.”
I will not run from you or what you want. I am not afraid, my shadow. The darkness within you . . . calls to the darkness within me.
