by S. M. Boyce
“Thanks,” she said.
He smiled.
The red line reached the hole above his other hand and dripped inward. He pressed his finger against the downward spike, breaking open his skin. Warmth splintered through his wrist and crept up his arm like a crashing wave. It swept through him, blurring pleasure with a dull ache in the muscles of his right arm. He closed his eyes and relished the sensation. Needles shot down his arm, starting at his elbow and ending at his wrist. His right hand went numb. He retreated from the spikes and wiggled his fingers. The numbness danced within his fingertips.
The sensation receded, dissolving like salt in stirred water. He studied his fingers and looked up to find Kara analyzing her own hands. The blood in the altar’s riverbeds evaporated until none remained.
He held Kara’s shoulders and examined her face. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “That was weird.”
“Agreed.”
“Your arm!” She ran her hands from his right elbow forward, a smile spreading across her face.
The life line that once covered only his bicep now reached his wrist, signaling he had bonded. He grinned and lifted her right arm, only to find her flawless, untouched skin. She had no lifeline of her own.
His smile fell with hers.
“It didn’t work,” she said.
“My lifeline extended, so it at least partially worked.”
“Did we stop too soon?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Let’s keep going,” she said, reaching for the spikes once more.
He wrapped his fingers around her hands and pulled her back. “Legend says we’re not supposed to. One go for each couple.”
“But—but this didn’t work. I don’t feel any different. I should be able to sense you, right? Sense your health? Feel where you are?”
He nodded but didn’t answer. Apart from the flurry of pins and needles, he didn’t feel different, either.
She cursed. “I can’t even do this right.”
He pulled her into a hug and stroked her hair. “We knew this might not work, Kara. It has nothing to do with you. Nothing is wrong with you. Something obviously worked, even if it wasn’t a complete success. Yes, it’s disappointing, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be a family. I have you. That’s what matters to me.”
She sighed and leaned into his chest. A drop of water brushed his chest through his shirt.
He kissed her head. “C’mon, don’t cry.”
She wiped her eyes. “Sorry.”
He laughed. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
She shrugged and looked at the floor. “I’m just frustrated. I wanted this to be a happy thing.”
“This is a happy thing.”
She smiled and caught his eye. He grinned. At least he could make her smile.
He slipped a hand under her knees and lifted her in his arms. She giggled and hugged his shoulder.
“Be mine forever?” he asked.
“Forever,” she said, her smile wide.
He kissed her cheek. Exactly what he wanted most—forever with her.
Chapter 5
Reception
Kara sat on the wide ledge beneath the window, one foot on the ground to stabilize herself. With only a sheet from the bed wrapped around her torso, she leaned against the wall. An early morning sun burned the sky, casting an orange glow through the canopy. She monitored the forest from her window, her breathing synced to the sway of the branches in whatever wind happened by.
She leaned her forehead against the glass. A cool chill sank into her skin, soothing the worry of a restless night. She’d been up for hours and tossed and turned for the rest. She kept fading in and out of nightmares involving paper vests and screaming Kirelms. She doubted she slept for more than three hours combined.
Her eyes stung. She rubbed them.
A blur of white in her periphery caught her attention. The dress. She’d set it out last night to prevent wrinkles, but now she wished someone would bring her another. One with both sleeves. She eyed the right side of the gown, its open hole of a right sleeve taunting the failed bond. She couldn’t even connect with the man she loved in a ceremony that obviously meant a lot to him. The look on his face when no lifeline appeared on her arm—she sighed.
Bonding ceremony—failure. Surviving a war game—failure. Mass murder—now, that she could do. For an extra helping of shame, she was even sad on her wedding day.
She didn’t want to admit it, but Braeden was more right than he knew. She’d been reckless in the war game, reckless in accepting Stone’s trip to the isen guild, even reckless in how she spoke to Stone, an isen who could control her at any moment but simply chose not to. For now. She’d essentially told him to shut his mouth when he opposed the wedding.
Unwise.
She groaned. Guilt twisted in her stomach, festering with her revelations at each new failure. Braeden cherished her. He wanted her alive and safe. She closed her eyes, frowning. For his happiness, she would be more careful—even if she had started to question this second life Death had given her.
Kara’s eyes fluttered open. Her forehead tingled, pressed against the warm glass and going numb. Light streamed through the window, blinding her.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes to clear the blurred streaks the sunlight left behind.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Braeden said in her ear.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck. A smile tugged on her lips. She took a deep breath and leaned backward into him. Her pulse hummed in her chest, pounding a little faster at his touch.
A trickle of anxiety pushed its way through her core, despite his touch. She shifted her weight and snuggled her head against his chest, trying to push away her doubts before they could assault her again. Still, the shame crept up her spine.
Murderer. Coward.
Her grip tightened on his shirt. The cloth pooled beneath her fingers, warming to her touch.
A hand ran through her hair.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Guess we should head down.”
He wrapped a hand around her waist and kissed her ear. “I think they can wait a little while longer.”
She grinned at the welcome distraction. “I suppose they can.”
Two hours later, Kara walked into the sunlight, left arm wrapped around Braeden’s elbow as he led her to their lunchtime reception. A carriage waited for them on the road outside the cave, its white body trimmed with gold that glittered in the sun. An Ayavelian man bowed as they neared and reached for the door, swinging it open. A stair swung forward to help passengers into the cart.
A breeze rolled past, prickling the skin on her exposed arm. She swallowed hard.
Braeden patted her hand. “It’s okay, Kara.”
She frowned. No, it wasn’t.
Braeden set a hand on her back and allowed her into the carriage first. She stepped on the stair and instinctively looked at the attendant as she entered. He examined her exposed and empty arm, but his eyes shifted away when she caught him. He cleared his throat and bowed his head.
Her frown deepened. She sat as far away from the door as she could in the little carriage. Inside, two benches covered in red cushions gave enough seating for four. Braeden stepped into the cabin and sat next to her.
He grinned and lifted her hand to kiss it. She smiled for Braeden’s sake, trying to forget the attendant, but the memory of his gaping stare made her want to fidget.
“When is the meeting with the Bloods?” she asked.
Braeden laughed. “This is your wedding, Kara. Can’t you relax for a day?”
She shrugged. “Sorry, Braeden, but not really.”
He took a deep breath and pulled her closer to him. She rested her head against his shoulder. His cologne danced around her nose, lulling her back toward happiness. “We meet with them this evening, after the reception ends. So no discussing business until then. This is a party, Kara.”
&nb
sp; She smiled, even though he couldn’t see it. “Very well.”
To Kara’s credit, she smiled through almost all of the reception. Despite the speeches and hours spent mingling with officials she barely recognized, her heart still fluttered when Braeden shot her one of his mischievous grins. She even ignored a snide comment from Evelyn about how Braeden hadn’t needed a separate room after all.
But Kara couldn’t ignore the stares.
At some point through the day, every single pair of eyes rested on her naked arm. Every single person—even Aurora and Gurien—examined her arm out of their peripheral vision, frowning.
At least it was over.
She lay on her back in the Ayavelian castle, still in that stupid dress. She rubbed her bare arm and stared at the roof of the canopy bed, eyes shifting in and out of focus. Rain pelted the windows, a sudden front that moved in during the banquet. She closed her eyes and listened, savoring the patter of raindrops breaking against the glass.
Braeden shuffled about behind the closed bathroom door. The muffled rush of water sloshing in the tub leaked from the tiled chamber as he prepared for their meeting with the Bloods, where they would reveal their plan to ally with isen. The royals wouldn’t go for it, at least not at first. They would disagree and bicker. She didn’t even want to imagine what Evelyn would say, much less Gavin. No one liked isen in Ourea.
She sighed. Her shoulders ached.
Deep within her chest, a small voice burned with the desire to simply run away. It bubbled and whispered, too small to illicit anything more than guilt, but it persisted nonetheless.
“Do you really want to give up?” a voice asked from the edge of the bed.
She frowned. Once more, the first Vagabond had appeared unannounced, reading her thoughts and burrowing into places of her mind where he didn’t belong.
“No, I’m not going to run away,” she muttered.
“What’s happened to you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Please just let me have some peace and quiet before the meeting with the Bloods.”
He didn’t respond. The pelting chorus of the rain consumed the room, tapping the glass in a broken rhythm.
Any icy touch burned her forehead. She shivered and pushed away, eyes snapping open. The Vagabond’s ghost leaned over her, his hood pulled back to reveal his face. His hand reached for her cheek.
“What are you doing?” she snapped.
“Bringing you to your senses.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed herself off the bed to get away from him.
He sat on the mattress. “What’s driving this sadness? Guilt for killing those Kirelms?”
“You can read my mind. Figure it out.”
“I can only understand as much as you’ve processed, but even you don’t seem to know what’s going on. We have to work through this together.”
“Fine. Just not now.”
“You’re running away from this problem, exactly like that little voice wanted.”
She frowned and crossed her arms, but didn’t object. She fought with the accusation, wrestling with it, looking for some weakness in the argument, but she couldn’t find one. Her shoulders relaxed. She leaned into the wall and grumbled.
“I only want to make things right,” she said, her voice quiet.
“You will.”
She shook her head. “How? Everything falls apart the more I try to fix it. I get Gavin on my side, he tries to enslave me with the tiara. I unite the Bloods, they betray me and try to enslave me again. I get the drenowith on our side, Aislynn tries to kill them. We unite the Bloods again, Niccoli dies and the isen are now a threat. Why do I even bother?”
The Vagabond studied her, frowning. “What is this frustration really about?”
She laughed. “What—seriously? Everything! This is about failure. It’s about exhaustion. It’s about—”
“—guilt,” he finished for her.
Her mouth snapped shut. A ball formed in her throat, tightening until she wanted to cry.
The first Vagabond stood. “You still feel the guilt of killing all of those Kirelms.”
A tear pricked her eye. She wiped it away.
She eventually whispered, “Wouldn’t you?”
He sighed. “And what will redeem you? Risking your life?”
She stared at the floor to avoid looking at him. “I just want to finish this war and move on with life.”
“You can’t redeem shame, Kara.”
A fresh wave of pricks erupted at the corners of her eyes. She bit her lip to stop the tears. “I have to make up for what I’ve done. I have to do something.”
Any icy hand chilled her shoulder. She shivered. It retreated.
He let out a slow breath. “It’s natural to feel guilt. But the shame—it will eat you. It’s a gremlin, a creature that feeds on your own self-loathing. It doesn’t make you a better person—it cripples you from within. It will never be full, even when there’s nothing left of the person you once were. If you succumb to it, you will fail. The only redemption left for you is in conquering your shame and reclaiming yourself.”
She glanced at him with watery eyes, one hand over her lips as she tried to fight back the urge to sob. He watched her, his mouth a thin line in something between pride and worry.
“You’ll overcome this, same as you’ve overcome everything else,” he added.
The door to the bathroom swung open. Kara glanced over and looked back at the first Vagabond, but he was gone.
Braeden smiled from the doorway, rubbing a towel over his hair, his eyes alive with joy. The smile faded just as fast when he got a good look at her. He wore pants, but no shirt, and her heart fluttered in a pang of desire that cleared her mind for a second.
He dropped his towel and crossed to her in a few long strides. He held her face and examined her, eyebrows furrowing in concern. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you upset about the bond?” he asked.
She hesitated, confused for a moment before it sunk in. He didn’t understand the lingering guilt of her murders. He thought these tears were for the failed bond—another of her failures, granted, but not the one pressing on her conscience at the moment.
He pulled her into a long kiss, his lips hesitating on hers before pulling her deeper under the spell of his touch. She lost herself in him, letting the worry and pain linger on the surface while she retreated into herself and into him.
His mouth released her, but he only moved far enough away to speak. His breath tickled her lips, teasing her with his proximity. “Bond or no, I have you, Kara. That’s all I care about. That’s everything I want. Even if I can’t sense you everywhere you go, even if we can never have children, I don’t care. You’re the greatest part of my world.”
She smiled. A tear creased down her cheek. He wiped it away and kissed her again.
Guilt or no—shame or no—at least she had Braeden.
Kara sat in a chair by the only window in one of Ayavel’s many war rooms. Braeden sat beside her, one hand wrapped in hers under the table. The wooden surface spanned the full length of the room, taking up almost all of the open space and leaving only enough room to walk behind the chairs. Their backs were to the window, its glass spanning the full height and width of the wall. Rain poured outside, pattering against the glass as it had since the late afternoon. It showed no signs of letting up.
Light flickered from a few sconces on the wall, but the storm sucked almost all light from the room. Kara took a deep breath, waiting.
The Bloods weren’t late—she was early. After her talk with the first Vagabond, she didn’t give him a chance to slip back into the conversation. She wanted to focus on the topic at hand: isen.
“Do you still think recruiting isen is a good idea?” Braeden asked.
She caught his eye but hesitated. He frowned, one eyebrow quirked as he waited for an answer.
She nodded.
The doors swung open.
Neither Kara nor Braeden stood. In walked Evelyn and Frine. Evelyn’s iridescent skin reflected reds and blues onto the walls as she walked, the three pupils in each of her large eyes all focused on Kara. Frine also kept his gaze on her, his coal-black eyes massive in his bald, blue head. The Lossian Blood nodded once and took his seat.
Seconds later, Aurora entered. The Kirelm Blood straightened her back and smiled, a new placeholder wing covering the stump of the one Carden sawed off in the Stelian prisons. Its white frame matched her good wing perfectly, its metal bars curved to mimic the flow of the feathers and bone that once graced her thin back. It seemed to give the queen balance as she walked into the war room, but Kara wondered what inner demons her newfound friend fought as they planned to return to the Stele—a place of such suffering for the girl.
Evelyn frowned in what Kara had grown accustomed to thinking of as the queen’s annoyance with vagabonds in general. The Ayavelian Blood sat at the far end of the table, her back to the open door.
Aurora smiled at Kara, while Frine simply nodded. Both sat a short ways off around the massive table.
“Why did you call us here?” Evelyn asked.
Aurora clicked her tongue. “Now, now. Let’s wait for Blood Gavin.”
As if on cue, Gavin rounded the corner into the room. He paused, eyes darting over the occupants. He cleared his throat and turned to shut the doors. “I apologize. I’m not accustomed to being the last to a meeting.”
“That honor is usually reserved for me,” Braeden said.
Braeden and Gavin laughed. Kara managed a chuckle, but her stomach churned with nerves. She hoped Stone’s idea went over well.
“Let’s get on with it,” Evelyn said.
Kara took a deep breath. “We have bad news and good news. I’ll start with the bad news.”
“I prefer good news first,” Evelyn interrupted.
Too bad. Kara had practiced by telling the bad news first and continued as if the queen hadn’t spoken. “The bad news is Niccoli is dead.”